Equity in Transportation

Alexis Aranda and Peter Eckart

On December 16, 2021, a diverse group of community leaders, academicians, and practitioners attended an online listening session about transportation, measurement, and how to advance mobility equity, environmental justice, and accessibility for all. The listening session was hosted by Well-being and Equity in the World and the WIN Network. The slides and notes from the meeting are available now, and the archived webinar is available here.  A comprehensive set of pre-readings on the current state of transportation metrics is available here.

The session opened with presentations from Alvaro Sanchez, Vice President of Policy at the Greenlining Institute, and Mary Buchanan, Senior Research Associate at the Transit Center.  Sanchez opened by describing how the Greenlining Institute focuses on combating the historical and enduring impact that redlining has on communities of color. 

For the Greenlining Institute, racial equity means increasing access to power and eliminating barriers to opportunity. “The purpose of the Greenlining Institute is to increase access to mobility, reduce air pollution, and create opportunities for more people in the United States. The roof of the organization combats the impact that redlining has had on communities of color, along with the injustices that are embedded in policy making.” 

One of those barriers is transportation infrastructure and access, which has become a prominent challenge for individuals and communities. “How do we reduce air pollution and improve general health? And how do these options enhance economic opportunities for low income people?” Without accessible transportation, individuals would struggle to get to jobs, medical attention, or necessary resources. While transportation is versatile – walking, biking, public mass transportation, rideshare, carpooling, or individual vehicle ownership - mobility generally has a direct impact on the quality of health for a person and the community around them. With these options in mind, it is important to note that the method of transport people choose for their route and daily activities can have an influence on their daily health. 

Alvaro noted that individual car ownership is the most popular option for commuting, but also the most damaging to their environment. About 86% of employees in the United States commute by car, and 76.7% of people drive to work alone. Among urban residents, 34% of Black residents and 27% of Hispanic residents have reported taking public transit daily, compared to 14% of whites. By focusing on the future of communities of colors and building places with accessible economic opportunities, Greenlining envisions more effective public transit, and a greater quality of life for the people who use it. This is becoming increasingly important with the state of the United States today, living through a pandemic that has shut down businesses, isolated individuals, and heightened an intense need for medical services. In the midst of this difficult time, it is important to find methods of transit that will be accessible and affordable for communities of color to be able to obtain the service and resources that they need. 

Sanchez closed by describing Greenlining’s Sustainable Transportation Equity Project, noting that equity has to be interposed within every element in order to be effective, including the project mission, the process, the outcomes and in measurement and analysis. He posed the question, “How do we reduce air pollution and improve general health? And how do these options enchant economic opportunities for low income people?”  To answer this, Greenlining Institute has taken various metrics to access mobility investments. At the very core, transportation investments are a choice. 

The state of California called a sustainable transportation equity project to attempt to fix standards for equity. This program delivers all funds to targeted populations, and has plans for climate adaptation resilience workforce. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is easy to note that communities that were most susceptible to the virus were the ones with high poverty and pollution rates, only proving racial wealth inequality is still a prominent issue that must be addressed. 

The Sustainable Transportation Equity Project seeks equity in the mission by giving 100% of their funds to communities most impacted by poverty, and pollution, and communities of color. To Greenlining Institute, equity means “increasing access to power redistributing and providing additional resources and eliminating barriers for income communities to reach full potential.”  With this project in motion, it will give economic opportunities for youth, offering full time employment. It will also provide more training in community colleges and universities. In the process, Greenlining Institute has developed guidelines with stakeholders and accountability for a meaningful community engagement and decision making. In addition, it will prioritize multisectorial equity approaches such as zero emission uses, electric buses, etc. 

Mary Buchanan joined the presentation to describe and demonstrate the Transit Center’s powerful web-based tool for measuring equity in public transit. The Transit Center recognizes that the purpose of a transportation system is to connect people to the places they need and want to go, conveniently and affordable. They see equity as benefiting the people with the greatest need for those connections, and focus their analysis of those who are underserved by current systems.  

The Equity Dashboard describes the state of transportation equity in seven large American cities, with more cities coming soon. The Dashboard displays data and maps that measure access to jobs, parks, grocery stories, healthcare and other vital services.  The sophisticated interactive maps also reflect affordability, convenience, demographics, and how transit compares to driving. 

Dr. Jesus Barajas, Assistant Professor at the University of California at Davis closed the presentation by looking at both the macro and micro measurement of equity in transportation. In one study, Barajas and colleagues addressed how regional transportation agencies do or do not use equity to prioritize investments. They found that most metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) included equity in their prioritization criteria, the methods could be improved to align better with more complete definitions of transportation equity, focusing on how targeted groups are defined, more comprehensive methods for equity evaluation, and an increase in the weight that equity is given in prioritization. They further recommend that MPOs and other agencies implementing transportation projects should adopt a justice-oriented framework for project prioritization that ensures that projects first affirmatively remedy historical inequities and work with affected communities to adopt appropriate and meaningful solutions.

At the very local level, Barajas measured the extent to which infrastructure, safety, and policing are linked. For “Biking While Black,” he measured tickets for bicycle offenses by neighborhood socioeconomics and context.

Barajas found that:

• cycling citations issued disproportionately in Black and Latino neighborhoods

• bike infrastructure was disproportionately absent from Black and Latino neighborhoods

• fewer tickets were issued on busier streets when bike infrastructure was present, and

• cycling enforcement was not associated with injury crash incidents.  

From these results, he identified these key takeaways for planners and policymakers: 

• Reconsider the role of enforcement in traffic safety

  • CPD quoted as acknowledging bike ticketing was for crime prevention

• Invest in infrastructure

  • Inequities in planning and investment compound other inequities

  • But work in close collaboration with community members

• Be attentive to the intersections of identity and mobility

  • Needs differ across groups

  • Sometimes efforts fail to count the differences.

The listening session then pivoted to conversations among those community leaders and practitioners attending. The conversations were rich and varied, and resulted in these comments, covering both the existing WIN Measures for Transportation and possible additional metrics. The full set of comments is available here.

• Measures need to also address how to address transportation as it applies to rural areas - rural areas have unique challenges that aren’t really addressed in the mapping systems designed for urban areas 

• Percentage of workers who commute alone by car is a useful measure, but for wheelchair users, the best transportation option IS to travel alone by own wheelchair accessible vehicle

• Need High-quality data on sidewalks to determine how safe and how possible it is to walk, including to walk to transit stops

• There are ways in which systems designed for one population – aging, disability, paratransit – means that we miss seeing how much alike our needs are

• What is and should be the role of “senior” or “student” or “child” discounts or incentives for different modes of transportation, if any?

• Transparency and prioritization of transit agency dollars to people with lived experience of mobility inequity.

Join us for future WIN Measurment Update Listening Sessions by registering here. This meeting’s slides and recording are archived here.