Transportation Equity

Advancing Road User Charge (RUC) Models in California: Understanding Social Equity and Travel Behavior Impacts

Lazarus, Jessica
Broader, Jacquelyn
Cohen, Adam
Alexandre Bayen
Susan Shaheen
2022

The State of California is currently moving forward with a road usage charge (RUC) demonstration program, creating promising research opportunities to examine the potential social equity implications of a shift from a gas tax to a RUC system in California. RUC . To this aim, this study investigates the relative burden of gas taxes and mileage-based RUC across various sociodemographic and geographic dimensions by examining key trends in road use, vehicle ownership, fuel consumption, use of RUC-related technologies, and attitudes/opinions related to RUC adoption. Expert interviews were...

Credit-Based Congestion Pricing: Equilibrium Properties and Optimal Scheme Design

Jalota, Devansh
Lazarus, Jessica
Alexandre Bayen
Pavone, Marco
2023

Credit-based congestion pricing (CBCP) has emerged as a mechanism to alleviate the social inequity concerns of road congestion pricing - a promising strategy for traffic congestion mitigation - by providing low-income users with travel credits to offset some of their toll payments. While CBCP offers immense potential for addressing inequity issues that hamper the practical viability of congestion pricing, the deployment of CBCP in practice is nascent, and the potential efficacy and optimal design of CBCP schemes have yet to be formalized. In this work, we study the design of CBCP schemes...

Activity-Based Travel Models and Transportation Equity Analysis: Research Directions and Exploration of Model Performance

Bills, Tierra S.
Sall, Elizabeth A.
Joan Walker
2012

The current state of practice for transportation equity analysis is moving toward the use of activity-based travel models for scenario analysis. However, little has been done to validate the use of these models for equity analysis. The first objective of this paper is to present a research framework for the equity analysis of long-range transportation plans, for the purpose of critiquing the current state of practice and pointing to key research needs. This research framework is used to identify four research areas for furthering transportation equity analysis: (a) identifying...

Looking Beyond the Mean for Equity Analysis: Examining Distributional Impacts of Transportation Improvements

Bills, Tierra S.
Joan Walker
2017

Activity-based travel demand models can be useful tools for understanding the individual level equity impacts of transportation plans, because of their ability to generate disaggregate transportation measures. However, these capabilities have yet to be fully explored in public practice. In this paper we first discuss a general framework for performing transportation equity analysis using activity-based travel demand models, distributional comparisons, and incorporating equity standards. In addition, we demonstrate the advantages of distributional comparisons, relative to average measures....

Influence of Socioeconomic Factors on Transit Demand During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Bogotá’s BRT System

Caicedo, Juan D.
Joan Walker
Marta Gonzalez
2021

The COVID-19 pandemic restricted most economic and social activities, impacting travel demand for all transportation modes and especially for transit. We hypothesize that the shifts in travel demand varied by socioeconomic status, and we assess the differential impact of COVID-19 in the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) patronage across various socioeconomic groups in Bogotá. We built a database of frequent transit users with data collected by smartcards in Bogota’s BRT system between January and October 2020. For each user in the database, we labeled their home and work stations. Transactions at...

Public Transit Use in the United States in the Era of COVID-19: Transit Riders’ Travel Behavior in the COVID-19 Impact and Recovery Period

Parker, Madeleine E. G.
Li, Meiqing
Bouzaghrane, Mohamed Amine
Obeid, Hassan
Hayes, Drake
Karen Trapenberg Frick
Daniel Rodriguez
Sengupta, Raja
Joan Walker
Daniel Chatman
2021

COVID-19 has upended travel across the world, disrupting commute patterns, mode choices, and public transit systems. In the United States, changes to transit service and reductions in passenger volume due to COVID-19 are lasting longer than originally anticipated. In this paper we examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual travel behavior across the United States. We analyze mobility data from Janurary to December 2020 from a sample drawn from a nationwide smartphone-based panel curated by a private firm, Embee Mobile. We combine this with a survey that we administered to...

For Whom Did Telework not work During the Pandemic? Understanding the Factors Impacting Telework Satisfaction in the US using a Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) Model

Tahlyan, Divyakant
Said, Maher
Mahmassani, Hani
Stathopoulos, Amanda
Joan Walker
Susan Shaheen
2022

The COVID-19 pandemic required employees and businesses across the world to rapidly transition to work from home over extended periods, reaching what is likely the upper bound of telework in many sectors. Past studies have identified both advantages and disadvantages of teleworking. The pandemic experience offers a unique opportunity to examine employees’ experiences and perceptions of telework given the broad participation duration and extent. While employer strategies will play a major role in defining the future forms and adoption of telework, employee preferences and constraints, such...

Socially-aware Evaluation Framework for Transportation

Kuncheria, Anu
Joan Walker
Jane Macfarlane
2023

Technological advancements are rapidly changing traffic management in cities. Navigation applications, in particular, have impacted cities in many ways by rerouting traffic. As different routing strategies distribute traffic differently, understanding these disparities across multiple city-relevant dimensions is extremely important for decision-makers. We develop a multi-themed framework called Socially- Aware Evaluation Framework for Transportation (SAEF), which assists in understanding how traffic routing and the resultant dynamics affect cities. The framework is presented for four Bay...

Impacts of Pandemic Service Adaptations on Job Accessibility: A Case Study of the Bay Area Rapid Transit

Ho, Phoebe
Zmud, Johanna
Joan Walker
2024

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted transit's crucial role as a social service, ensuring access to essential destinations. Despite this, unprecedented ridership lows forced agencies to implement service cuts, disproportionately affecting essential workers and vulnerable populations. However, the full extent of these impacts remains underexplored. While existing literature examines transit agency responses during the pandemic, much of the focus has been on public health and safety measures, overlooking the specifics of service adjustment strategies implemented. This study contributes to...

Job Accessibility Impacts of Pandemic Transit Service Adjustments in the San Francisco Bay Area

Ho, Phoebe
Zmud, Johanna
Joan Walker
2025

The COVID-19 pandemic forced transit agencies to quickly adapt to new challenges, with service reductions as part of the response to reduced ridership, rising fiscal pressures, and staffing shortages. However, approaches to service adjustment varied significantly across agencies. While pandemic research often focuses on ridership impacts, less attention has been given to how transit service changes affected accessibility and equity. This study examines the impacts of pandemic service adjustments made by three major San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies on accessibility and equity, which...