Transportation Equity

To examine longitudinal associations of the neighborhood built environment with objectively measured body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) in a geographically and racial/ethnically diverse group of adults. This study used data from 5,506 adult participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, aged 45-84 years in 2000 (baseline). BMI and WC were assessed at baseline and four follow-up visits (median follow-up 9.1 years). Time-varying built environment measures (population density, land-use, destinations, bus access, and street characteristics) were created using...

The proportion of teens and young adults with driver’s licenses has declined sharply in many industrialized countries including the United States. Explanations for this decline have ranged from the introduction of graduated driver licensing programs to the increase in online social interaction. We used a longitudinal cohort study of teenage girls in San Diego and Minneapolis to evaluate factors associated with licensure and whether teens’ travel patterns become more independent as they age. We found that licensure depended not only on age but also on race and ethnicity as well as on...

Preliminary studies suggest that neighborhood social and built environment (BE) characteristics may affect cognition in older adults. Older adults are particularly vulnerable to the neighborhood environment due to a decreasing range of routine travel with increasing age. We examined if multiple neighborhood BE characteristics are cross-sectionally associated with cognition in a diverse sample of older...

Cycling advocates have recently argued that low-income and minority communities across the U.S. have disproportionately low access to bike lanes. To date, however, quantitative evidence of disparities in access to bike lanes has been limited to a small number of cities. We addressed this research gap by examining cross-sectional associations between bike lanes and sociodemographic characteristics at the block group level for 22 large U.S. cities (n = 21,843 block groups). Dependent variables included the presence (yes/no), coverage, connectivity, and proximity...