Transportation Equity

Is City-Level Travel Time by Car Associated with Individual Obesity or Diabetes in Latin American Cities? Evidence from 178 Cities in the SALURBAL Project

Delclos-Alió, X
Rodríguez, D
Olmedo, N
Ferrer, C
Moore, K
Stern, D
Menezes, M
Cardoso, L
Wang, X
Guimaraes, J
Miranda, J
Sarmiento, O
2022
There is growing evidence that longer travel time by private car poses physical and mental risks. Individual-level obesity and diabetes, two of the main public health challenges in low- and middle-income contexts, could be associated to city-level travel times by car. We used individual obesity and diabetes data from national health surveys from individuals in 178 Latin American cities, compiled and harmonized by the SALURBAL project. We calculated city-level travel times by car using the Google Maps Distance Matrix API. We estimated associations between peak hour city-level travel time by...

Modification of Temperature-Related Human Mortality by Area-Level Socioeconomic and Demographic Characteristics in Latin American Cities

Bakhtsiyarava, M
Schinasi, LH
Sánchez, BN
Dronova, I
Kephart, JL
Ju, Y
Gouveia, N
Caiaffa, WT
O'Neill, MS
Yamada, G
Arunachalam, S
Roux, AV Diez
Rodriguez, D
2023

In Latin America, where climate change and rapid urbanization converge, non-optimal ambient temperatures contribute to...

Bicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic PositionBicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic Position

Avila-Palencia, I
Gouveia. N
Jáuregui, A
Mascolli, M
Rodriguez, D
Slovic, A
Sarmiento, O
2023

We aimed to examine utilitarian bicycle use among adults from 18 large Latin American cities and its association with socio-economic position (education and income) between 2008 and 2018. Data came from yearly cross-sectional surveys collected by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). A total of 77,765 survey respondents with complete data were used to estimate multilevel logistic regression models with city as random intercept and year as random slope. Individuals with high education and high-income levels had lower odds of using a bicycle compared with participants with lower...

Social Disparities in Flood Exposure and Associations with the Built Environment in 47,187 Urban Neighborhoods in Eight Latin American Countries

Kephart, JL
Bilal, U
Ferreira, A
Gouveia, N
Rodriguez, DA
Barbieri, IS
Miranda, J
Roux, AV Diez
2023
BACKGROUND AND AIM: Climate change is expected to greatly increase population exposure to flooding and related health impacts, particularly in urban areas of the Global South. We aimed to examine within-city social disparities in exposure to flooding within 326 Latin American cities and associated features of the neighborhood environment. METHOD: We used a high spatial resolution dataset of historical flood events from 2000-2018 to describe flood exposure at the neighborhood level for all cities with 100,000+ residents in eight Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,...

Uncovering Physical Activity Trade-offs in Transportation Policy: A Spatial Agent-Based Model of Bogotá, Colombia

Stankov, I
Meisel, JD
Sarmiento, OL
Delclòs-Alió, X
Hidalgo, D
Guzman, L
Rodriguez, D
Hammond, R
Roux, AV Diez
2024

Transportation policies can impact health outcomes while simultaneously promoting social equity and environmental sustainability. We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the impacts of fare subsidies and congestion taxes on commuter decision-making and travel patterns. We report effects on mode share, travel time and transport-related physical activity (PA), including the variability of effects by socioeconomic strata (SES), and the trade-offs that may need to be considered in the implementation of these policies in a context with high levels of necessity-based physical...

Future of Mobility White Paper

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Totte, Hannah
Stocker, Adam
2018

Transportation is arguably experiencing its most transformative revolution since the introduction of the automobile. Concerns over climate change and equity are converging with dramatic technological advances. Although these changes – including shared mobility and automation – are rapidly altering the mobility landscape, predictions about the future of transportation are complex, nuanced, and widely debated. California is required by law to renew the California Transportation Plan (CTP), updating its models and policy considerations to reflect industry changes every five years. This...

The Equity Challenges and Outcomes of California County Transportation Sales Tax

Albrecht, Maxwell
Brown, Anne
Lederman, Jaimee
Taylor, Brian D.
Wachs, Martin
2017

This report examines equity among local option sales tax (LOST) measures for transportation in California between 1976 and 2016. Since the first was enacted in 1976 in Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley), 76 LOST measures have appeared on county ballots, 48 of which (63%) were approved by voters. These measures have proven to be popular methods to finance transportation system construction, operations, and maintenance over the past four decades, increasing in number even after a 1995 ruling in Santa Clara County Local Transportation Authority v. Guardino required that LOSTs secure two-...

Women and Cycling: A Case Study of the Use of San Francisco Bike Lanes

Deakin, Elizabeth
Bhamidi, Vidya
Funaki, Dorry
Colani, Tasha
2018

This paper presents a case study of the use of San Francisco bike lanes with a focus on women. Bike counts and intercept surveys of cyclists at three locations in San Francisco’s SoMa District were complemented by focus groups with cyclists, particularly women cyclists, and brief interviews with non-cyclists. Consistent with other US studies, we find that white men are disproportionately represented among the cyclists we observed, and that women bike less and bike shorter distances. However, at least in the SoMa sample, women are more likely to bike to work than men. Cyclists included...

A Report on the Future of Electric Aviation

Seeley, Brien A., MD
Seeley, Damon
Raka, Jasenka, PhD
2020

UC Berkeley has long been known as the home of important societal movements. In early October 2019, the electric aircraft movement came to UC Berkeley (UCB) courtesy of UCB’s Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS) and the College of Engineering. At what some have called the “Woodstock of Aviation”—the Sustainable Aviation Symposium (SAS) convened leaders of that movement from across the globe for two full days in UC’s Pauley Ballroom to explore how to solve important societal-enviro-economic issues in transportation with breakthroughs and innovations in high-tech physics, chemistry and...

Renaming and Removal of Harmful Names and Monuments on State Transportation Right of Way

Deakin, Elizabeth, PhD
Munoz, Jasmin
Son, Daisy
2022

The objectives of this study are to formulate policies and practices that can be used to identify place names that have derogatory or racist linkages and provide recommendations on how to rename or remove harmful names and monuments in the California transportation right of way (ROW). This study was requested by the California Department of Transportation and conducted through the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies Technology Transfer Program.