Disparity of Access: Variations in Transit Service by Race, Ethnicity, Income, and Auto Availability

Elisa Borowski, Alireza Ermagun and David Levinson ()
Additional contact information
David Levinson: TransportLab, School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

No 175, Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group

Abstract: This study explores the relationship between transit-based job accessibility and minority races and ethnicities, low- and middle-income households, and carless households at the block group level for the 50 largest by population metropolitan regions in the United States. A log-linear regression model is used to identify inequities in transit-based job accessibility across the US using data collected from the American Community Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Location Database, and the Access Across America database. The intra-metropolitan analyses reveal that accessibility is unevenly distributed across block groups that have different densities of race and levels of income. The differences in accessibility are especially apparent where there are denser pockets with higher percentages of African Americans, Hispanics, low-income households, and zero-car households. The inter-metropolitan analyses show that accessibility is unevenly distributed across metropolitan regions across the US when considering various sociodemographic populations. Different metropolitan regions provide different levels of accessibility for all investigated sociodemographic categories, whether considering racial minorities, levels of income, or car ownership. The results may inform recommendations for equitable transport planning and policy-making.

Keywords: Accessibility; Equity; Justice; Transit timetable; Disadvantage; Regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 R14 R20 R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Applications of Access (2021), editor David Levinson and Alireza Ermagun. Chapter 4, pp. 45-68

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18780 First version, 2016; Second version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nex:wpaper:disparity

DOI: 10.25910/Z07C-KX08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Levinson ().