Are mass transit projects and public transport planning overlooking uneven distributional effects? Empirical evidence from Sao Paulo, Brazil

Despite the growing literature on equity and accessibility, little attention is placed on the shortcomings of the transport planning process in bridging the gap between research and practice. Urban mobility plans are usually not oriented towards increasing accessibility and reducing inequalities, and transport projects are traditionally selected based on utilitarian approaches that disregard the distributional effects of proposed actions and policies. This is problematic due to several reasons, including the legitimization of political choices that perpetuate existing inequalities. In this paper, we aim to analyze how different distributive principles in ex-ante evaluations may result in quite distinct conclusions in the policy decision-making process, highlighting the many limitations of the most commonly used transport planning toolkits. To do so, we use data from Sao Paulo's mass transit network expansion projects, which shows disparities among the proposed lines regarding their impacts on inequality levels. While some lines consistently contribute to reducing the difference in accessibility between rich and poor or between white and black populations, others increase the city's average, but at the expense of worsening inequalities. The systematic use of inequality metrics in planning procedures might represent significant progress in reducing transport-related inequalities compared to the predominant utilitarian criteria.