IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nex/wpaper/accessequityjourneytowork.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Accessibility, Equity, and the Journey-to-Work

Author

Listed:
  • Boer Cui
  • Genevieve Boisjoly
  • Ahmed El-Geneidy,
  • David Levinson

    (TransportLab, School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney)

Abstract

Inequality in transport provision is an area of growing concern among transport professionals, as it results in low-income individuals travelling at lower speeds while covering smaller distances. Accessibility, the ease of reaching destinations, may hold the key in correcting these inequalities through providing a means to evaluate land use and transport interventions. This article examines the relationship between accessibility and commuting duration for low-income individuals, compared to the general population, in three major Canadian metropolitan regions, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver using multilevel mixed effects statistical models for car and public transport commuters separately. Accessibility measures are generated for jobs and workers both at the origin (home) and the destination (place of work) to account for the impact of competing labor and firms. Our models show that the impacts of accessibility on commuting duration are present and stronger for low-income individuals than for the general population, and the differences in impact are more visible for public transport commuters. The results suggest that low-income individuals have more to gain (in terms of reduced commute time) from increased accessibility to low-income jobs at the origin and to workers at the destination. Similarly, they also have more to lose from increased accessibility to low-income workers at the origin and to low- income jobs at the destination, which are proxies for increased competition. Policies targeting improvements in accessibility to jobs, especially low-income ones, by car and public transport while managing the presence of competition can serve to bridge the inequality gap that exists in commuting behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Boer Cui & Genevieve Boisjoly & Ahmed El-Geneidy, & David Levinson, 2018. "Accessibility, Equity, and the Journey-to-Work," Working Papers 176, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
  • Handle: RePEc:nex:wpaper:accessequityjourneytowork
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/18781
    File Function: First version, 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manaugh, Kevin & Badami, Madhav G. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed M., 2015. "Integrating social equity into urban transportation planning: A critical evaluation of equity objectives and measures in transportation plans in North America," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 167-176.
    2. J. Douglas Carroll, Jr., 1949. "Some Aspects of the Home: Work Relationships of Industrial Workers," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(4), pages 414-422.
    3. David Levinson & Ajay Kumar, 1994. "The Rational Locator: Why Travel Times Have Remained Stable," Working Papers 199402, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    4. Banister, David, 2012. "Viewpoint: Assessing the reality—Transport and land use planning to achieve sustainability," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 5(3), pages 1-14.
    5. Lucas, Karen, 2012. "Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 105-113.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boarnet, Marlon G. & Flores Moctezuma, David & Gross, James, 2022. "New Open-Source Analyses of Transit Job Access and Transit Ridership," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt7t5876bw, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cui, Boer & Boisjoly, Geneviève & El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Levinson, David, 2019. "Accessibility and the journey to work through the lens of equity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 269-277.
    2. Rafael Henrique Moraes Pereira & Tim Schwanen, 2013. "Commute Time in Brazil (1992-2009): Differences Between Metropolitan Areas, by Income Levels and Gender," Discussion Papers 1813a, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    3. Nazari Adli, Saeid & Donovan, Stuart, 2018. "Right to the city: Applying justice tests to public transport investments," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 56-65.
    4. Walks, Alan, 2018. "Driving the poor into debt? Automobile loans, transport disadvantage, and automobile dependence," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 137-149.
    5. Lachapelle, Ugo & Boisjoly, Geneviève, 2023. "Breaking down public transit travel time for more accurate transport equity policies: A trip component approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    6. Hallgrimsdottir, Berglind & Wennberg, Hanna & Svensson, Helena & Ståhl, Agneta, 2016. "Implementation of accessibility policy in municipal transport planning – Progression and regression in Sweden between 2004 and 2014," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 196-205.
    7. Zhao, Pengjun & Zhang, Yixue, 2019. "The effects of metro fare increase on transport equity: New evidence from Beijing," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 73-83.
    8. Xiaoshu Cao & Huiling Chen & Feiwen Liang & Wulin Wang, 2018. "Measurement and Spatial Differentiation Characteristics of Transit Equity: A Case Study of Guangzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-17, April.
    9. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2019. "Sizing up transport poverty: A national scale accounting of low-income households suffering from inaccessibility in Canada, and what to do about it," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 214-223.
    10. Costa, Cayo & Ha, Jaehyun & Lee, Sugie, 2021. "Spatial disparity of income-weighted accessibility in Brazilian Cities: Application of a Google Maps API," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    11. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2020. "Planning transport for social inclusion: An accessibility-activity participation approach," SocArXiv ap7wh, Center for Open Science.
    12. Pereira, Rafael H.M., 2019. "Future accessibility impacts of transport policy scenarios: Equity and sensitivity to travel time thresholds for Bus Rapid Transit expansion in Rio de Janeiro," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 321-332.
    13. Yang, Wenyue & Chen, Bi Yu & Cao, Xiaoshu & Li, Tao & Li, Peng, 2017. "The spatial characteristics and influencing factors of modal accessibility gaps: A case study for Guangzhou, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 21-32.
    14. El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Levinson, David & Diab, Ehab & Boisjoly, Genevieve & Verbich, David & Loong, Charis, 2016. "The cost of equity: Assessing transit accessibility and social disparity using total travel cost," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 302-316.
    15. Boisjoly, Geneviève & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2016. "Daily fluctuations in transit and job availability: A comparative assessment of time-sensitive accessibility measures," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 73-81.
    16. Zhu, Le & Shi, Fei, 2022. "Spatial and social inequalities of job accessibility in Kunshan city, China: Application of the Amap API and mobile phone signaling data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    17. Camporeale, Rosalia & Caggiani, Leonardo & Ottomanelli, Michele, 2019. "Modeling horizontal and vertical equity in the public transport design problem: A case study," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 184-206.
    18. Frimpong Boamah, Emmanuel & Miller, Maya & Diamond, Joshua & Grooms, Wes & Hess, Daniel Baldwin, 2024. "The long journey to equity: A comparative policy analysis of US electric micromobility programs," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    19. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2019. "Sizing up transport poverty: A national scale accounting of low-income households suffering from inaccessibility in Canada, and what to do about it," SocArXiv ua2gj, Center for Open Science.
    20. Doran, Alexandra & El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Manaugh, Kevin, 2021. "The pursuit of cycling equity: A review of Canadian transport plans," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    accessibility; journey-to-work; equity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R40 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - General
    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nex:wpaper:accessequityjourneytowork. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Levinson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nexmnus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.