IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/20803.html

Mobility, Segregation and Inequality: Who Gains from Urban Transportation Improvements?

Author

Listed:
  • Akbar, Prottoy
  • Couture, Victor

Abstract

Urban transportation projects are massive public investments that can transform cities. This article reviews evidence on how these projects shape where people live, and how their benefits are shared across income groups. A simple model helps organize the findings. Three factors are especially important: who uses the new transportation mode, where it is built, and how easily people can relocate. Projects serving a narrow group in a specific area tend to increase segregation and inequality. These impacts can be severe if poorer households face barriers to relocation, as happened with the Interstate Highway System. Projects with broad spatial coverage and use by all income groups, like Bus Rapid Transit in developing countries, tend to have more modest segregation effects and broadly shared welfare gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Akbar, Prottoy & Couture, Victor, 2025. "Mobility, Segregation and Inequality: Who Gains from Urban Transportation Improvements?," CEPR Discussion Papers 20803, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20803
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP20803
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    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:cpr:ceprdp:20803. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    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.