Intro: In the U.S., racial and ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. These populations are also more likely to rely on public transit to access essential resources such as food and health care; thus, understanding transit agencies’ strategies to reach and serve these populations during the pandemic is critical. Research evaluating the accessibility and cultural competency of transit-related messaging during disasters and emergencies is needed.

Methodology: We conducted a thematic content analysis of 16 US transit agencies’ webpages and Twitter accounts during the first 6 months of the pandemic. Our analysis assessed frequency of messaging about COVID-19 and alignment of communications with best practices in disaster communication across five themes (perceivability, navigability, understandability, suitability, and content) derived from the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We trained and engaged two raters in the coding process and drew from multiple frameworks to enhance methodological rigor.

Findings: Overall, transit agencies did not consistently use communication strategies known to enhance accessibility and uptake of messaging among vulnerable populations. Every transit agency website provided COVID-19 information. Of the 11 websites with images, 8 websites (72.7%) included alt text with images, and 3 websites (27.3%) did not. Only 2 (12.5%) of the 16 websites indicated the purpose embedded links so that it could stand alone, while 14 (87.5%) did not. The majority (15 (93.8%)) of websites were in compliance with use of multiple and appropriate communication channels and platforms to reach target vulnerable population audiences, and only 1 (6.3%) that was not. Across the websites and Twitter accounts combined, messaging related to mobility service was only present on 10 (31.3%) of the sample and 22 (68.8%) of the pages did not provide any content related to mobility services, and 23 (82.1%) used images in COVID-19-related pages to reflected racial/ethnic diversity, while only 6 (20.7%) of images reflected disability diversity.

Conclusions: Transit agencies may need additional guidance to implement evidence-based, practical recommendations that effectively address the needs of riders disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. We offer recommendations for public transit agencies to move beyond compliance to effectively address the needs of ridership most substantially impacted by public health emergencies, including working with people who represent these vulnerable populations in the development of all web-based and other content, and engaging in strategic hiring practices to draw on the lived experience and expertise of members of the underrepresented groups.

Understanding Food Insecurity through A Transportation Equity Lens: A Case Study for Baltimore City during COVID-19 Pandemic

Reduced access to healthy food due to geographic location or socioeconomic status can lead to food insecurity and malnutrition for disadvantaged communities especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disparities in food access and availability hinder public health and individual wellbeing. Existing literature links food deserts with distance to grocery stores and vehicle ownership; it has been evaluated by many researchers yet methodically they do not comparably demarcate food deserts or identify vulnerable communities. Now the burden of COVID-19 has disproportionately fallen on racial/ethnic minority groups and marginalized populations in the United States. This study evaluated existing methods and proposes a novel data-driven method to identify food insecure areas commonly known as food deserts in Baltimore, Maryland. This study evaluates survey responses for in-depth analyses for individual grocery store choice and travel decisions. Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) decision trees are used to develop a user-generated food desert metric. Income level was found as a key indicator for food desert demarcation over vehicle ownership. Network distance was applied to develop the prioritization matrix deemed a food desert.

This investigation of food insecurity in response to COVID-19 identifies strategies that have the potential to increase equitable access for at-risk, low-income communities. This study identifies strategies that have the potential to increase equitable access to nutrition assistance programs. Our findings can support current attempts to improve food insecurity during the pandemic. This research provided a replicable method for determining food insecure areas in a locality by aggregating individual data to identify them. Such a metric can aid policymakers in investment decisions and direct resources to areas of need. Future research should further examine the rationale behind food distribution site location and how those sites availability changed over time.

Keywords: Food Desert, COVID-19, Equity, Baltimore, GIS, Accessibility

The rapid spread of the new coronavirus across the world has raised concerns about the responsiveness of cities and healthcare systems during pandemics. Recent studies try to model how the number of COVID-19 infections will likely grow and impact the demand for hospitalization services at national and regional levels. However, less attention has been paid to the geographic access to COVID-19 healthcare services and to hospitals’ response capacity at the local level, particularly in urban areas in the Global South. This paper shows how transport accessibility analysis can provide actionable information to help improve healthcare coverage and responsiveness. It analyzes accessibility to COVID-19 healthcare at high spatial resolution in the 20 largest cities of Brazil. Using network-distance metrics, we estimate the vulnerable population living in areas with poor access to healthcare facilities that could either screen or hospitalize COVID-19 patients. We then use a new balanced floating catchment area (BFCA) indicator to estimate spatial, income, and racial inequalities in access to hospitals with intensive care unit (ICU) beds and mechanical ventilators while taking into account congestion effects. Based on this analysis, we identify substantial social and spatial inequalities in access to health services during the pandemic. The availability of ICU equipment varies considerably between cities, and it is substantially lower among black and poor communities. The study maps territorial inequalities in healthcare access and reflects on different policy lessons that can be learned for other countries based on the Brazilian case.

Along with all public transit services, paratransit services for people with disabilities experienced substantially reduced demand and an increased need to provide equitable services while protecting their clients and staff's safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Paratransit services provide a lifeline for their clients' essential mobility needs, including access to medical appointments and grocery stores. In the absence of pre-existing pandemic response plans, examining transit agencies' responses to provide paratransit services during the pandemic can help inform planning for post-pandemic recovery and future disruptive events.
In September 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 decision-makers, planners, and drivers working for the primary transit agency in the Seattle region – King County Metro – and its paratransit contractors. Interview questions were designed to identify current services, policy gaps, and critical challenges for recovery planning and post-pandemic paratransit services. Interview transcripts were analyzed using NVivo software to obtain essential themes.
The interviewees provided insights about (1) paratransit service changes in response to the pandemic, (2) anticipated impacts of a returning demand on paratransit service efficiency, equity, and quality during the recovery period, and (3) innovative approaches for maintaining post-pandemic equitable paratransit services while balancing safety measures with available resources.
Study findings suggest that paratransit service providers should consider (1) developing guidelines for future disruptive events, (2) examining alternative methods for food delivery to clients, (3) planning scenarios for delivering equitable services in the post-pandemic recovery period, and (4) increasing resilience possibly by establishing partnerships with transportation network companies.

The Covid-19 pandemic has decimated public transit service across the United States, with ridership on subways, light rail, and commuter rail in the second quarter of 2020 dropping more than 85% percent compared with the prior year, while ridership on buses dropped by two-thirds (Transit & APTA, 2020; Veck, 2020). One of the consequences of plummeting ridership is falling revenue, which has led to service cuts by transit agencies. Public transit is an essential determinant of quality of life for those who rely on it, providing critical access to essential destinations. Many transit riders, including essential workers, are facing reduced mobility and lower quality of life. We conducted a survey of 500 U.S. public transit users during Fall 2020 with a focus on the impacts of the pandemic on different types of transit riders. We find that as ridership has declined during the pandemic, these declines are less pronounced among vulnerable riders, such as those without a car and Hispanic and Latinx riders. At the same time, among riders who report reducing their transit use, vulnerable riders are more likely to cite concerns about exposure to Covid-19, transit service cuts, and expense as reasons for reducing their transit use. They are also more likely to report that their reduction in transit use has caused significantly greater difficulty accessing work, grocery stores, and healthcare. The results also reveal that concerns about interacting with police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on transit are a greater deterrent for Hispanic and Latinx riders. When evaluating frequent vs. infrequent transit riders these outcomes did not differ significantly. The survey results also provide qualitative insights into respondents’ perceptions of the impacts of a future loss in transit service on their lives. The findings of this study reveal the deep impact of reductions in transit use and transit service cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of transportation equity and mobility justice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected urban systems across the globe, particularly public transportation systems. Social isolation mandates, business closures, and work-from-home eliminated many trip purposes. Fear of the spread of COVID-19 pushed people to other modes that were deemed safer. As a result, ridership declined in many cities by more than 90% on some route segments (1). Yet, the decline may not have been uniform. Even in the depths of lockdowns in March and April 2020, some people continued to ride public transportation systems, and weekend ridership declined less than weekday service. Although we know that public transportation plays a major role in housing access and deconcentrating poverty (2), there is a gap in the literature on who is continuing to ride through the pandemic, their trip origins, and their destinations (3). Public transit should focus as much on serving the people continuing to use the systems, matching service to their needs, as they do on choice riders. This paper is an effort to better understand public transit’s triple bottom line – the traditional prioritization of “choice” peak-hour riders (4), with a focus on equity and access to opportunity for those that have fewer mobility options. In expanding transit’s customary approach pursuing commute-based ridership growth to serving the people who continue to use and depend on public transit, agencies may find greater success sustaining revenue and bolstering their bottom line, even in the most challenging times.
In Atlanta, GA, the decline in rail ridership has been steep, currently down over 70% compared to pre-COVID levels. Bus route ridership has been more resilient, declining on the order of 50%. Weekend service fell least of all. The epidemic provides a natural experiment, exposing the bottom-line ridership - a worst-case scenario for transit ridership that can be used to identify the essential riders (5) who rely on public transportation. We examine the case of Atlanta, GA to identify the spatial and temporal changes in public transit demand as a result of COVID-19 to develop a profile of the essential rider. We spatially analyze diurnal service changes at the bus stop level for the pre-COVID-19 and present lockdown period of April to October 2019/2020, respectively. We model ridership change as a function of poverty and race, controlling for connectivity (6, 7) and socioeconomic characteristics at the block group level. We augment our analysis with Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to visualize the model's spatial variation.

The past decade witnessed growing recognition of the many health benefits offered by active transportation (AT). Yet over the same period, bicyclists and pedestrians represented an increasing share of traffic fatalities. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities endeavored to improve safety by closing streets, calming traffic, and opening new bicycle lanes to support increases in AT. However, many of these efforts failed to recognize the disproportionate hazards faced by people of color who are at greater risk of both injury and death when engaging in AT and poor outcomes related to COVID-19. Though understanding the impact of individuals’ attitudes towards AT can provide diverse perspectives critical to advancing greater transportation equity, scant research focuses on this context. The present analysis extends research that demonstrates significant relationships between minority race, time constraints, and safety concerns around both traffic and germs and AT commuting among essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study utilized data from an online survey on the commuting choices of essential workers (N=178) in Philadelphia, PA between June and August 2020. Chi-square tests examined differences between AT and non-AT commuters and a latent class analysis (LCA) identified sub-types of related cases using dichotomized variables measuring individual beliefs, barriers, and motivators related to AT use.

Nearly half of respondents changed their commute mode during the pandemic—most often to limit exposure to COVID-19—and AT through bicycling or walking was the primary commute mode for 50% of respondents. The nearly one-quarter (21%) of respondents who were non-white were significantly less likely to commute using AT than white respondents (22.2% vs. 59.1%, p<.001). Initial LCA results suggest that while most respondents endorsed the positive health benefits of AT, three similarly sized classes reflect differing attitudes towards AT: one that endorsed largely positive beliefs, few barriers, and more motivators; one that endorsed less positive beliefs, more barriers (particularly safety concerns), and fewer motivators; and one that endorsed slightly positive beliefs about AT, but greater barriers and fewer motivators than the first class. A descriptive examination of the most likely probability of class and non-white race suggests that non-white respondents disproportionately fell into the latter two classes. Additional analyses will use the three-step approach to explore the relationship between class membership and AT commuting and race as well as sex, income, and having children living in the home. Findings can inform interventions to promote AT, especially among minority commuters.

As bikeshare systems have gained popularity worldwide and expanded across the U.S. in the last decade, data repeatedly shows that users skew higher income and are predominately white, not reflecting the demographics of their cities’ populations as a whole. Many barriers have been identified that exclude or limit participation and access by low-income people of color (Ursaki and Aultman-Hall, 2015, McNeil et al., 2017, Caspi and Noland, 2019, Qian and Niemeier, 2019). Cities and bikeshare operators have been working to address these challenges; however, measuring the success of equity interventions has limitations and lacks standardization. Few studies have quantified changes in bikeshare use and access by ethnicity groups over multiple cities and years.

As ethnoracial residential segregation persists in communities across the U.S., we argue that it is important for cities to measure changes in access and improve bikeshare equity by examining and mitigating mobility segregation, defined as concentrated travel flow between areas of similar sociodemographic profiles. Using publicly available bikeshare trip data from four U.S. metropolitan areas (Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia) over six years (2015 to 2020) as well as sociodemographic data from American Community Survey (ACS), we design a data mining framework to measure the degree of mobility segregation by race and income and its changes over time. We analyze the location quotients of the race (for white non-Hispanic and Black) and income at the census tract level and measure bikeshare flow between trip origin and destination census tracts by their ethnoracial profiles.

Pre-COVID, we find that bikeshare trips in Chicago and New York City demonstrate the highest degree of segregation by race and income. Those in Philadelphia and Boston are more equitably distributed. The built environment and equity considerations during system startup and design both play a role in mobility segregation. We then show how mobility segregation changed during COVID in 2020. Finally, we provide policy recommendations for cities to mitigate mobility segregation and design and expand bikeshare systems in more equitable ways.

COVID-19 has been an unprecedented global challenge for the most vulnerable users of the transportation system: pedestrians and transit users. In medium-low income countries, this segment of the population is captive transit users exposed to the known road dangers such as collision risk and the new threat of getting exposed and infected of COVID-19.

Our study aims to identify how transit BRT boarding stations and bus stops perform during the COVID-19 pandemic and assess the risks that vulnerable users, particularly pedestrians, are exposed to. The dangers include both risks of infection and risk of being struck by a motor-vehicle when accessing transit. A better understanding of these risks and their links with the facility designs is expected to help identify the critical factors and designs or policies that could attenuate them.

For this study, a set of locations with BRT stations and bus stops are carefully selected. Then, a large quantity of video is collected and automatically process using computer-vision software. Based on video data outcomes, interactions between pedestrians and other road users are identified to define events in terms of physical distance and risk of collision. To evaluate the risk of infection, pedestrians' physical distance and exposure in transit access facilities are measured in different facility elements (access ramps, crosswalks, sidewalks). To evaluate the risk of collision, surrogate safety measures (speed, post-encroachment time, etc.) are used following the recent developments in the road safety field.

After identifying a large set of events (interactions) measuring proximity in terms of social distance and collision risks, a statistical and regression analysis is run to determine the salient factors associated with these risk measures. Among the preliminary findings, we observe that pedestrians' exposure risk accessing BRT accessing facilities is shallow in most cases. (However, the injury risk is high, in particular the one generated from motor-vehicle and motor-cyclists. The frequency of events and the bus speeds represent a lower risk for pedestrians. Moreover, given the needs and rules of social distancing, many pedestrians are walking on motorways (jaywalking), raising concerns about designing facilities to address safety issues and allow social distancing.