In 2020, Metro Transit (Mpls/St. Paul) committed to developing and publishing performance metrics that evaluated service quantity and quality with a racial equity lens. The subsequent work established a common and repeatable way to disaggregate traditional performance metrics like on-time performance, transit speed, stop amenity access, vehicle overloads, and job accessibility. It also created a way to communicate how service, specifically high-frequency service and all-day service, is distributed across our region and what the impacts are for Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color.

For example, we can now answer questions like "among Twin Cities residents within walking distance of transit stops, are white people more likely than Black people to access our high-frequency service?" For each initial equity metric developed, we can share the results and ask questions about what related targets or goals are meaningful. For example, if communities ask for a response to historical divestment, they will be able to understand the current performance and describe what meaningful change looks like.

This work includes the building blocks from a data perspective to have more robust and transparent conversations with our community members and policy makers. The 'building blocks' include a method to define walksheds around each stop and establish a racial demographic profile of each walkshed using widely available American Community Survey data.

Metro Transit recognizes there are many building blocks for creating a transparent equity metrics program that results in community power influencing priorities for investment. This work represents one element that we believe increases the probability for sustainable change and accountable transit agencies.

This poster presents an analysis of the geographic distribution of the recent speed limit changes in the city of Los Angeles. These changes were established by city ordinance (Council File No. 15-1006) in 2018. It defines just over 100 miles of increased and about 10 miles of decreased speed segments respectively.
It may seem odd to raise the speed limits considering the significant increase in traffic deaths, including pedestrians, in the last several years in Los Angeles. It is therefore worth exploring if these are distributed equitably and if they have any effect on safety going forward.

The analysis compares the location of the road segments involved in relation to disadvantaged communities (SB 535) and other socioeconomic variables in a series of maps and graphs. It is based on publicly available data sources including the Census Bureau, CA OEHHA (CalEnviroScreen) and county assessor property valuations.
Additionally, the analysis will establish a baseline for before and after studies of the occurrence of traffic collisions along the impacted roads segments compared to the general trend in the region. This analysis will include comparisons to the number of incidents along similar segments, number of pedestrians and bicyclists involved, the closeness to bus stops, crosswalks and bike lanes. However, it will likely only give an indication of any potential impact as the data available is limited to the timeframe (2019-2020) since the changes were implemented.

Speed limits, in California, are established by an Engineering and Traffic Survey (E&TS) according to vehicle code section 22349, considering: a) prevailing speeds, b) collision history and c) highway, traffic, and roadside conditions not readily apparent to the driver.

Most public transit performance measures align closely with the performance measures reported annually to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). These metrics characterize the public transit’s service efficiency (i.e. operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile/hour) and service effectiveness (i.e. operating expenses per passenger mile/trip and trips per vehicle revenue mile/hour), representing a top-down approach to the assessment of transit agencies. While these performance measures remain important for transit agencies, they may not capture the needs of users such as transit captive riders as the assessment focuses on system level effectiveness.

This study uses a community based participatory research strategy to develop performance measures that focus on the needs of the transportation disadvantaged population. In interviews and focus groups, the Environmental Justice (EJ) population characterize their priorities for public transit service, which develops themes to create performance measures. Their concerns focus on access to opportunities, equity, limited-service hours, reliability, safety, security, affordability, assistive services, and built environment.
The study focuses on security, access to opportunities and the built environment and applies these performance metrics at the block group level to assess the equity between EJ groups for older adults, women, single mother led households, minority races and ethnicities, Limited English Proficiency (LEP), foreign-born, low income, zero-car and disabled. The study also considers the intersectionality of these populations and examines the equity of block groups using the United States’ Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of racially/ethnically-concentrated areas of poverty.

This study demonstrates the application of the performance measures for one of the fifty largest public transit providers in the United States, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). The results show that overall quarter-mile access to the public transit system remains low at about 55% of the total population. While the system serves 64% of the total population living in poverty and those near poverty (63%), it only serves 54% of carless households who are in greater need of transit service. Native Americans (48%) appear particularly unserved by the system. Using an equity lens, the study also looks at the proportion of those served by transit who have adequate sidewalks and bus shelters and timely access to jobs, education, healthy food, and healthcare. Future research includes a comparison of access and affordability for car owning households and zero-car households and a comparison of multiple public transit systems using the newly developed performance measures and the traditional FTA metrics.

Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) is in the process of creating an interactive equity dashboard to better understand disparities in transportation, economic, social, environmental, and health outcomes in a region of 4.3-million people. Although this performance tracking project is part of an ongoing agency goal of incorporating equity and social justice in its long-range regional growth, transportation, and economic development planning, the development of this tool reflects the important planning conversations revolving around equity.

The main goals of this project include tracking the region’s progress in ensuring more equitable opportunities for all residents, holding the regional agency and local jurisdictions accountable for following through with equity-centered goals and policies, and making data more easily accessible to decision-makers. Because of the broad scope and interdisciplinary nature of this project, a range of stakeholders and potential users are being considered in the development of a final dashboard. In addition to considering the eventual users of this tool, the process of creating an equity dashboard requires technical considerations, such as choosing appropriate performance measures, collecting and analyzing available and reliable data, and contextualizing geographic and historic trends.

Much of the early part of this process has been based around research into existing literature and examples from peer jurisdictions. This greater familiarity with the state of the practice has helped to guide discussions within the project team about the scope, purpose, and optimal format of the end-product. After background research, an initial set of approximately 120 potential indicators were identified as relating to and supporting the broad equity-centered goals and policies in PSRC’s long-range regional plan, VISION 2050. This recently adopted 30-year plan connects regional growth goals with the regional transportation and economic development plans, acknowledging the close relationship between growth, land use, and transportation. These initial indicators were evaluated through an internal assessment process based on data availability and quality. Ongoing collaboration with internal and external stakeholders will yield a smaller subset of indicators, which can be used to develop a draft version of the tool for discussion.

Although at an early stage, this project likely reflects similar efforts being made by other governments, agencies, and organizations to identify equity-related challenges with the goal of reducing inequities through policy and resource reallocation. This ongoing and iterative process helps to illustrate the various elements – both general and technical – that are important to consider when pursuing this type of equity-related performance measure project.

Traditional transit markets in suburban communities are expanding to include more on-demand mobility solutions.1 Yet, the growth of on-demand services by public agencies has been somewhat limited.2 This study attempts to address one possible explanation for this lag: The lack of effective metrics that capture the value added by on-demand service. 3

Conventional metrics in public transit were developed from models of productivity common to most forms of commercial enterprise. Most public transit agencies evaluate their transportation systems based on metrics of performance, including cost-efficiency and productivity.4 On-demand services are inherently less productive and more expensive, due to the need to travel longer distances per passenger. Therefore, their performance on traditional metrics is predictably poor. It is not a surprise that on-demand services are uncommon within public transit agencies and are often dismissed as cost-prohibitive.

There is a need to develop metrics, which will accurately capture the potential of on-demand services to improve equity.5 The study goals presented here are to define equity and to adequately operationalize the term. The metrics developed will evaluate the potential of on-demand public transit systems to reduce inequality, provide an adequate minimum level of access, and facilitate greater choice for disadvantaged travelers.6,7 Quantitative metrics for equity should be incorporated with other common metrics of efficiency and productivity to evaluate which transit systems merit public investment into on-demand services.

Many transit systems have “coverage” service and “revenue” service as part of their operations.8 This study explores the potential of on-demand service to provide more equitable suburban “coverage” service. Case studies or scenario analyses are needed to confirm the assumption that on-demand services can be justified against their increased cost and lower productivity.9 Without adequate and enforceable equity metrics, it is difficult to ensure the fair use of public funds to contribute to the public good.10 Furthermore, these metrics can be used in contract negotiations and in the regulation of privately provided on-demand transportation services, for the promotion of the public good and in defense of unfair use of public funds.

Equity has long been a consideration of the transportation planning process. The Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice in 1994, and the update to the National Environmental Policy Act in 1994 all advanced equity considerations in transportation. Because transportation agencies must balance the advancement of dozens of complex objectives, including ensuring safe and reliable infrastructure, enhancing community well-being, and equitably serving their resident, visitor, and commercial community members, a wealth of methods and tools have evolved to assess equity in transportation policy. However, understanding of how equity is incorporated throughout the steps of the transportation decision-making process is uneven. A rich literature explores the distribution of transportation system costs and benefits, frameworks exist for assessing distributional impacts of transportation projects, and methods to incorporate equity analysis into travel demand models are well-established (1, 2). Yet, the data that underlay many of these tools and methods—travel surveys and, increasingly, passively collected location data—may not be representative. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how quickly transportation agencies have embraced emergent data sources such as passively collected location data and data from autonomous and connected vehicles, while simultaneously revealing the limitations of these data to provide insights on travel behavior for specific communities of concern. The lack of frameworks to critically compare the representativeness of travel survey data and passively collected data is a pivotal gap in our understanding of how transportation agencies consider equity. This paper will address this gap by comparing passively collected data with modern transportation survey instruments that emphasize recruitment of hard-to-reach populations across key equity dimensions. This comparison will include a case study from the abrupt travel behavior changes measured during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. In closing, this paper with provide recommendations for a hybrid travel survey-passive data program to provide transportation agencies with more representative data to support more equitable transportation decisions.

Transportation planners conduct equity analysis to ensure that transportation benefits are distributed fairly across populations. In doing so, it is critical to evaluate how effectively shared and active transportation options serve disadvantaged populations that often have more limited access to private vehicles. While some equity evaluation methods focus on access to the transportation system, such as distance to transit stops and stations, our approach evaluates equity by measuring access to opportunities. We have demonstrated that, when layered with spatial demographic information and equity designations, this data-driven process tells a compelling story about equity and access. In this presentation, we will describe our methodologies for combining zone-level accessibility analysis with demographic analysis for equity evaluation, and we will describe several example applications.

Our evaluation process can be used as a tool to allow municipalities to identify areas in which people are disproportionately lacking in access to economic opportunities. The methodology can also be used to track changes in access over time, as land use changes or as transit, pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure is improved. To facilitate such evaluation, we composed a socioeconomic classification method for geographic zones to identify communities of concern. This classification method includes a set of equity indicators and metrics that identify where there are high concentrations of people of color, in poverty, and/or with limited English proficiency, as well as areas with low incomes, low educational attainment, and high unemployment rates. We then integrated the socioeconomic classification with our access-to-opportunities analysis to evaluate whether there is distributive injustice in access to opportunities within our study areas.

We have used this method to develop maps that visualize where communities of concern are located in relation to areas with varying levels of access-to-opportunities as well as to estimate access scores reflecting access for different population groups. Additionally, since our methodology utilizes publicly-accessible data, such as U.S. Census ACS Five Year Estimates, General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), OpenStreetMap, and the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), our methodology is replicable for agencies and organizations who are looking to produce a similar analysis for their communities. Our presentation will include insights from three recent applications that adapted our methodology in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; and the Sun Corridor megaregion in Arizona.