Recent laws to address California's housing supply and homelessness crisis are being credited as the end of single-family zoning. The State Legislature has passed numerous pieces of housing legislation in each legislative session. This year, more than 30 individual pieces of housing legislation were enacted into law.

However, some bills removed infrastructure fees and mitigations that cities rely on for impacts and city services. Many bills contain environmental exemptions and few require affordable housing, doing virtually nothing to increase the supply of desperately-needed affordable housing. In particular, working class and communities of color could be at risk.

Among the housing laws passed in recent years is the ability to convey an Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADU) as separate property. Another is the property does not have to be “owner-occupied.” The theory is increasing supply reduces price. However, when building additional housing, the other housing surrounding it tends to reflect local market rates, rather than suppressing prices. Selling or renting such units is subject to the open economy. Homeowners and investors are finding that ADU real estate strategies compliment their long-term rental portfolios.

The outcome is while increasing the supply of smaller housing, the price is still unattainable by many. Low-income and minority communities often are exposed to cumulative environmental burdens. Increasing population density by concentrating people through suburban lot splits near uses such as airports, ports, and railyards increases the amount of people exposed to pollutants and other potential safety issues. Where is the equity in that?

Encouraging walking as a safe and convenient mode of transport is increasingly seen as an important policy goal for cities grappling with moving towards sustainable transport systems. Walking is perhaps uniquely situated to address a wide range of societal goals: reducing GHG emissions and traffic congestion; increasing social inclusion and interaction, and improving air quality and population health. Walking plays a foundational role in transport systems – all trips, regardless of primary mode, contain some amount of walking (whether it is traversing a parking lot, walking to a bus stop, transferring from one subway to another, or walking after locking up or docking a bicycle). While not everybody is physically capable of walking on two legs, people of all abilities travel as pedestrians, sometimes using wheelchairs or other assistive devices. However, opportunities to safely and comfortably walk are not equitably distributed; residents of low income and minority areas experience increased exposure to pollutants (Sider et al, 2015) and traffic danger (Campos-Outcalt et al, 2003) and may need to walk to access destinations despite poor walkability (Manaugh & El-Geneidy, 2011). This inequity can impact access to employment, leisure, and civic engagement. In other words, poor environments for active transportation may perpetuate disadvantage along social and geographic lines. In addition, while most impacts of improved walkability are positive, large-scale pedestrian-oriented infrastructure projects (such as Manhattan’s ‘High Line’ and Philadelphia’s Rail Park project) have been criticized for possible gentrification and displacement impacts (Rigolon & Németh 2018). Much of the transport equity scholarship focuses on public transit and automobiles; while this is partly to be expected as highway and large-scale transit projects involve much larger outlays of public money relative to pedestrian safety improvements, ‘pedestrian equity’ remains an understudied and vital topic.
This study examines the 2020 Statistics Canada Proximity Measures database and census datasets to analyse and identify spatial patterns and relationships across Canada between walkability, housing affordability, and residential displacement. The proximity datasets provide a comprehensive measurement of the quality of the built environment for active transportation by capturing local accessibility to a wide range of amenities and green and leisure space. We further posture the distribution of walkable environments as an affordability and equity issue through assessing other indicators of inequality and marginalisation, such as household income, dwelling value, and immigration status. Additionally, by comparing data on residential mobility, we identify how the distribution of walkable environments intersects with residential displacement.

In the past five years there has been concerted efforts in many cities to expand the availability and benefits of bike sharing systems to underserved communities through outreach and education programs, low-income discounts, and more. One challenge many cities have as they simultaneously push to expand access is that there is limited evidence about which program approaches are available, which are proven to be effective, and which have been tried and rejected.

The Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP), a national collaboration aiming to “increase access to and use of shared micromobility systems in low-income and BIPOC communities,”1 has funded equity programming initiatives in numerous U.S. cities, and has sought to share lessons learned and best practices through cohort-based meetings, conferences, blog-posts, and more. Through grant funding from BBSP and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, a national University Transportation Center, a Portland State University research team sought to document the array of bike share equity program types, successes and failures. After producing a detailed report, the project team developed ten concise topical briefs (including topics such as Equity Policies, Data and Metrics, Funding Equity Work, etc.). The goal of the briefs is to provide manageable and digestible resources to people working on bike share who will not have time to read a 100+ page report, but would benefit from exposure to the lessons the research team learned over the course of extensive outreach.

After producing the ten 2-page topical briefs, the research team held webinars, Twitter campaigns, and direct emails of bike share professionals. Follow-up questionnaires were distributed to learn what aspects of the briefs were useful. The poster will briefly describe the briefs and what we learned about how to make such information useful to those working on bike share in cities and at bike share systems. Findings from the project can help inform both the specific topic of how to improve equity programming in bike share, but also how to prepare and present research findings to be accessible to practitioners.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) commissioned an Equity Analysis to identify the locations of historically marginalized communities and better understand the freight system’s impacts on these communities. This analysis aimed to support informed, equitable decisions about transportation investments and help identify areas to focus community and stakeholder engagement. This analysis consists of two major elements: the definition of equity focus areas and analysis of freight transportation impacts to these communities.
This analysis considered several measures to determine whether an area represents a historically marginalized community. Any census tract containing a high concentration of at least one of the following measures would be considered a historically marginalized community:
 Young people - people under 18 years old,
 Older Adults - people over 65,
 People with a disability – adults living with a disability,
 People of color – people who identify as non-white,
 People with limited education - people without a high school degree,
 People with low income - People below the poverty line,
 People with limited English - households with limited English proficiency, and
 Unemployed people - areas of high unemployment.
This analysis identified areas of high concentration (defined as greater than twice the statewide average) of measures of historical marginalized communities. An interactive map highlighted equity focus areas or areas of concentrations of multiple marginalized communities. The statewide freight stakeholder database including members of the general public, community organizations, industry representatives and governmental partners was analyzed to identify gaps in coverage within these communities.
Understanding the gaps in the stakeholder database, targeted outreach and engagement can be included in future freight planning initiatives.

The United States has welcomed over three million refugees since 1975 (National Immigration Forum, 2020). The federal government provides arriving refugees with limited financial support while private volunteer organizations (VOLAGs) secure initial housing for refugees through local rental markets (American Immigration Council, 2020). The resulting housing and accessibility outcomes of refugees are thus subject to what some researchers have called a ‘lottery effect,’ as VOLAG resources varies from place to place and the organizations have little control over local housing opportunities (Brick et al., 2010). Many refugees may thus end up in communities with limited public transportation, although research on this issue is sparce. A third of refugees in a New Hampshire survey reported that they did not have enough transportation to “do the things that they need to do” (Schiller et al., 2009: 18). The authors’ call for improved public transit service and the provision of discounted passes for refugees. Little transportation research incorporates the needs of refugees resettling in the United States. This paper reports on a survey of transportation needs and housing affordability challenges among refugees resettled in the Boise metropolitan area. We analyze data through summary statistics and GIS analysis. Our conclusions identify ways that planning agencies and transit operators can better serve refugees.

Equity refers to the fairness with which impacts (benefits and costs) are distributed, and the degree that those impacts are considered appropriate. Transportation planning decisions often have significant equity impacts, and there is growing recognition of the importance of considering these impacts. Transportation equity analysis is therefore important and unavoidable. Most practitioners and decision-makers want to incorporate equity analysis into transportation planning.

However, transportation equity can be difficult to evaluate because there are various types of equity, impacts, ways to measure impacts, and categories of people to consider. As a result, there is no single method for evaluating transportation equity. It is generally best to consider a variety of equity issues, perspectives and goals. A planning process should reflect a particular community’s equity concerns and priorities, so public involvement is important for transport equity planning.

Horizontal equity requires that people with comparable needs and abilities be treated equally, for example, receiving similar benefits and bearing similar costs. It implies that people should “get what they pay for and pay for what they get,” unless a subsidy is specifically justified. It can also justify compensation for external costs.

Vertical equity requires that the allocation of benefits and costs favors disadvantaged people. This tends to justify universal design that accommodates people with diverse needs and abilities, multimodal planning that provides transportation options for non-drivers, planning for affordability, special discounts and exemptions for lower-income travelers, and special protections or benefits for vulnerable or disadvantaged groups.

A useful way to incorporate equity into planning is to define various equity goals. Specific transportation policies and projects can then be evaluated based on the degree that they support or contradict these goals, and their design can be adjusted to better achieve these goals.

More comprehensive equity analysis allows practitioners to better incorporate equity objectives into planning decisions, and identify policies and projects that maximize equity objectives. New analysis tools and information resources are available to better evaluate equity and incorporate equity objectives into transport planning. Improved equity analysis in transport planning can reduce conflicts and delays, and better reflect a community’s needs and values.