The time is right. Transportation is about to cross the bridge connecting people, research, and practice with diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Opening Plenary is designed to welcome everyone to this meeting and explain how attendees earn the greatest benefits offered through it. CATE is a safe space for attendees to talk with one another about transportation equity subjects. Remember that the practice and study of equity in transportation is relatively new. Not everyone uses the same language and knowledge. Take your time and respect one another. Attendees come to this conference with a common objective of helping to advance transportation equity.

COVID-19 dramatically disrupted the lives, travel patterns, and social interactions of individuals around the world. Furthermore, these impacts were more pronounced for individuals who already faced barriers to accessing essential services, as well as for many transit agencies, who had to reduce service due to severely reduced ridership demand, increased costs of providing service, and limited budgets. This session offers insights on adaptations and recovery strategies in different cities, particularly regarding the deployment of new transportation services and technologies for diagnosing and addressing equity issues as well as lingering challenges over street space allocation and the longevity of pandemic-induced innovation.

As the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic set in, it became clear that traditional community engagement and public participation efforts were no longer viable. As organizations pivoted to socially distanced outreach methods like virtual meetings and project websites, how did these changes affect the accessibility of the community engagement process, especially for disadvantaged populations? How did organizations accommodate those with limited access to digital technology or the internet? In this session, presenters will explore how organizations responded to these challenges, delving into what worked and what failed, with case studies from both neighborhood-level and regional planning efforts.

Being included and accounted for in the planning process can help to ensure that diverse transportation needs and concerns are addressed. This session focuses on adults with visual impairments, households with low incomes, and populations by race, ethnicity, and culture to discuss transportation needs and how some needs may be heightened during a pandemic. The presenters will provide recommendations for how diverse transportation needs can be better monitored with respect to equity, including how to address representation in travel surveys.

As we strive for a world where people have the freedom and resources to move safely and with dignity, the term mobility justice is important now more than ever. Mobility justice is thinking about the ways people feel safe or unsafe while traveling on the street. This roundtable discussion brings transportation professionals from across the spectrum to discuss the potential of a mobility justice framework in creating more equitable transportation systems. To better understand the emerging concept of mobility justice, this roundtable discussion will include a detailed overview of three case studies, followed by breakout sessions.

Part 1: Mobility Justice: Concepts from Research and Practice
Part 2: Using a Mobility Justice Lens to Expand Transportation Safety Research.

Typically, the image of shared mobility is one private companies and urban environments. These two panels will show us that shared mobility concepts work to help all people move around in all environments. The first half of this session will showcase a small panel discussing the role and potential of faith-based transportation including information about services, decision-making, and advocacy. Second, a panel on shared electric mobility to support marginalized communities (low income, people of color, small and mid-sized cities, and rural communities) will present lessons learned from the development of organizations and programs dedicated to facilitating access to shared electric vehicles in California.

This session features transit agency, metropolitan planning organization, and state Department of Transportation perspectives on addressing disparate transportation outcomes that have arisen from discriminatory policies and practices. Ranging from creative public engagement strategies and inclusive professional development opportunities to the development of new passenger and goods delivery services framed with explicit equity goals, speakers will share their experiences in crafting an exciting and just transportation future for the communities their organizations serve.

Public transportation is typically optimized for the “traditional commute”. However, this neglects the needs of a growing population of workers with lower incomes and essential workers with little to no control over their schedule. This session focuses on the unequal commute to discuss patterns between housing, work, and other social factors that contribute to commuting inequities and extreme commuting for workers with lower incomes. This session also discusses the unmet transportation needs of shift workers and the potential negative implications tied to transportation gaps and challenges.

As researchers, transit agency leaders, advocates, and transit planning practitioners, we want to share data, personal experiences, best practices and recommendations for the current and future role of equity in transportation. We acknowledge that equity as a consideration, or metric in transportation planning processes and decision-making is quickly becoming a standard best practice. However, equity is often framed in the narrow context of low income, working class, BIPOC communities needing support and resources without the context of why that is the case. Rarely is equity discussed or evaluated in the context of the generations of people who have been and continue to be subjected to institutionalized inequity through policies of discrimination in redlining/zoning, exclusionary/predatory lending practices, disparities in policing, and disproportionate environmental burdens. The systemic and intersectional causes of inequity are rarely quantified or evaluated when equity in transit and transportation is considered. Identifying the problem without identifying these pervasive root causes results in ineffective approaches to building equity in transit and transportation programs and projects. This willfully incomplete understanding of the relationship between power, inequity, and equity disproportionately places the responsibility, or burden, of addressing equity in transportation on BIPOC communities, planners, consultants, and decision makers. We’d like to explore how expanding the conversation around equity to include inequity, its history, intersections, proponents and beneficiaries will allow communities, transportation planners, public agencies, and decision-makers to take on a broader perspective on why equity is important, what it should look like, and why it has been so hard to define and implement.

Deep racial inequities in the city of Chicago triggered the formation of several coalitions to help advance transportation equity and justice in the city. This session includes representatives from two of those coalitions: Elevated Chicago and the Mobility Justice in Chicago research team spearheaded by Equiticity. Panelists from Elevated Chicago will share how the coalition supported city leaders to undertake a bold communications and public involvement process to make transit-oriented development tangible, relatable, and equitable through a variety of social media and communication tools. Panelists from the Mobility Justice in Chicago research team will provide an overview of their work in transportation equity advocacy bolstered by their research on performance-based planning, accessibility challenges, and pedestrian funding decision-making.

The novel COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented impacts on several sectors, transportation being one of them. The nonpharmaceutical interventions to lessen the spread of this pandemic (e.g., stay-at-home orders and social isolation mandates) have primarily affected the safety and mobility of the most vulnerable users—pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, underserved communities, ethnic minority groups, and marginalized populations. This session includes topics on a broad spectrum of transportation equity issues that have either emerged or worsened because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In many ways, the locations we call home affect all other aspects of life. Unfortunately, choosing where to live is often a matter of affordability instead of one of a convenience or access. The posters in this session will explore questions about mode-constrained travel, modal mismatch, transportation burden, transportation incentives for affordable housing residents, impacts of mobility on household income, and job-housing fit.

What do housing, public transit, walkability, bike-sharing, societal re-entry, and freight planning have in common? Systemic inequities, of course! Six presenters will critically dissect policies and system operations with respect to one (or more) of these topics and offer potential pathways towards alleviating burden from traditionally disadvantaged populations. Importantly, there will be several examples of how to combine multiple data sources to produce valid and meaningful insights.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) are institutions of higher education that were established based on historical origin or categorized based on enrollment criteria. These institutions provide students, who were historically denied or restricted access based on their race and/or ethnicity, with opportunities for equal (and welcoming) access to higher education while also providing a unique support system. To succeed in developing meaningful partnerships that can support the talented STEM graduates from HBCUs and MSIs, and the industries they will join, companies must strive to connect with these institutions beyond career services. This panel discussion will cover the background of HBCUs, MSIs and their students, benefits of creating bonds with these programs, and the steps industry leaders can take to develop meaningful relationships that are both beneficial to the institutions and helpful for the industry. Industry folks, educators, alumni, students and all interested parties are welcome to participate!