Modeling Transportation Affordability with Cumulative Density Function of Mathematical Beta Distribution

Abstract

Transportation affordability refers to people's financial ability to access important goods and activities such as work, education, medical care, basic shopping, and socializing. Making transportation more affordable can produce considerable socioeconomic benefits by lowering the costs and boosting mobility for people who are more disadvantaged. More affordable transportation is equivalent to higher income. There are many factors to consider when evaluating transportation affordability, including housing affordability; land use factors that affect accessibility; the quantity, quality, and pricing of mobility options; and individuals’ mobility needs and abilities. Traditional transportation planning takes hardly any transportation affordability considerations into account. Greater emphasis on this field would shed more light on affordability effects and help policy makers to identify more affordable transportation solutions. However, to take transportation affordability into account, there should be practical ways of evaluating it. This paper investigates the concept of transportation affordability and suggests a metric for its measurement. The metric calculates affordability on the basis of the trade-offs that households make between transportation and housing costs. The transportation costs considered include car ownership, car use, and public transport costs. The suggested approach can be applied to any spatial zone (e.g., neighborhood or other) to reflect the average expenditure that households are willing to make to satisfy their basic travel needs.