Varieties of Transportation Justice: US Transportation Equity Policy and the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

Transportation policy has long been concerned with achieving direct outcomes such as maximum mobility, reduced unit travel times and increased access, and indirect outcomes such as regional economic development. More recently a distinct concern has arisen regarding equity and justice in transportation, in a very broad sense a concern about whether all transport system users have equal access and fair burden and benefit distributions. The equity policy framework in the US rests upon and is closely bound up with the post Civil War struggle for civil rights. This article describes what American conceptions of civil rights have come to mean in US policy and legal spheres; discusses the extent to which transportation is seen as a civil right; discusses what the limits of those rights are and how those definitions have changed over time; and suggests some current issues for US policymakers that a civil rights approach to transportation equity must consider going forward.