Transit Accessibility Research Articles

Equity of transit accessibility across Chicago

This article studies the equity of transit accessibility in the City of Chicago. We measure the accessibility of different cohorts including minority and low-income populations, the elderly, people with disabilities, those with lower education levels, and households without a car to six different destinations by public transit. The destinations are jobs, parks, groceries, hospitals, schools, and libraries. We show that there are clear inequalities across cohorts in the distribution of benefits that the transit system provides as measured by the number of reachable valued destinations. The results indicate that areas of low accessibility have a higher percentage of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, low-income workers, low-educated citizens, and the elderly. The most affected cohort are low-income workers, for whom access to jobs, parks, groceries, hospitals, and libraries decline as their number grows. The findings also highlight that inequities are most severe, in order, to jobs, hospitals, and grocery stores when examining the different cohorts. While transit agencies must deploy service with the existing demand in mind, the observed inequities behoove decision makers to make accessibility and equity considerations explicit in transit service decisions.

Nonlinear effect of accessibility on car ownership in Beijing: Pedestrian-scale neighborhood planning

Using a 2017 travel survey dataset and crawled heatmaps and point-of-interests (POIs) data in Beijing, China, this study adopts a gradient boosting decision trees (GBDT) algorithm to measure the relative importance and nonlinear effects of local accessibility, regional accessibility, and transit access on household car ownership. Results show that local accessibility measures such as retail and service density and job density play a more critical role in predicting auto ownership than transit access, while regional access to city centers is the least important. Thus, for reducing car ownership, planning efforts should emphasize improving local accessibility through planning pedestrian-scale neighborhoods (i.e., life-circles). Moreover, nonlinear associations between accessibility measures and car ownership are common. The results suggest that within the 15-min neighborhood life circle, there should be 65–145 retail and service facilities per km2 and block size should be within 150–200 m. Furthermore, residential neighborhoods should be within 400 m of bus stops and 1200 m of metro stations. These findings provide meaningful policy implications for planning pedestrian-scale neighborhoods recently advocated in Chinese cities.

Economic impacts of being close to subway networks: A case study of Korean metropolitan areas

Subway networks are often developed in densely populated metropolitan areas that have enough potential passengers to merit their operation. Once a network has been constructed, it provides mobility to passengers and improves local accessibility to various destinations, thereby having economic, social, and public health impacts. This study aims to examine the economic impacts of subway networks in metropolitan areas among the various, wide-ranging effects of provision of transit networks. The association between actual transaction prices of condominiums and accessibility to subway networks in four metropolitan areas in South Korea is examined. Condominiums make up the dominant housing type in South Korea, so they provide a valid proxy for housing prices. In the modeling process, factors known to have a close relationship with housing prices are integrated along with the accessibility of subway networks, and spatially lagged models are utilized to effectively deal with the spatial patterns. The results of this research show that the expected positive effects of transit accessibility exist in the majority of cases in metropolitan areas, though one metropolis was an exception. These findings enhance our understanding of the economic impacts of public transit systems in relatively small metropolitan areas with less complex subway systems.

Accessibility to transit, by transit, and property prices: Spatially varying relationships

Accessibility to transit facilities is perceived to affect property prices. However, accessibility by transit has rarely elicited adequate scholarly attention in property price analyses. Additionally, previous studies on how transit accessibility affects property prices mainly focused on rail and bus rapid transit systems, while conventional bus transit, which is very popular in many contexts, has seldom been investigated. Moreover, whether there is spatial heterogeneity in the price (or capitalization) effects of conventional bus accessibility remains to be explored. To fill these gaps, this study aims to investigate the role of accessibility to and by bus in determining housing prices in a bus-dependent city where urban transit service is offered mainly by a bus system rather than other transit systems. Using a database of 4966 condominium units in Xiamen, China, this study develops a battery of spatial econometric models to estimate global and local relationships between to-bus and by-bus accessibility and housing prices. The findings are as below: (1) to-bus accessibility (measured by the number of nearby bus stops) is positively associated with nearby housing prices; (2) by-bus accessibility (measured by travel time to city centers by bus and bus frequency) significantly affects nearby housing prices; (3) spatial heterogeneity exists in the price effects of bus accessibility; and (4) bus frequency exerts a larger price effect in the peripheral area than in the central. Finally, practical and policy implications are discussed.

Abstract C085: Neighborhood built environment was significantly associated with colorectal cancer screening among underserved Vietnamese American adults

Abstract Introduction: Colorectal Cancer (CRC) places a significant burden among Asian Americans, and prevailing as the second most common cancer diagnosis and third leading cause of cancer mortality. Vietnamese Americans represent an Asian American subgroup with many being foreign-born, having limited English proficiency, living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and reporting substantially low levels of CRC screening. The built environment that surrounds where individuals reside impacts health outcomes and behaviors, including cancer risk factors and morbidity. The purpose of the study was to determine whether neighborhood walkability and transit accessibility were associated with CRC screening among underserved Vietnamese Americans. Methods: Vietnamese American adults aged 50 and older enrolled in a multilevel CRC screening intervention were recruited from 20 community-based organizations in the Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey regions. A total of 804 cross-sectional baseline surveys were collected from participants to determine their screening behavior, including past colonoscopy and fecal immunochemical test (FIT) screenings. Built environmental factors were measured using the Walk Score™ and Transit Score™. Results: Multiple logistic regression analyses illustrated that a one unit increase in Transit ScoreÒ was associated with an 2.6% higher odds of obtaining a colonoscopy (OR 1.026, 95% CI 1.001-1.051, p=0.039) and 7% higher odds of obtaining a FIT (OR 1.069, 95% CI 1.025-1.116, p=0.002) after controlling for covariates including age, gender, marital status, education level health insurance status, having a primary care physician and English fluency. Neighborhood walkability measured by the Walk Score was not significantly associated with having obtained a colonoscopy or FIT. Discussion: This study elucidates the impact of the built environment on CRC screening and accessibility of services among Vietnamese Americans. Future assessment and intervention studies should address and incorporate built environmental components to address CRC risk behaviors and screening among potentially underserved populations. Keywords: built environment; colorectal cancer screening; Vietnamese Americans Acknowledgement This research project was supported by grant U01MD010627 (PI: Grace X. Ma, PhD) funded by National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of National Institute of Health (NIH), and partially supported by the grant of U54 CA221704(5) funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of NIH (Contact PIs: Grace X. Ma, PhD and Olorunseun O. Ogunwobi, MD, PhD). The contents of this abstract are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIMHD or the NCI, NIH. Citation Format: Aisha Bhimla, Cecily Johnson, Phuong Do, Minsun Lee, Grace X Ma. Neighborhood built environment was significantly associated with colorectal cancer screening among underserved Vietnamese American adults [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr C085.

Exploring the Nonlinear Relationship between the Built Environment and Active Travel in the Twin Cities

Active travel is important to public health and the environment. Previous studies substantiate built environment influences active travel, but they seldom assess its overall contribution. Most of the studies assume that built environment characteristics have linear associations with active travel. This study uses Gradient Boosting Decision Trees to explore nonlinear relationships between the built environment and active travel in the Twin Cities. Collectively, the built environment has more predictive power for active travel than demographics, and parks, proximity to downtown, and transit access have important influences. The threshold effects of built environment variables help inform planning practice.

Where do you live and what do you drive: Built-environmental and spatial effects on vehicle type choice and vehicle use

The carbon footprint of daily travel for an individual household is based on the types of vehicles that the household owns, their fuel efficiency, and the number of miles traveled (Federal Highway Administration, 2009). Therefore, the types and usage of vehicles a household owns are informational to overall sustainable planning. This study develops a multinomial logit model for vehicle type choice and a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model for vehicle use for Ohio households using the most recent Household Travel Survey (HTS) collected in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. The developed vehicle choice model identifies the effects of the built environment characteristics on vehicle type based on vehicle size, controlling for socio-economic attributes. People residing in neighborhoods characterized with higher densities in population, employment, and intersection and with fewer single detached housing are more likely to own smaller vehicles as compared to the ones living in suburban areas. A good transit accessibility would decrease the probability of owning pickup trucks. The SAR model reveals how the vehicle a household owns is used is still slightly positively associated with his/her neighbour’s vehicle use after controlling for the effects of the built environment and socio-economics. The models will enable decision makers to estimate potential changes in vehicle fleet composition under changing built environment scenarios and neighborhood culture in using private vehicles. Although the model results and estimated coefficients may be different for different urban areas, the methodology is transferable to other communities, locally and nationally.

Do For-Hire Vehicles Provide First Mile/Last Mile Access to Transit?

This research examines how for-hire vehicles (Uber, Lyft and taxicabs) are combined with other transport modes, both in daily travel tours and as parts of individual trips. Using data from the National Household Travel Survey, we find that about 75 percent of for-hire tours include another travel mode, and 27 percent of for-hire tours include transit. The California add-on sample allows us to look specifically at for-hire use for first mile/last mile access to transit. There, we find that about 11 percent of all for-hire tours in California include first mile/last mile transit access. However, these represent less than three percent of all tours that feature transit, and the sample size is very small. Lastly, we examine the distribution of non-auto and for-hire use within tours by time of day, and show that for-hire use exceeds other non-auto use in evenings, when transit service is typically reduced. These findings suggest that for-hire vehicles can act as complements to other modes both for individual trips, such as first mile access, and at the tour level, where for-hire vehicles may be used for some trips in conjunction with other modes within a travel day.

Does Rapid Transit and Light Rail Infrastructure Improve Labor Market Outcomes?

Public transit has often been proposed as a solution to the spatial mismatch hypothesis but the link between public transit accessibility and employment has not been firmly established in the literature. Los Angeles provides an interesting case study – as the city has transformed from zero rail infrastructure before the 1990s to a network of 103 Metro stations in 2016 consisting of subway, light rail, and bus rapid transit servicing diverse neighborhoods. I use panel data on tracts, treating route placement as endogenous, which is then instrumented by the distance from the centroid of each tract in LA to a hypothetical Metro route. Overall, I find proximity to Metro stations increases labor force participation and employment for residents, which is robust to using both a binary and continuous measure of distance. Additionally, I find evidence that increased job density in neighborhoods near new transit stations is contributing to the employment increase.

Shared mobility and transit-dependent population: A new equity opportunity or issue?

Using shared mobility data collected from different sources and multinomial models, this paper investigates its role in serving transit-dependent populations and whether shared mobility can reduce transit deserts in New York City (NYC). It has been found that shared mobility has an important role in serving low-income populations with no car access and physically challenged travelers. However, shared mobility activities in NYC highly concentrate in wealthier areas with better transit access and less transit-dependent population. The findings indicate that without effective and appropriate policy and planning guidance, shared mobility may exacerbate transport equity issues even though they appear to be particularly adept at serving transit-dependent travelers.

Determining transit nodes for potential transit-oriented development: Along the LRT corridor in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The aim of transit-oriented development (TOD) is to create a livable urban environment by improving the integration between land-use and transportation systems. The capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, aims to promote a sustainable transportation system by launching its first light rail transit (LRT) network to control the current pattern of increased congestion and the need for mass transport. Planning for TOD around existing transit stations helps achieve improved transit choice and encourages local economic development. Therefore, this article proposes a methodology to quantitatively measure the existing TOD in terms of a TOD index within the walkable distance of transit nodes by measuring the criteria that define TOD levels. The TOD index is calculated for areas of 22 stations on the East-West LRT line of Addis Ababa. Depending on the value of the TOD index, certain stations are identified to have a potential TOD but poor transit accessibility. With these results, the recommendation to improve TOD planning can become accurate for each station, depending on its relevant factors. Such results also help identify each station's potential for TOD planning and its improvements toward future local developments.

Impacts of rail transit access on land and housing values in China: a quantitative synthesis

ABSTRACT Rail transit investment has been viewed as a prominent policy instrument for local and regional development. However, little is known about to what extent the theorised changes in land and housing values arising from rail transit access can be substantiated by evidence in a large developing country context. This paper presents a quantitative review of empirical studies that analysed the impacts of rail transit access on land and housing values in China. We review empirical analyses in 67 studies from 1997 to 2018 for which we encode quantitative results along with a range of theoretically combinations of spatially contextual characteristics, data and methodological-design characteristics. The results show that there are significant variations in the size estimates of effects of rail transit access across studies. Such variations are associated with rail project types, data and methodological designs. Our study provides the insights on what has already been known and what needs to be known on evaluating real estate consequences of rail transit improvements in developing countries.

Evaluating household residential preferences for walkability and accessibility across three U.S. regions

Accessibility has been established as a major planning goal in recent years. However, little knowledge exists regarding how individuals value walkability, transit accessibility, and auto accessibility differently when deciding where to live. To fill this knowledge gap, this study conducts residential location choice modeling across three U.S. regions—Atlanta, Puget Sound, and Southeast Michigan. I find that, overall, all three types of accessibility are important determinants of residential location choice. Transit accessibility has a statistically significant positive influence on residential location choice across all three regions. On auto accessibility, results show that commute time by auto has the greatest influence on residential location choice among all independent variables, but auto accessibility to nonwork destinations appears to be inconsequential. Moreover, walkability is found to be a key determinant of residential location choice in the Puget Sound region but not the other two regions. I argue that these regional differences result from a lack of choice among Atlanta and Southeast Michigan residents, that is, a undersupply of walkable neighborhoods inhibits households in the two regions from living in such neighborhoods. This finding suggests the need for cities and regions to promote pedestrian-oriented development in order to broaden residential choice. The results further imply that, due to housing-supply constraints, households often have to live in a neighborhood with a level of accessibility lower than what they prefer. Transportation and land-use planners should address this “residential dissonance” when applying residential location choice models to predict land-use growth patterns.

First-and-last mile solution via bicycling to improving transit accessibility and advancing transportation equity

The speed advantage of bicycling surpasses walking as a better solution to the first-and-last-mile problem, thus improving transit accessibility and equity. As more cities are investing in bike infrastructures, it's essential to estimate to what extent the transit accessibility can be increased through the bicycle-transit modal solution to ensure sound bike network planning. To address this uncertainty, this paper creates a quantity-based method to measure the pedestrian- and bicycle-transit accessibility on the basis of which impacts of bicycling and walking on transit accessibility are estimated and compared. Meanwhile, the benefit of bicycling the first-and-last mile to transportation equity is investigated among social groups defined by income and race. The case study of Hamilton County, Ohio demonstrates that the transit access distance by bicycling is tripled compared with that by walking. The extended access distance increases the transit job accessibility by 43.70%. Moreover, it advances transit equity, which is reflected in an upgraded transit accessibility to jobs for low incomes and minorities. The paper contributes to advancing understanding the capacity of bicycling as a first-and-last-mile connector to improve transit accessibility and equity. The developed methodology can serve as a tool to facilitate the bikeway planning for extending transit point-to-point mobility.

Effects of transit-oriented development (TOD) on housing prices: A case study in Wuhan, China

Rail transit is becoming significant to urban growth and sustainability in China since China is investing more than 2 trillion yuan in urban rail transit during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). Transit-oriented development (TOD) emphasizes using built-environment factors such as mixed-use, density, and walkability, to maximize the benefits of improving transit accessibility. Although studies illustrate how transit-oriented built-environments amplify the rail transit impact on housing prices within the American context, little attention has been paid to Chinese cities. Using a case study of Wuhan City in China, this study shows that a higher transit proximity premium of housing prices is more likely to occur in the place with more mixed land uses. Policy implications on TOD planning and land value capture near transit station areas are derived.

The role of public transit in school choice and after-school activity participation among Toronto high school students

Transportation plays a growing role in the ability of students to access educational opportunities as communities continue to sprawl and school systems diversify students’ school attendance options. This study models the impacts of household transportation resources on two education related outcomes: after-school activity participation and attendance at a non-local high school. We model after-school activity participation across the Greater Toronto Area through probit regression, identifying a significant effect of public transit accessibility on a high school student’s likelihood of participating in an after-school activity. We conduct a similar analysis predicting the likelihood that a student attends a non-local high school in the City of Toronto, wherein over 60% of students attend one of several alternatives to local designated high schools. Finally, we conduct a biprobit Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) on both variables to account for unobserved student and household characteristics that influence both outcomes. Our results highlight a significantly positive association between transit accessibility and students’ participation in after-school activities. We identify a weakly significant association between transit accessibility and attending non-local schools. We contend that while transportation resources may not be the most significant factors influencing these outcomes, transportation plays a significant enough role in students’ lives to warrant thoughtful attention by policymakers.

The effects of polycentric evolution on commute times in a polycentric compact city: A case of the Seoul Metropolitan Area

This study attempts to investigate the dynamics of polycentric evolution and the changing roles of existing and new employment centers in determining commuting patterns. For this purpose, we analyze temporal changes in urban form and individual commuting behavior between 2000 and 2015 for the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA)—an area that has experienced rapid employment growth and changes in urban form over the last half-century. Results reveal both positive and negative effects on commuting efficiency. On the positive side, inner-city subcenter commuters have significantly reduced commute times over the last 15 years, possibly due to locational adjustment (i.e., the reduction of commute distance), improvement in public transit accessibility, and the emergence of new suburban subcenters that attract workers who previously traveled to inner-city subcenters. On the negative side, these new suburban subcenters have also attracted more workers from a wider job market, resulting in longer commute times for suburban subcenter commuters. The evidence suggests that mixed land use for development and improvements in public transit accessibility are important drivers of commuting efficiency, while improving public transport directly leads to shorter commute times in high-density urban areas.

Planning transport for social inclusion: An accessibility-activity participation approach

Social equity is increasingly becoming an important objective in transport planning and project evaluation. This paper provides a framework and an empirical investigation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) examining the links between public transit accessibility and the risks of social exclusion, simply understood as the suppressed ability to conduct daily activities at normal levels. Specifically, we use a large-sample travel survey to present a new transport-geography concept termed participation deserts, neighbourhood-level clusters of lower than expected activity participation. We then use multivariate models to estimate where, and for whom, improvements in transit accessibility will effectively increase activity participation and reduce risks of transport-related social exclusion. Our results show that neighbourhoods with high concentrations of low-income and zero-car households located outside of major transit corridors are the most sensitive to having improvements in accessibility increase daily activity participation rates. We contend that transit investments providing better connections to these neighbourhoods would have the greatest benefit in terms of alleviating existing inequalities and reducing the risks of social exclusion. The ability for transport investments to liberate suppressed activity participation is not currently being predicted or valued in existing transport evaluation methodologies, but there is great potential in doing so in order to capture the social equity benefits associated with increasing transit accessibility.

Public Transportation Accessibility, Proximity to New York City, and Residential Property Values in New Jersey

In recent years as housing with better transit accessibility has become unaffordable to many households in many regions globally, the call to study the connection between transit and property values has shifted to concern itself with the negative consequences of transit access being capitalized into property values. The primary purpose of this research is to define the effect of station proximity and other characteristics on housing prices and provide evidence if there is displacement in the area with better accessibility to transit. The outcome reveals that locational factors are associated with housing prices. Inherent housing features, the number of beds, structure age, and parking spots were the strongest predictors in this model of housing prices. Relative to housing near other transit lines, housing near the Northeast Corridor Line, which provides direct access to New York Penn Station, had much higher sales prices. Given the significant increase in the poverty rate in a high-density area with a transit station, low-income people move into the inner-city area with higher population density and public transportation accessibility. We expect that the results can contribute to providing improved housing price forecasting model, responding to the housing crisis, and ultimately establishing sophisticated strategies for affordability and livability.

Extending public transit accessibility models to recognise transfer location

A longstanding issue for public transit agencies has been how to assess the performance of transit service including spatial service coverage to meet the transport needs of the community. The conventional approach quantifies accessibility using door-to-door travel time in such a way that accessibility declines as the travel time to the opportunity increases. A new approach to modelling transit accessibility is proposed by incorporating the potential effect of transfer location. It builds on the premise that transit users may have a preference for a transfer location best located relative to the trip origin and destination points. The model is tested in Brisbane's bus network which has a radial form, where inner-city suburbs have relatively higher accessibility than outer-city suburbs, if only travel time is counted. Incorporating the transfer location refines the accessibility modelling so that some outer-city suburbs located along the major bus corridors have a relatively higher accessibility level. The new model also suggests that inner-city suburbs do not necessarily have better accessibility. Suburbs close to the city centre may have shorter transit travel time to reach other suburbs, but they do not have a well-connected transit network to other suburbs through service transfers.