Re-examining TODs through the Lens of Disability and Care Responsibilities: How Street and Network Structure Perpetuate Inequity of Access and Opportunity

Transit-oriented developments are generally viewed as equity- and accessibility-focused transportation investments with high returns in terms of GHG reductions and equitable opportunity outcomes. In fact, recent literature suggests that households in transit-oriented developments (TODs) spend less on the combined cost of housing and transportation (Zhou & Zolnik 2013, Dong 2021). Other research suggests that TOD residents engage in more physical activity due to the built environment factors than people living in other areas (e.g., suburbs) (Langlois et. al. 2016, Appleyard et al. 2019). In this research project, we start by asking the question what it means for a TOD to be truly accessible and equitable for people of all abilities. We will then investigate and quantify the relationship between the access network structure and different users’ ease of access to destinations in a variety of built environment archetypes. We will consider a variety of destinations related to social mobility and well-being such as educational facilities, healthy food, health care facilities, and job opportunities. Instead of assuming an average user and commuting trip purpose, we will examine access through the lens of users with different abilities and travel needs. This approach is based on the hypothesis that person-level attributes strongly affect accessibility and the lack of available research on this topic. For example, even when seemingly adequate transit is available, women are less likely than men to use transit at night if the bus stop or the first/last mile travel does not feel safe (Chowdhury and Van Wee, 2020). The reason for including trip purpose is that our previous research has shown that people value trips differently depending on the purpose. In other words, people might be unwilling to take transit with certain trips such as a medical appointment due to concerns over reliability. We propose to adopt the framework and protocols suggested by Ewing et al. in their article ‘Identifying and Measuring Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability’ (2006). We will use a similar framework for measuring transit accessibility for a sample of stops within a few selected Regional Transit District (RTD) bus and train routes. The transit stops will be selected based on whether they serve lower income neighborhoods or not (counterfactual) and high versus low ridership to contrast and compare barriers to access and their impact in ridership for different communities. Routes will be selected based on whether they lie on or in close connectivity to the proposed BRT corridors in the Denver Metro so that preemptive policies and measures can be designed to support and boost ridership post launch of the BRT services. The project is also tied to a transit design class that will be offered at CU Denver in Fall 2024. Through projects, students will get hands-on experience of identifying urban design elements that supports and promotes universal access to transit and destinations. The outputs will include: 1) At least one conference paper to be submitted to Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2) At least two peer reviewed journal publications 3) An open source map of the accessibility metric for the routes and stops so that users can change different parameters of the metric and visualize the change in outcome and 4) Design project reports with recommendations from the class which will be hosted on the class website in the future.

• Record URL:
  https://www.uno.edu/cetoc/
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Funding: $100,000 USDOT + $50,000 Matching = $150,000

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $150000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348337

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)

  University of New Orleans
  New Orleans, LA  United States 
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

  Danton, Bob

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Colorado, Denver

  Denver, CO  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Misra, Aditi

  Marshall, Wesley

  Shirgaokar, Manish

• Start Date: 20241001
• Expected Completion Date: 20250930
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Housing; Network analysis (Planning); Transit oriented development; Transportation equity
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01928839
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348337
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Aug 26 2024 3:00PM