Making accessibility analyses accessible: A tool to facilitate the public review of the effects of regional transportation plans on accessibility

Aaron Golub; Glenn Robinson; Brendan Nee

doi:10.5198/jtlu.v6i3.352

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Published

2013-11-14

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 3 (2013)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Golub, A., Robinson, G., & Nee, B. (2013). Making accessibility analyses accessible: A tool to facilitate the public review of the effects of regional transportation plans on accessibility. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 6(3), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.v6i3.352

Making accessibility analyses accessible: A tool to facilitate the public review of the effects of regional transportation plans on accessibility

Aaron Golub

Arizona State University

Glenn Robinson

Morgan State University

Brendan Nee

BlinkTag, Inc

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.v6i3.352

Keywords: Accessibility, Regional Transportation Plan

Abstract

The regional transportation planning process in the United States has not been easily opened to public oversight even after strengthened requirements for public participation and civil rights considerations. In the effort to improve the public review of regional transportation plans, this paper describes the construction of a proof-of concept web-based tool designed to analyze the effects of regional transportation plans on accessibility to jobs and other essential destinations. The tool allows the user to analyze disparities in accessibility outcomes by demographic group, specifically income and race, as required by civil rights-related planning directives. The tool makes cumulative-opportunity measures of the number of essential destinations reachable within certain times by public transit and automobile. The tool is constructed to analyze the San Francisco Bay Area’s 2005 regional transportation plan. Users can choose to make measures for a particular neighborhood or for all neighborhoods in the region with certain demographic characteristics. Two example analyses are shown with an interpretation and discussion of calculator outputs.

Author Biographies

Aaron Golub, Arizona State University

Assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University

Glenn Robinson, Morgan State University

Research Engineer, School of Engineering and Institute for Urban Research at the Morgan State University

Brendan Nee, BlinkTag, Inc

Co-Founder, BlinkTag Inc.