[sustran] Equitable Transportation

[eric britton]

From: Chris Bradshaw [mailto:c_bradshaw at rogers.com] 



 

This is a big elephant-in-the-room.  Is access to transportation equitable.
I raise this issue as one that the usual green-transportation agenda (more
efficient cars, intelligent highways, better transit at rush hours) ignores.
The others that are ignored are: health/obesity; health/trauma;
health/stress, sprawl, congestion, social/community capital.

I use the PED-CIVS acronym to identify those who the system ignores in
favour of AAAs (active, affluent adults):  It stands for poor, elderly,
disabled, children, ill/infirm, visitors, and "simplicists" (this last
eschews car-ownership).  Your reference to the unemployed and under-employed
suggests that I should add one: making it PED-CIVUS.  The IVUs are really
those temporarily in the PEDCS classes.

The total in this group at any one time must be close to 50% (and will be
higher as the aging occurs).

In transit, the engineer-planners use the term "transit captive" to refer to
those without the means to driver whenever the transit service "displeases"
them.  Their patronage, as a result, can be taken for granted.  It is only
the AAAs whose patronage they have to compete for.  That is a distinction
that is the opposite of what we need. [See Walker, Jarrett (2012), Human
Transit, p. 44-45; or my essay:
http://hearthhealth.wordpress.com/about/previously-published-works/feet-firs
t-and-car-sharing-recent/transits-two-solitudes-%E2%80%9Cchoice%E2%80%9D-vs-
%E2%80%9Ccaptive%E2%80%9D-riders-2009/]

So, count me in as part of your group you are organizing to monitor this
important study.

Chris Bradshaw