Those Who Need It Most: Maximizing Transit Accessibility and Removing Barriers to Employment in Areas of Concentrated Poverty

Abstract

This research assesses the transportation assets and challenges faced by residents of Areas of Concentrated Poverty (ACPs), paying special attention to ACP50s—ACPs in which people of color comprise more than 50% of the population. The authors develop a graphically-facilitated survey blending multiple choice, free response, cognitive mapping and discussion questions to capture unmet transportation needs and user experience information difficult to gather in traditional travel behavior surveys. They find that participants’ activity spaces vary significantly based on car availability and local built form and that pedestrian environments around stops affect the experience of using transit in ACPs more strongly than transit service itself, leading to the conclusion that transit- and pedestrian-oriented community design is a significant equity issue.