Assessing the equity of changing travel behaviors

Abstract

This research makes the radical claim that there is a social equity to travel behavior. Such equity is defined as a lack of systematic differences between the travel patterns of disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged groups. This research then proposes and applies an innovative methodology to help planners assess the social equity of policy interventions that result in changing travel behaviors. This methodology distinguishes between outcome equity and impact equity, proffers non-parametric and parametric statistical tests for identifying the existence (or absence) of both types of equity, and presents a theoretical framework of ranked scenarios, which integrate the findings from the statistical tests. This research applies this methodology to survey data collected after a disruption in retail land use patterns in post-soviet Prague to both identify specific findings and explore the general utility of the proposed equity model.