Measuring Public Transportation Connectivity and Equity

Access to quality public transportation is critical for mobility and accessibility for many groups that rely on transit as their main mode. Determining how transit service is distributed among vulnerable groups has the potential to significantly enhance policy analysis. While many measures of accessibility exist, due to the complexity of transit networks and the scale of the urban areas, limited research has been conducted on developing a tool to measure how equitable the distribution of transit access is in a region. 

In this project, researchers developed a tool to quantify the quality of service and accessibility at each transit stop using a number of readily available attributes such as frequency, speed, capacity, and built environment in a multi-modal transit network. Extensions to the research include a method to measure transit equity from a graph theoretical approach for all levels of transit service coverage integrating routes, schedules, socio-economic, demographic and spatial activity patterns.