Discussing Equity and Social Exclusion in Accessibility Evaluations

By Bert van Wee, Karst T. Geurs. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 2011

380 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ex ante evaluations of transport policy options (including infrastructure plans) are generally based on cost-benefit analyses (CBA). Accessibility changes are included in such analyses indirectly, via a utilitarian perspective. But accessibility is broader than is assumed by this perspective and also incorporates equity and related distribution effects as well as social exclusion. This paper aims to give an overview of the relevance of distribution effects and equity, and social exclusion for accessibility, based on the literature. The most important conclusions of our paper is that the two subjects are poorly addressed in transport appraisal in general, and in CBA in particular. Additional ethical theories could add value to the utilitarian perspective, egalitarian theories being a major competitor. Equity analysis is however complex because there are several types of equity, various ways to categorize people for equity analysis, numerous impacts to consider, and various ways of measuring these impacts. And such analysis requires normative judgements, in addition to simply presenting distribution effects. Several options are available to express distribution effects. Important choices to be made if such effects need to be reported relate to the unit of comparison (e.g. the household versus the individual), the indicator to be used, and the value of each unit to be compared (e.g. accessibility) for all units of comparison (e.g. households). We also conclude that CBA is not suitable for evaluating social exclusion policies. Based on this overview we propose an agenda for potential future research in the area of ethics and accessibility.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/372fbd5aa0c547caa033a53ef6bcba55127dbf41

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Citations in the corpus

A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches (2016, background): “Van Wee (2011) and Van Wee and Geurs (2011) have argued the Gini index is applicable to evaluate accessibility and social exclusion effects.”
The impacts of high-speed rail extensions on accessibility and spatial equity changes in South Korea from 2004 to 2018 (2015, background): “…vertical equity issues is problematic from the future extension because this kind of analysis would require to predict the social needs and mode choices of various groups, and changes of land use to a non-existence situation (van Wee and Geurs, 2011), which may actually change after the operation.”
Distributive justice and equity in transportation (2016, background): “This is the case with policies that focus on improving the accessibility of low-income classes living in deprived areas, or policies that prioritise those transport modes most commonly used by low-income people (Van Wee & Geurs, 2011).”
Distributional effects of transport policies on inequalities in access to opportunities in Rio de Janeiro (2019, methodology): “Accessibility is understood as the ease with which a person can reach places and opportunities from a given location and it results from the interaction between the transport system, land-use patterns, and the constraints of individuals (van Wee & Geurs, 2011).”
The Cost of Equity: Assessing Transit Accessibility and Social Disparity Using Total Travel Cost (2016, background): “This corresponds to the literature that normally calculates accessibility based only on travel time (van Wee & Geurs, 2011).”
Evaluating equity and accessibility to jobs by public transport across Canada (2018, background): “…measures of accessibility count how many destinations can be reached from a certain point in space within a certain time threshold using a certain mode, e.g. the number of grocery stores an individual can reach in 30min by public transportation (Ingram, 1971; Morris et al., 1979; Wickstrom, 1971).”
Future accessibility impacts of transport policy scenarios: Equity and sensitivity to travel time thresholds for Bus Rapid Transit expansion in Rio de Janeiro (2019, neutral): “There are various methods of measuring accessibility to discuss equity impacts of transport policies (Martens & Golub, 2012; Neutens et al., 2010; van Wee & Geurs, 2011).”
The social consequences of transport decision-making: clarifying concepts, synthesising knowledge and assessing implications (2012, background): “vanWee and Geurs (2011) discuss the relationships between accessibility and equity and social exclusion in greater depth.”