Transport and Justice

Local governments increasingly justify the hosting of mega-events because of their legacy value, assuming that all local residents benefit from those events. Yet, little attention has been paid to the distributive question of who benefits from the transport legacy left by those events. This paper reflects on the delimitation of transport legacies and its social impacts in terms of how such developments can reshape urban accessibility to opportunities. It analyses the transformation in the transport system of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. That transformation involved substantial expansion in public transport infrastructure followed by rationalization of bus routes and cuts in service levels. The paper examines whether those recent changes have increased the number of people from different income levels who could access Olympic sports venues and healthcare facilities by public transport within 15, 30, 60 and 90 minutes. The analysis uses a before-and-after comparison of Rio’s transport network (2014-2017) and a quasi-counterfactual scenario to separate the effects of newly added infrastructure from the reorganization and cuts of transport services. The results show that the infrastructure expansion alone would have increased the number of people who could access the Olympic sports venues but it would have only marginally improved people’s access to healthcare facilities. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that the streamlined bus system have offset the benefits of infrastructure investments in a way that particularly penalizes the poor. The analysis of both the implemented changes to the public transport network and the counterfactual scenario show that the accessibility benefits from the recent cycle of investments and disinvestments in Rio generally accrued to middle- and higher-income groups, reinforcing existing patterns of urban inequality.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the type of mobilities and subjects that are being promoted and constituted through bike-sharing systems. This is done through an analysis of the bike-sharing system in the city of Lund in Sweden. The analysis utilises Bacchi’s What is the Problem Represented to be? framework and develops it through adding a spatial perspective. Departing from a critical velomobilities perspective, we argue that urban transport policies cannot merely be regarded as one specific and delimited reaction to well-defined policy problems. Instead, the ways that BSSs are, described, motivated – but also spatially organised – constitute which mobilities are produced. The analysis is based in an analysis of relevant policy documents, maps and observations. It is concluded that bike sharing is not seen as cycling and is rarely linked to cycling as such, but rather is seen as part of the public transport system. Further, it is concluded that the motivation behind the location of the stations is to facilitate the flow of workers to public transport, and promote attractiveness and tourism, thus constituting a
strong belief in a win-win situation between sustainability and growth. Here prioritisation between different values, and the possible tensions between different social and environmental dimensions of sustainability is down-played.

The evaluation of the social impacts of transport policies is attracting growing attention in recent years. Yet, this literature is still predominately focused on developed countries. The goal of this research is to investigate how investments in public transport networks can reshape social and geographical inequalities in access to opportunities in a developing country, using the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a case study. Recent mega-events, including the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, have triggered substantial investment in the city’s transport system. More recently, though, bus services in Rio have been rationalized and reduced as a response to a fiscal crisis and a drop in passenger demand, giving a unique opportunity to look at the distributional effects this cycle of investment and disinvestment have had on peoples’ access to educational and employment opportunities. Based on a before-and-after comparison of Rio’s public transport network, this study uses a spatial regression model and cluster analysis to estimate how accessibility gains vary across different income groups and areas of the city between April 2014 and March 2017. The results show that recent cuts in service levels have offset the potential benefits of newly added public transport infrastructure in Rio. Average access by public transport to jobs and public high-schools decreased approximately 4% and 6% in the period, respectively. Nonetheless, wealthier areas had on average small but statistically significant higher gains in access to schools and job opportunities than poorer areas. These findings suggest that, contrary to the official discourses of transport legacy, recent transport policies in Rio have exacerbated rather than reduced socio-spatial inequalities in access to opportunities.

This article considers how migrant deaths -particularly in the borderlands of Europe and the United States -relate to the speed at which migrants travel. It argues that the most dangerous boundaries for migrants, and the most difficult ones to traverse, are those which embody the sharpest divides in energy consumption, divides reflected in the vulnerability of migrants who typically move at relatively slow speeds and have insufficient access to safe modes of travel. Thus, migrant deaths and the boundaries that produce them embody the injustices associated with grossly unequal levels of access to, control over, and consumption of environmental resources.

Um dos principais objetivos das políticas de transporte urbano é facilitar o acesso das pessoas a oportunidades de emprego, serviços de saúde e educação, atividades culturais e de lazer. No entanto, os estudos e as políticas de mobilidade urbana no Brasil costumam dar ênfase aos desafios de reduzir congestionamentos e o tempo que as pessoas gastam no trânsito, ao passo que dedicam pouca atenção ao tema da acessibilidade urbana. Este estudo apresenta os primeiros resultados do Projeto Acesso a Oportunidades, e faz um retrato das desigualdades de acesso a oportunidades nas maiores cidades brasileiras no ano de 2019, com estimativas de acesso a empregos, serviços de saúde e educação. Nesta edição, o estudo inclui estimativas de acessibilidade por modos de transporte ativo (a pé e de bicicleta) para as vinte maiores cidades do país, e por transporte público para sete grandes cidades (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre e Curitiba). O projeto combina dados de registros administrativos, pesquisas amostrais, dados de imagens de satélite e de mapeamento colaborativo, para se calcular os níveis de acessibilidade em alta resolução espacial, e desagregados por grupos socioeconômicos segundo nível de renda e cor/raça. Os resultados revelam dois padrões gerais. Em todas as vinte cidades estudadas, a concentração de atividades nas áreas urbanas centrais aliada à performance/conectividade das redes de transporte leva a áreas de alta acessibilidade próximas ao centro das cidades, em contraste com regiões de periferia marcadas por desertos de oportunidades. Ainda, os resultados apontam que a população branca e de alta renda tem em média mais acesso a oportunidades de trabalho, saúde e educação do que a população negra e pobre em todas as cidades estudadas, independentemente do meio de transporte considerado. Os resultados e bases de dados do Projeto Acesso a Oportunidades são disponíveis publicamente, criando rico material que pode ser utilizado para guiar o planejamento e avaliação de políticas públicas que promovam cidades sustentáveis e inclusivas.

PORT:
As políticas de transporte público determinam em larga medida a facilidade com a qual pessoas de diferentes grupos sociais e níveis de renda conseguem acessar oportunidades de emprego, serviços de saúde e educação. Essas políticas têm, portanto, importantes implicações para a promoção de cidades mais justas e inclusivas. Esta pesquisa traz três contribuições para os estudos sobre acessibilidade, equidade e avaliação de impacto de políticas de transporte e mobilidade urbana. Primeiro, propõe um quadro teórico para a avaliação de impactos de acessibilidade dessas políticas e da mobilidade urbana sob o ponto de vista de justiça distributiva. Em seguida, esse arcabouço é aplicado na avaliação das políticas de transporte desenvolvidas no Rio de Janeiro em preparação para sediar a Copa do Mundo de 2014 e os Jogos Olímpicos de 2016. A pesquisa avalia, ainda, como o legado de mobilidade urbana desses megaeventos impactou o acesso a oportunidades de empregos e serviços de saúde e educação para populações de diferentes níveis de renda. Para isso, o estudo fez tanto avaliações ex post e contrafactuais do impacto das políticas implementadas entre 2014 e 2017 quanto uma avaliação ex ante de um projeto de transporte rápido por ônibus (bus rapid transit – BRT), ainda não concluído. Os resultados mostram que a expansão na infraestrutura de transporte no período 2014-2017 poderia ter gerado ganhos de acessibilidade, mas estes foram corroídos pela reorganização e redução nos níveis de serviço de ônibus que sucederam uma crise econômica que atingiu o município do Rio após as Olimpíadas. Mesmo que a cidade não tivesse sido atingida pela crise econômica, as políticas de transporte nesse período teriam tido impactos regressivos. Essas políticas geraram maiores ganhos de acessibilidade para a população de mais alta renda, aumentando as desigualdades de acesso a oportunidades. A análise dos futuros impactos do corredor inacabado do BRT TransBrasil, no entanto, indica que esse projeto poderia melhorar significativamente o acesso a oportunidades de trabalho para uma grande parcela da população do Rio, particularmente para grupos de baixa renda. Por fim, esta pesquisa mostra como avaliações de impacto e equidade de projetos de transporte baseadas em indicadores cumulativos de acesso a oportunidades – a prática mais comum adotada por estudos acadêmicos e agências de transporte – são sensíveis à forma e à escala espacial de análise, bem como ao tempo máximo de viagem considerado no indicador de acessibilidade.

ENG:
Public transport policies play a key role in shaping the ease with each people from different social groups and income levels can access job opportunities, health services and education. Thus, these policies have important implications for the promotion of more just and inclusive cities. This research contributes in three different ways to the literatures on transport accessibility, equity and impact assessment of transport policies. First, the research proposes a theoretical framework for assessing accessibility impacts of transport policies from a distributive justice perspective. Second, it demonstrates the means by which the proposed theoretical framework can be applied to a city in a developing country. This framework is applied to evaluate the transportation policies developed in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. This research examines how the transport legacy of those megaevents impacted accessibility to job opportunities, health and education services for the population of different income levels. The study presents -post and counterfactual analyses of the policies implemented between 2014 and 2017 and ex-ante analysis of an as yet unfinished BRT project. The results show that the expansion in transport infrastructure between 2014 and 2017 could have generated accessibility gains, but these gains were generally offset by the reduction in bus service levels that followed an economic crisis that hit the city after the Olympics Even if the city had not been hit by the economic crisis, transport policies in that period would have had regressive impacts. Those policies have generated higher accessibility gains for wealthier groups, increasing inequalities in access to opportunities. The evaluation of the future accessibility impacts of the unfinished BRT corridor, nonetheless, indicates that such project could significantly improve access to job opportunities for a large share of Rio’s population, particularly lower-income groups. Finally, this research shows how the equity and impact assessment of transport projects based on cumulative opportunity accessibility - the most common practice adopted by academic studies and transportation agencies - are sensitive to spatial scale and zoning scheme of analysis as well as on the time threshold considered in the accessibility indicator.

While equity has been an important consideration for transportation planning agencies in the USA following the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI specifically) and the later Department of Transportation (DOT) environmental justice (EJ) directives, there is little guidance on how to assess the distribution of benefits generated by transport investment programs. As a result, the distribution of these benefits has received relatively little attention in transportation planning, compared to transport-related burdens. Drawing on philosophies of social justice and our earlier work in this direction, we present an explicit equity standard for the assessment of the distribution of accessibility improvements generated by transportation investment programs. We then apply this equity standard to the case of investments in the San Francisco Bay Area. The empirical explorations show that virtually all neighborhoods suffer from substantial gaps between car and public transport-based accessibility. The two transportation investment programs hardly succeed in reducing these gaps and thus fail to live up to the maximax yardstick, even if a wide maximum range is accepted as fair. We conclude that the systematic application of the maximax yardstick, or a comparable distributive principle, has the potential to substantially alter transportation investment priorities.