Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Assessing Transit Fare Equity In Utah Using A Geographic Information System, Steven Farber, Keith Batholomew, Xiao Li, Antonio Paez, Khandker M. Nurul Habib

TREC Final Reports

The goal of this study is to develop and apply a new method for assessing social equity impacts of distance-based public transit fares. Shifting to a distance-based fare structure can disproportionately favor or penalize different subgroups of a population based on variations in settlement patterns, travel needs, and most importantly, transit use. According to federal law, such disparities must be evaluated by the transit agency, but the area-based techniques identified by the Federal Transit Authority for assessing discrimination fail to account for disparities in distances travelled by transit users. This means that transit agencies currently lack guidelines for assessing the …