Fast, Frequent, and Fair: Public Transportation and Equitable Growth
https://uscpriceonline.usc.edu/resources/equitable-growth-and-transportation/
The article “Fast, Frequent, and Fair: Public Transportation and Equitable Growth” highlights the importance of innovation in meeting the demand of accessible transportation. In class we learned that the addition of more highways doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in traffic. However, this article also considers the accessibility to transportation. In all of the situations we consider, we always assumed that people had access to cars. This totally disregards all the people who cannot afford cars. The next best option for public transportation was metros; however, the demand for public transportation is so high that it has been proven that metros are not enough because people who live outside the range of the metro and don’t have access to cars.
“Physically reaching a community with transportation is not the only step in providing equitable options, according to experts.” Therefore, mobility is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration when desiring equitable growth in public transportation. One of the main examples that the article points out are the new transportation apps that were created for short distance transportation such as Bird and Lime.
This article relates to topics we learned in lecture because it touches upon the added complexity of transportation networks. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration in addition to computing traffic at equilibrium when and if we want to help commuters.