I am going to start with the given that a major source of inequity in transportation is the prioritization in funding and building infrastructure for personal motor vehicles. Equity (and addressing climate change) require a shift in this resource allocation. The power to make these decisions are mostly outside individual transit agencies. However, the question of equity also exists within the allocation of resources for transit (and biking and walking). And transit agencies do have the power to make these decisions.

There are a number of ways to define and measure equity in public transit. One definition is essentially that people (or neighborhoods depending on your dataset) of all demographics (income, race, ethnicity, language, ability, age) have access to service that meets their transportation needs. Since ‘needs’ is hard to measure, most analysis measures sameness (equality). For example, do people living in Black neighborhoods have access to the same number of jobs within 45 minutes as white neighborhoods?  

There is a lot of data showing these types of inequities across transit networks. The underlying problem is both discriminatory land use policies and transportation decisions. Transit agencies can and should use these types of metrics and data to reduce and eliminate these inequities. But these inequalities didn’t just happen. They are the result of past (and current) transit agency decisions – big and small.

In order to not repeat past inequitable decisions and to acknowledge the impacts caused by agency decisions, I think transit agencies need to do an accounting of how their system got inequitable.  We need ‘active voice’ in transit agency equity plans that takes responsibility for their role in creating the problem.

Inequitable transit access can come from big Capital decisions, like where to invest in rail service, and incrementally as a series of small decisions, like where to put that one additional bus trip. No doubt political pressure by politicians representing white and higher income communities is a major factor in many decisions. But that pressure will continue in the backrooms until forced into the light and acknowledged as inequitable.

If you are with me so far that this is important, my question is how: how should transit agencies go about this accounting of past decisions? Here are few components I am thinking about.     

Who should do the accounting? Quite literally what process should agencies take and who should lead and be involved in the process. To build new solutions to long-term problems the answer can’t be the agency hires the usual consultants to lead a study. How can agencies and communities collaborate so the process builds trust?

What is the scope? Some transit agencies in the US go back to private sector control and it would be overwhelming to analyze every decision. (The history of transit injustice goes back to the beginning- here is a timeline I put together for my master’s project on Atlanta.) Every agency and region will need to figure out their scope, but it seems important to pick a variety of decisions and look at how they happened and their impact. 

What is the format for presenting the history and acknowledgement of equity impacts? Or what is a platform for ongoing analysis and discussion? One interesting example I found is an LA Metro blog post on one of their rail lines.

How should the outcome be used? How will the results be integrated into policy decision-making? And drive narratives and communications about equity to help push back on the forces of inequity? I have seen inequitable decisions as the result of political bullying, maybe talking about the past can help inoculate against those tactics in the future.

What are the challenges for government agencies admitting past injustices? Or even disclosing that they were wrong about something? Clearly the main challenge is if you admit a past wrong then you should do something about it and that requires shifting power and resources. But I also found a deep fear inside a government agency of admitting any mistakes, even small ones. We need to figure out ways that a governmental body can acknowledge they did something wrong in ways that doesn’t undermine trust in government and instead builds it.

(A side tangent, one of the reasons I started the data blog at the MBTA was to create a forum or platform for talking about data mistakes and errors. Data analysis is difficult and messy and even if there are no mistakes new data comes along that might change the results. But there wasn’t really a way for a matter of fact telling of what happened and why we think the new results are better. My hope is that talking about mistakes makes people more confident in the data analysis and the agency in general.)  

I have a lot more questions than answers on this topic. And I don’t think I should be the one to have the answers and I know this idea isn’t new. So I am looking for examples or best practices of transit (or other government) agencies doing this type of accounting of past inequitable decisions. Please share if you have any and I will share what I learn! 

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