Examining the Spatial and Social Variation in Employment Accessibility: A Case Study of Bus Transit in Austin, Texas

Abstract

This paper describes why, as efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness persist as goals of transportation systems, ensuring equitable access to job locations, shopping centers, and other important destinations must be given more attention in transport policy agendas. It describes how this presents real challenges for public transit systems facing increasingly constrained financial resources and pressures for increasing and extending service. Moreover, the growing complexity of modern day urban form and its resultant travel demand have made achieving equitable accessibility to urban opportunities a tenuous proposition. The paper examines how an urban bus transit system provides accessibility to residents through a case study of bus service in Austin, Texas. Austin is a medium sized urban area with a diverse economy and well-developed bus transit system. The research focuses exclusively on the transit mode, work commute trips, and those workers and jobs accessed by transit. Data was compiled from the 2000 Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP, 2000) which included the locations and detailed characteristics of workers and their jobs. A detailed transit network is constructed in a geographic information system (GIS) in order to facilitate accurate estimates of the bus travel times between residences and workplaces. Given these data, the paper develops several GIS-based measures of accessibility and uses them to explore the landscape of transit service provision. Specifically, the social dimensions of accessibility are investigated by computing indices controlling for patrons’ racial, ethnic and employment characteristics. Spatially, the paper visualizes accessibility in the Austin area, and produces summaries of how accessibility varies at multiple scales (i.e., a system level vs. a neighborhood level).

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