Community severance and vertical equity assessment with spatially aggregated data

Abstract

Transport related urban barriers are often a consequence of the unplanned expansion of transport infrastructures (railways, freeways, roadways and urban streets), housing growth around those infrastructures, and the vehicular traffic itself.This process, also known as "community severance", is a problem that mainly affects vulnerable social groups (the elderly, young children and the physically disabled), and impairs active trips.For this reason, we propose a simple and low-cost analytical approach for the assessment of community severance based on a classification of the quality of pedestrian crossings on two different types of transport infrastructures, railways and urban streets.Furthermore, the approach identifies possible inequities regarding spatially aggregated demographic data in the surroundings of the distinct classification groups.The method for both transport barriers is similar, however, due to their different characteristics, there are specific procedures for each.In general, the analysis procedures that comprise the method, for both transport infrastructures, include: data collection, characterization of the transport barrier through the evaluation of a set of criteria, classification of the quality of pedestrian crossings, statistical analysis and vertical equity analysis.In addition, we presented two case studies in order to illustrate the method.The case studies comprise a railway and urban streets located in the urban region of the city of São Carlos, which is a medium-sized Brazilian city.Results indicated evidence of association between the variables.In addition, the study showed evidence that the residents nearby the railway and the urban streets that have a low income or are aged up to 19 years old are poorly assisted in relation to pedestrian urban mobility.Hence, even with the limitation of the aggregated data, the research indicates that the assessment of community severance by the analysis of the quality of pedestrian crossings in both railways and urban streets is feasible.Moreover, it also highlights that the distribution of the number of residents surrounding the distinct classes of quality of crossings regarding the railway and urban streets are vertically equitable for vulnerable social groups, except for low-income residents and aged up to 19 years old.

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