Measuring Transit Equity for People Living in Affordable Housing: A Spatial Principal Component Analysis

摘要

Social equity can be potentially improved by well-designed transit systems. However, dissatisfaction with transit is commonly reported within an area due to an intricate process to allocate the resources. Thus, it is critical to quantify transit equity for vulnerable groups. Based on the prior literature, this study includes 683 affordable housing units in the City of Seattle to quantify transit equity using spatial principal component analysis. The factors include the built environments, sociodemographic, and transit access and service. The result suggests the level of transit service play a key role in explaining transit equity, followed by indicators of street design, and sociodemographic factors. Land use and transit access seems of lower weight in relation to transit equity. In addition, densely developed areas, including downtown and university areas, present a high degree of transit equity than outskirts. The identified areas of more segregated from transit are in the outside areas of downtown, and some inside areas of rich neighborhoods. The findings of this study inform the location choice of affordable housing where transit access and affordable housing should be jointly considered. Densely developed regions are more suitable for developing new affordable housing programs. To avoid building segregated affordable housing units, when making changes in transit, the selection of routes and stops may prioritize the coverage to transit underserved areas.