Job accessibility through public transport and unemployment in Latin America: The case of Montevideo (Uruguay)

Accessibility to job opportunities is one of the factors that explains labor outcomes. For developing countries, public transport plays a key role in providing the population with access to employment opportunities. This paper aims to quantify accessibility by public transport to employment in Montevideo, Uruguay and to explore how accessibility to job opportunities via public transport relates to unemployment. To do so, we calculate a cumulative measure of accessibility to job opportunities for 1063 small zones—approximately 4–6 blocks each—within Montevideo. This measure yields accurate data on accessibility and can be assigned to individual households. Accessibility in Montevideo is unevenly distributed among social strata and is concentrated within the central (and wealthier) areas of the city. In addition, a multilevel logistic regression analysis indicates that greater accessibility to jobs via public transport is associated with a lower probability of being unemployed. This finding suggests that improving accessibility to job opportunities via public transit may enhance individual labor outcomes.     

A deeper investigation into the effect of the built environment on the use of ridehailing for non-work travel

Ridehailing has become a main-stream mobility option in many cities around the world. Many factors can influence an individual's decision to use ridehailing over other modes, and the growing need of policy makers to make built-environment and regulatory decisions related to ridehailing requires an increased understanding of these. This study develops a model that estimates how the built environment affects the decision to choose ridehailing for making non-work trips, while carefully accounting for a variety of confounding effects that could potentially bias the results (if ignored or improperly incorporated). These include: total number of trips, differences in supply between urban and non-urban areas, residential choice (e.g. urban versus non-urban areas), and household choice of whether to own a vehicle. We use individual-level data from a California travel survey that includes detailed attitude measurements to estimate an integrated choice and latent variable (ICLV) model to properly specify these effects. We include accessibility measures used elsewhere (e.g., Walkscore) plus measures developed for this study. Our analysis estimates the effect of these measures on ridehailing mode share, and how they differ between urban and non-urban areas. This analysis results in several major findings: we confirm that omission of latent preferences for residential location and vehicle ownership from the analysis can lead to biased results; previous studies may have overestimated the complementarity or substitution relationships between public transit and ridehailing by ignoring confounding effects; and even after accounting for other effects, individuals living in vibrant and walkable neighborhoods have a higher mode share for ridehailing (potentially using it instead of active modes).     

Informality and accessibility to jobs by public transit: Evidence from the São Paulo Metropolitan Region

Access to opportunities through public transport can have different impacts on individual's life especially in developing countries where opportunities are limited, job informality rates are high, and socioeconomic characteristics gaps are big. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between job informality and accessibility to employment by public transport in São Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR), Brazil. To do so, we calculate a cumulative-opportunity measure of accessibility to jobs for 633 areas within the SPMR. We use a multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression model to estimate the effect of job accessibility on the likelihood of being informally employed, controlling for individual and other area characteristics. To account for informal sector heterogeneity, two regression models are generated: one for the workers earning below minimum wage and one for the workers earning above minimum wage. The results show that accessibility to jobs is unevenly distributed across the region, largely concentrated in the core of the region, and especially in the high-income areas. The regression results show that for workers earning less than the minimum wage, a higher level of accessibility to jobs by public transport is associated with a lower likelihood of being a worker in the informal job sector. For informal workers earning more than the minimum wage, car ownership seem to be more relevant than transit accessibility in determining the likelihood of being part of the informal job sector. In light of these findings, increasing accessibility by public transport through either expanding transit services to areas with high informality rates to have a better access to formal jobs or supporting the decentralization of formal jobs may be a way to achieve reductions in informality rates, especially among those earning less than the minimum wage.     

Measuring and visualizing place-based space-time job accessibility

Place-based accessibility measures, such as the gravity-based model, are widely applied to study the spatial accessibility of workers to job opportunities in cities. However, gravity-based measures often suffer from three main limitations: (1) they are sensitive to the spatial configuration and scale of the units of analysis, which are not specifically designed for capturing job accessibility patterns and are often too coarse; (2) they omit the temporal dynamics of job opportunities and workers in the calculation, instead assuming that they remain stable over time; and (3) they do not lend themselves to dynamic geovisualization techniques. In this paper, a new methodological framework for measuring and visualizing place-based job accessibility in space and time is presented that overcomes these three limitations. First, discretization and dasymetric mapping approaches are used to disaggregate counts of jobs and workers over specific time intervals to a fine-scale grid. Second, Shen's (1998) gravity-based accessibility measure is modified to account for temporal fluctuations in the spatial distributions of the supply of jobs and the demand of workers and is used to estimate hourly job accessibility at each cell. Third, a four-dimensional volumetric rendering approach is employed to integrate the hourly job access estimates into a space-time cube environment, which enables the users to interactively visualize the space-time job accessibility patterns. The integrated framework is demonstrated in the context of a case study of the Tampa Bay region of Florida. The findings demonstrate the value of the proposed methodology in job accessibility analysis and the policy-making process.     

Investigating socio-spatial differences between solo ridehailing and pooled rides in diverse communities

Transformative mobility services present both considerable opportunities and challenges for urban mobility systems. Increasing attention is being paid to ridehailing platforms and connections between demand and continuous innovation in service features; one of these features is dynamic ride-pooling. To disentangle how ridehailing impacts existing transportation networks and its ability to support economic vitality and community livability it is essential to consider the distribution of demand across diverse communities. In this paper we expand the literature on ridehailing demand by exploring community variation and spatial dependence in ridehailing use. Specifically, we investigate the diffusion and role of solo requests versus ride-pooling to shed light on how different mobility services, with different environmental and accessibility implications, are used by diverse communities. This paper employs a Social Disadvantage Index, Transit Access Analysis, and a Spatial Durbin Model to investigate the influence of both local and spatial spillover effects on the demand for shared and solo ridehailing. The analysis of 127 million ridehailing rides, of which 15% are pooled, confirms the presence of spatial effects. Results indicate that density and vibrancy variables have analogue effects, both direct and indirect, on demand for solo vs pooled rides. Instead, our analysis reveals significant contrasting effects for socio-economic disadvantage, which is positively correlated with ride-pooling and negatively with solo rides. Additionally, we find that higher rail transit access is associated with higher demand for both solo and pooled ridehailing along with substantial spatial spillovers. We discuss implications for policy, operations and research related to the novel insight on how pooled ridesourcing relate to geography, living conditions, and transit interactions.     

Access to jobs and apartment rents

This study empirically explores the relationship between access to jobs and apartment rents. Specifically, the research examines the following three hypotheses: job accessibility positively influences apartment rents, the effect of job accessibility on apartment rents varies by transportation mode, and the effect of job accessibility on apartment rents varies by rent level. To examine these hypotheses, this study applies gravity-type job accessibility indexes based on a study sample of 7077 observations in the Taipei Metropolitan Area, Taiwan, from the year 2009. The sample data are analyzed using linear and quantile regressions. The empirical evidence confirms the positive effect of job accessibility on apartment rents, and its variability depending on the transportation mode and rental level. The effect of job accessibility on apartment rent is significantly positive in the median or lower-rent-level sub-markets, but insignificantly negative in higher-rent-level sub-markets. Job accessibility by motorcycle and public transit has a higher positive influence on rent than accessibility by car. These findings provide new knowledge on the role of access to jobs in explaining apartment rents, and reveal a fresh policy direction on rental subsidy programs for lower-income workers living in cities.     

A flexible framework for measuring accessibility with destination bundling

A transit system's usefulness is governed by the freedom it provides to those who use it. This freedom, typically quantified as accessibility, is proportional to the amount and variety of destinations available to a potential transit user. Often, transit systems are designed with the commuter in mind; employment is a typical stand-in measure for all destinations when measuring accessibility in a city. This paper proposes a framework to “bundle” destination types into a more comprehensive profile of accessibility. The framework is flexible enough to adapt to local conditions and data availability, and provides a potential planner with the ability to tell a more nuanced story of transit accessibility in a city. Using population, employment, and crowd-sourced destination data in Calgary, Canada, we perform a comparison of destination bundling approach to find that the relative level of access to destinations varies greatly with the bundle of destinations used. We also analyze correlations between quality of access to destinations, suggesting that certain destinations can act as substitutes for others, and that using destinations with low correlations in their quality of access increases the results' sensitivity to the transit network. As this approach uses open data sources available in most jurisdictions, it can be easily applied to different urban areas, destination sets, and accessibility measures to tell a more comprehensive story of transit accessibility in cities.     

Modeling job accessibility using online map data: An extended two-step floating catchment area method with multiple travel modes

Current quantitative measures of job accessibility rarely consider the interaction between job opportunities and labor force, and the effects of dynamic travel mode choice. Drawing upon multiple open-source datasets, we develop a job accessibility index by extending the two-step floating catchment area method (2SFCA). The job accessibility indices are calculated for different commuting scenarios concerning distance, time, and travel modes. The results suggest that job accessibility is very sensitive to travel modes, and using a single travel mode would contribute to a biased job accessibility index. The job accessibility indices with combined travel modes are more geographically balanced than using a single travel mode. Furthermore, the new index is employed to examine the spatial pattern of job accessibility and explore the relationship between job accessibility, housing, and population in the Pudong district, Shanghai. The new job accessibility indices manifest the impacts of ring roads on the spatial distribution of job accessibility. A comparative analysis shows that the floating population has poor driving-based job accessibility but can access job opportunities using public transit. Also, poor job accessibility leads to low rent prices but has little impact on medium-high rent. Both transit-based and drive-based job accessibility indices are positively related to housing prices. Our study highlights the importance of considering dynamic travel mode choice in job accessibility research. The research outcomes also contribute to the literature on spatial mismatch by revealing the unique relationship between job accessibility, housing, and population in urban China.     

Balancing time: Using a new accessibility measure in Rio de Janeiro

One of the most common applications of accessibility is in evaluating inequality in access to jobs. A vital factor to be incorporated by accessibility indicators when analyzing job accessibility is the competition for job positions by job seekers; otherwise, the results may be inaccurate or misleading. Despite efforts by researchers to develop accessibility measures that capture job competition, they fail to ensure that these measures are practical and easily interpretable and communicable, which in turn makes planners and policymakers continue to opt for more straightforward measures. In this paper we aim to fill this gap by providing a simple accessibility measure that accounts for competition effects, while remaining practical, intuitive, and highly communicable. The proposed indicator – Balancing Time – is applied to assess the inequality in job accessibility in 160 neighborhoods within the city of Rio de Janeiro, and the results are compared with the most popular indicator used in practice, the cumulative opportunities. The findings suggest that Balancing Time overcomes some of the limitations of cumulative opportunities and that it is a useful tool for planners, particularly in the cities with job opportunities concentrated in central areas. Given its simplicity, Balancing Time is especially relevant in the context of the Global South, where most transport agencies face data limitations and have low skilled technical staff.     

A GIS-based spatial statistical approach to modeling job accessibility by transportation mode: case study of Columbus,Ohio

Improving job accessibility based on transport connectivity helps to address equity issues. Spatial autocorrelation (SA) is also a focus of interest in transportation planning, but has been neglected in analyzing job accessibility in metropolitan areas. In this study, GIS-based job accessibilities by walking, transit, and car are computed for the metropolitan area of Columbus, Ohio, and three transport-based spatial autoregressive (SAR) models are estimated to account for the SA of job accessibility among neighboring block groups, while controlling for built-environment and socioeconomic factors. SA intensities and extents are compared in order to better understand local spatial clusters of job accessibility across the region. Direct and indirect spillover effects due to an investment change in transportation facilities are estimated and provide important transportation planning information. The results also show that walking-accessed jobs are primarily related to physical settings (e.g., land uses) at the local level. Locations with a higher share of zero-vehicle housing units have better job accessibility by transit. There is a spatial mismatch between Asian population clusters and transit-accessed jobs, possibly because of the car-oriented residential clusters around Honda of America Manufacturing in suburban areas. More importantly, locations with a higher share of single-parent households are at a disadvantage in overall job accessibility. Due to its complex transportation needs, a society friendly to single parents should spatially integrate accessible jobs with other needed activities via land-use and transportation planning. Alternatively, car-ownership programs and non-spatial social supports also might be effective to help secure job opportunities and perform daily life activities.     

Daily fluctuations in transit and job availability: A comparative assessment of time-sensitive accessibility measures

Accessibility to jobs by transit is increasingly incorporated into transportation and land-use planning objectives, as it is proven to be a relevant indicator for assessing land-use and transport performance. With a rise in time-sensitive accessibility measures, choosing the appropriate measure is increasingly challenging for engineers, planners and policy-makers. This research presents a comparative analysis of three accessibility measures, two of which are time-sensitive. Relative accessibility measures are generated for five time periods based on a) constant transit service and number of jobs (constant); b) variable transit service and constant number of jobs (static) and c) variable transit service and variable number of jobs available (dynamic). The measures are first assessed by incorporating them into a transit mode share model. Interestingly, findings show that all three measures behaved similarly in the three regression models. Furthermore, all accessibility measures are found to be highly correlated. The study suggests that the most commonly used accessibility measure (constant measure at 8 am) is representative of the relative accessibility (static or dynamic) over the course of the day and is thus appropriate and meaningful to be used by policy-makers, engineers and planners.     

Grocery store accessibility: Different metrics – Different modal disparity results and spatial patterns

Most accessibility studies focus on within transport mode travel performance variations. However, modal accessibility disparity analysis adds value to the single-mode analysis by assessing the interaction between different transport modes and land use. A review of modal disparity studies shows that different accessibility metrics lead to different results, and so it is unclear how this impacts modal accessibility disparity variation. Moreover, the correspondence of the disparity spatial pattern between the different metrics is unclear. This research examines how three typical accessibility metrics (closest facility, cumulative opportunity, space-time constrained) impact modal disparity of grocery store accessibility in Warsaw, Poland. Further, local indicators of spatial association are used to identify areas of similarity and difference between the metrics. This study finds that cumulative opportunities during non-rush hours indicate the best car advantage for all travel times but indicate the best transit advantage during rush hours for 15 min. Generally, the space-time metric indicates better transit accessibility than the closest facility metric which in turn shows better transit accessibility than cumulative opportunities. The city center has significant spatial similarity while peripheral, especially dense, areas have significant spatial difference. Similarity areas have higher transit stop and population densities, while difference areas have average-to-low stop, population, road and store densities.     

An innovative transit system and its impact on low income users: the case of the Metrocable in Medellín

The Metrocable in Medellín, Colombia, is an innovative system to improve access to deprived areas located in hilly zones. The idea to use cable cars as feeders to the metro was integrated into an ambitious urban project that, to date, has improved accessibility dramatically for some low-income residents. Using data before and after the project’s implementation, we evaluate the impact on social equity for the population in the zone of influence, considering changes in accessibility to employment and in housing-related costs. The access provided by the project to the main high-employment centres has doubled the number of opportunities that can be reached by the “target population,” even though travel-time savings and costs have seen only small changes. In fact, prior access to the CBD was poor and expensive, but time and costs were reduced with the Metrocable, although this reduction was not equal for all locations in the metropolitan area. In general, we argue that the main benefits, in terms of accessibility that differentiates the areas analysed from those used for comparison, are related to a localised ease of access to specific centres of activity according to the centralised development of the city’s job market along the mass transit lines. In terms of housing costs, we developed a set of difference-in-difference models that considered rent, transport, and public utilities costs; however, none of them have allowed us to conclude that there was a statistically valid relationship between the Metrocable and the changes in costs between the two analysed populations.     

Transit Deserts: Equity analysis of public transit accessibility

Areas, where disadvantaged and transit-dependent populations are provided with inadequate amounts of transit supply, can be labeled transit deserts. Exploring transit deserts may help transit agencies improve accessibility to services while improving transit distribution and equity. This study utilizes the concepts of transit demand and transit supply to identify transit deserts in the City of Dallas. The comprehensive public transit accessibility (CPTA) score is introduced to evaluate accessibility to transit and to provide a holistic view of transit supply. While previous studies have primarily used proximity or spatial indicators to describe accessibility, this study utilizes a comprehensive set of spatial and temporal measures (connectivity to the network, connectivity to destinations, service frequency, flexibility, and time efficiency) to estimate accessibility to transit. Overlapping areas of high demand (transit dependency) and low supply (as measured using the CPTA) are then characterized as transit deserts. The CPTA score and its application to the analysis of transit deserts provides a universal framework which can be broadly applied by transit agencies, city officials, and transit stakeholders. The contributions of this study are as follows: first, developing a comprehensive framework to estimate transit supply or accessibility; and second, introducing a methodology for identifying transit deserts.     

A random utility maximization (RUM) based measure of accessibility to transit: Accurate capturing of the first-mile issue in urban transit

The paper presents a random utility-based measure of accessibility to explain the first-mile issue in urban transit. A discrete access stop/station location choice model is used to calculate the expected maximum utility of transit access choices as the measure of the proposed access to transit measurement approach. It captures the effects of changes in various personal, sociodemographic, transportation and land-use variables on access to urban transit that are overlooked by conventional approaches of accessibility measurements (count-based cumulative opportunities measures and gravity-based measures). The proposed accessibility to transit measurement approach is empirically measured for the Greater Toronto Area and is integrated into an operational tool programmed in a GIS-based traffic assignment software, TransCAD 7.0. This allows comparing it to the conventional measures, and the results reveal that the conventional measures tend to over-estimate access to transit.     

Travelling fair: Targeting equitable transit by understanding job location,sectorial concentration,and transit use among low-wage workers

Low-wage workers have a pressing need for adequate and affordable transportation services. However, the growing polycentricity of North American metropolises means transit providers face the difficult task of serving ever more dispersed employment centers. Deciding where limited project resources would provide the most benefit for disadvantaged populations should be a concern for transit planners and elected officials. The purpose of this research is to determine where low-wage employment zones are, where different types of low-wage jobs concentrate, and determine if job type and location have an effect on transit ridership for low-wage workers. We use a previously proposed method to identify low-wage employment zones in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area, Canada and measure job type concentration using a gravity approach. We then test to see if job type concentration and employment centres relate to ridership, while controlling for other factors that influence mode share. Our results indicate significant differences in transit use for different occupations exist. These results can help guide more transit investment and research by tackling specific occupation's travel needs.     

Public transit accessibility approach to understand the equity for public healthcare services: A case study of Greater Mumbai

Urban public health is one of the most critical yet neglected aspects of urban planning in developing countries such as India. Inequity in access to government healthcare facilities affects the overall urban population and can substantially negatively impact the vulnerable population, who mostly rely on government healthcare services. In this paper, the accessibility measure for healthcare services by public transport is developed using travel time and the number of transit stops (accounting for transit connectivity) for Greater Mumbai. We also identified socially vulnerable wards (administrative units) using a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), developed based on 16 indicators using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Developed regression models showed that the proposed accessibility measure explains the coverage and usage of healthcare services better than the traditional accessibility measure, which is based on only aggregate level travel time impedances. South Mumbai has relatively better accessibility for public hospitals and dispensaries, whereas, lower level of accessibility is observed in the eastern part for public healthcare services. Assessment for the spatial inequity based on the Gini index, bivariate Moran's I, and mean access value reveals a higher degree of spatial inequity for accessing government hospitals for the slum population. The study developed a decision framework to suggest effective policy measures, which can be prioritised based on SVI to reduce the disparity in the spatial distribution of accessibility to government healthcare systems for vulnerable groups. Our findings can aid transportation and urban planners, health researchers, and policymakers to improve accessibility in under-served areas and give special attention to the needs of the vulnerable population.     

Analysis of job accessibility promoted by ride hailing services: A proposed method

The concept of accessibility as an element of the interaction between land use and transportation is widely applied in studies of urban mobility. The idea that the accessibility of a place can be measured by the variety and quantity of opportunities available at the destination has led to the creation and adaptation of various indicators. The new mode of transport known as ride hailing (RH) has grown in recent years throughout the world, making it necessary to evaluate its impact on modern society, mainly its interaction with other modes. Therefore, this article presents a method to calculate the accessibility of formal jobs generated by public transportation (PT) and RH, to compare the results. For this purpose, we made adaptations to two indicators commonly used in the literature: the Gini index combined with the Lorenz curve; and the location quotient (LQ). The integrated structure is demonstrated in the context of a case study conducted in four districts of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. By applying the proposed method, we found that in regions with high commercial concentration and number of jobs, with the fares charged in the city, the accessibility to formal jobs generated by RH is greater than that associated with PT when more than two passengers travel together. This information on the competition or complementarity of the two modes can be useful to make decisions for regulation of the transport sector in general, and ride hailing in particular.     

Robust accessibility: Measuring accessibility based on travelers' heterogeneous strategies for managing travel time uncertainty

Uncertainties in travel times due to traffic congestion and delay are risks for drivers and public transit users. To avoid undesired consequences such as losing jobs or missing medical appointments, people can manage the risks of missing on-time arrivals to destinations using different strategies, including leaving earlier to create a safety margin and choosing routes that have more reliable rather than fastest travel times. This research develops a general analytical framework for measuring accessibility considering automobile or public transit travelers' heterogeneous strategies for dealing with travel time uncertainty. To represent different safety margin plans, we use effective travel time (expected time + safety margin), given specified on-time arrival probabilities. Heterogeneity in routing strategy is addressed using different Pareto-optimal routes with two main criteria: faster travel time vs. higher reliability. Based on various safety margin and routing strategy combinations, we examine how accessibility changes under varying safety margin plans and routing strategies. Also, we define and measure robust accessibility: geographic regions that are accessible regardless of the safety margin planning and routing strategy. Robust accessibility can provide a conservative and reasonable view of accessibility under travel time uncertainty. To demonstrate the applicability of the methods, we carry out an empirical study on measuring the impacts of new transit service on healthcare accessibility in a deprived neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, USA.     

Understanding accessibility through public transport users' experiences: A mixed methods approach

The quantitative measurement of accessibility through public transport has become more complex and accurate over time. However, it lacks many of the deeper nuances of how people actually experience their travel environments. Our previous works have highlighted the importance of incorporating the lived travel experiences of passengers within accessibility indicators, considering the quality of the walking environment and different attributes of the public transport services.Building on these works, this mixed-method research seeks to further improve the characterization of accessibility according to users' travel experiences, as described by those attributes that inhibit or enhance access to opportunities within the city. We use content analysis of focus groups, data gathered in a brief survey and sociodemographic and public transport data for our analyses. Our main contributions are (i) to develop a conceptual framework to analyze qualitative data on how people relate and discuss their public transport accessibility experiences and (ii) to develop accessibility indicators differentiating user perceptions. We apply this novel conceptual framework and methods to the unique urban morphology of two municipalities of Santiago de Chile.We identified different ‘socially constructed’ narratives for buses and metro. The participants focused on barriers to accessibility, showing an important relationship between them, as well as substantial differences in their overarching positive perception of metro and negative for buses. However, when disaggregating the analysis by primary transport mode and location, we found ‘hidden’ values for buses, recognizing its capillarity and underlying connectivity with the metro system. Furthermore, we found a dissimilar perception of transport environments when disaggregating the analysis by gender, age and location, which translated into different accessibility profiles for the various public transport users. From these experiential qualitative perspectives, it was thus possible to determine some attributes that had been previously overlooked in more quantitative studies but which are important when analyzing public transport accessibility for different population groups.