Category: Equity

  • Cycling and Equity

    Two recent pieces worth note on issues of equity surrounding cycling: It matters where the facilities are and where they go – as areas surrounding London argue that the design of the bikeways favors the central city over local neighborhoods. The “elitist” cyclist is largely a myth Both via Planetizen.

  • Reactions to Bicycle Planning: Beyond the Backlash

    I missed the post on Streetsblog when this first came out (thanks to @groxie for tweeting it and catching my attention). A group of students at Hunter College produced a report: “Beyond the Backlash: Equity and Participation in Bicycle Planning” (PDF, 10.6M). The report resonates quite a bit with issues here in Portland: Better infrastructure…

  • TriMet to study OPAL’s Campaign for a Fair Transfer

    The TriMet board today, before a packed house, considered a proposal from OPAL, the “Campaign for a Fair Transfer”, which would extend the validity of single-ride tickets to address equity issues in public transit. OPAL, an advocacy group which focuses on environmental and economic justice issues, claims that the reductions in service over the past…

  • Speaking of Equity

    A couple of recent and very insightful reports on transportation equity: Brookings has analyzed transit access among households that don’t have access to cars and in some places it’s not very pretty (but maybe not so bad here). Another report (PDF, 361K) looks at some of the same data an analyzes it on a racial…

  • Equity Versus Innovation? Which Kind of Equity?

    Last week we had a significant achievement for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. Portland City Council approved a $2M application to Metro for Federal Flexible Funds to seed a bike sharing program, one the key strategic objectives of the BTA. But this didn’t happen easily. The bike sharing proposal was part of a package of four…