Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	279
Event Title:	Environmental Justice, Transit, and Mobility
Event Date:	Jan 23 2012 10:15AM- 12:00PM
Event Location:	Hilton, Columbia Hall 5
Event Description:
Event Agenda:

Maintaining Key Transit Services While Retaining National Core Values: New York City Transit’s Title VI and Environmental Justice Strategies in a Recession (12-0414)

In a recession, transit agencies aim to provide key services while retaining national core values. Transit agencies receiving Federal funding are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin in their service changes, as per Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964). Additionally, Presidential Executive Order 12898 requires ‘identifying and addressing disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on low-income populations.’ Thus, for transit agencies, service changes must not place undue burden on Environmental Justice (EJ) populations. In 2010, New York City Transit (NYCT) proposed 50 service rationalization initiatives. To ensure compliance, NYCT developed analytical methodologies to identify impacts during planning stages, allowing proactive deployment of mitigation strategies. Each major service change was classified as either span or route change. For span changes, load factor analysis compared extent of empty seats across social and income categories during periods of service elimination. On 38 affected routes, analysis demonstrated that service reduction impacts were equitably shared. For route changes, impacts were measured using trip time-and-cost analysis using shortest path trip planning tools, journey-to-work-matrix, and Census data. The M Train modification that eliminated the V Train, and Co-op city bus restructuring (BX25 elimination) illustrates analysis of complex service changes as packages, capturing mitigating effects of adjacent route restructurings. These service changes reduced costs and our analysis showed that Title VI and EJ communities were not disproportionately affected in terms of travel options, journey time, and costs.

Authors
     Wang, Ted , New York City Transit Authority
     Reddy, Alla V., New York City Transit Authority