Project Summary
Advancing the tools needed for equity analysis of transportation investments requires new frameworks that consider the conditions of vulnerable communities and link to travel choice behavior measurement, transportation systems infrastructure, and policy. Large-scale urban travel demand models (made up of a system of linked discrete choice models) are widely used to evaluate the costs and benefits of transportation investments and are employed during the transportation decision-making process). Yet, absent from this classic framework is the role that discrimination plays in constraining opportunity spaces for certain travelers, which then skews assessments of transportation costs and benefits and drives inequitable and harmful transportation investments.
This research project will develop a methodological framework for travel demand modeling that explicitly integrates social-political attitudes, such as discrimination in transport services like ride hailing or in economic activity opportunities such as the labor market. This new framework requires new approaches of latent variable measurement of spatially varying discrimination effects, and development of a choice set generation process that links discrimination with restriction of opportunities. Developing methods to integrate social-political attitudes with the travel behavior modeling framework requires innovation in the measurement of latent spatial discrimination effects and how best to associate these effects with the choice generation process. The required research activities include a literature and data review, testing of approaches for integrating discrimination effects in travel choice models, estimating two-mode destination models for LA County, and performing a series of statistical and model checking tests.
