Project Summary
Advancing the tools needed for equity analysis of transportation investments requires new frameworks that consider the real world conditions of vulnerable communities and link to travel behavior analysis, transportation infrastructure, and policy assessment practices. 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 systematic constraints play in shaping opportunity spaces for certain travelers, which can skew assessments of transportation costs and benefits and drive inequitable and harmful transportation investments.
This research project will develop a methodological framework for extending travel demand modeling, to explicitly integrate constraints on traveler decision-making, such as racial and income disparities in access to travel alternatives. This framework requires new approaches of modeling traveler choice sets, and using non-traditional data sources, such as data on auto insurance premiums and auto loan availability. Developing methods to integrate such traveler constraints requires innovation in the measurement of latent effects that vary across communities and how best to associate these effects with the travel choice generation process.
The required research activities include a literature and data review, testing of measurement approaches and choice model structures for capturing traveler constraints, and performing a series of statistical and model checking tests, to arrive at clear recommendations for improvements in modeling practices.
