Policy, Planning, and People: Promoting Justice in Urban Development

Chapter 7. Urban Transportation and Social Equity: Transportation-Planning Paradigms that Impede Policy Reform

Chapter 7 Urban Transportation and Social Equity: Transportation-Planning Paradigms That Impede Policy Reform Jonathan Levine To the casual observer, transportation may seem to be an egalitarian aspect of metropolitan life. The vehicles of the wealthy travel in traffic jams at the same speed as those of the poor. An overcrowded rapid transit system leaves all passengers uncomfortable regardless of social class. But access to the means of transportation and to the destinations they connect is distributed highly unequally in cities of the developed and developing world—an inequality that affects nearly all aspects of the lives of people with limited ability to reach their destinations. This presents a particular challenge for equity-based planning. Views on social equity in general can be divided between an expansive view that focuses on equity in outcome, and a more constrained view that seeks to limit itself to equality of opportunity (Litman 2002). Under the former view, severe societal inequities are a problem per se; under the latter , they are a problem only to the extent that they stem from unequal opportunities . In the more constrained view, the planning approach to societal inequity is presumably the treatment of unequal opportunity as a root cause of unequal outcomes. In this connection, transportation ought to be an especially promising venue for equity-based planning. This stems from the view that transportation , or movement, is not an end in itself, but only means to provide access to one’s destinations. If access to destinations is a prerequisite for economic and social opportunity, then some level of equality in transportation would 13423-Policy Planning and People_Carmon1.indd 141 3/14/13 9:48 AM 142 Jonathan Levine easily fit both the more expansive and more constrained definitions of societal equity. Moreover, given the pervasive involvement of planning in the transportation realm and the intimate connection with equality of opportunity , one might expect the practice of transportation planning and policy to be a significant force for promotion of transportation equity, or at minimum provision of an equitable baseline. In many areas, transportation planning has lived up to this challenge. Innovative polices have sought to expand poor people’s access using a variety of means, including public provision and expansion of markets; conventional mass transit and innovative flexible services; and approaches based in technology , land use, and attention to the human dimension of social exclusion. Exemplars of equitable transportation planning seem to be the exception, however. In many regions worldwide, auto-oriented transportation planning leaves the nondriving minority—or often majority—with ever-deteriorating accessibility (Sanchez et al. 2003). Even public transit investment and pricing structures frequently favor commutes by the affluent in both the developed (Grengs 2005) and developing worlds (Laquian 2004). Given these documented inequities, this essay considers the capacity of transportation policy to reform itself for a more equitable practice. It argues that three paradigms of transportation planning have impeded the equity of its practice. The first is a focus on mobility as an end in itself, rather than as one means to the greater purpose of accessibility. The second is an implicit equation of policy changes to the status quo with interventions into the free market. In this framework, policy reform ostensibly hinges on demonstration of market failure—even when the shifts considered are the reform of existing exclusionary governmental practices. Finally, transportation planning has treated revealed willingness to pay as definitive evidence of the value of a trip. This framework sheds little light on the role of transportation in the lives of the poor and even less on needs that are unmet in the present. Reform of these paradigms is not a sufficient condition for the improvement of transportation equity. To a great extent, transportation inequities emerge from the imbalances of political power that inevitably find their expression in the planning process in general and the transportation planning process in particular. But the three paradigms in combination constitute an obstacle to the reform of transportation planning into a more equitable practice . Such reform will not rest on the improvement of the technical methods that emerged from these worldviews; rather, fundamental reforms for a more 13423-Policy Planning and People_Carmon1.indd 142 3/14/13 9:48 AM 143 Urban Transportation and Social Equity equitable transportation planning practice need to be grounded in a change in the worldviews themselves. A search for those elements of the transportation planning process that have led to...