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July 2005

Talk addresses transportation equity

When does equity trump efficiency in transportation planning? And how can transportation planners include equity issues earlier in the planning process?

Those were some of the questions raised by Georgia Institute of Technology professor Michael Meyer at the 19th Annual Sehlin Lecture in the Department of Civil Engineering (CE) on April 29.

Michael Meyer, Shirley Hunt Alexander, and David Levinson. (Hunt Alexander is the daughter of the Sehlins, who funded the lecture series.)

Meyer, former director of transportation planning for the state of Massachusetts, said equity or fairness is difficult to measure and is often overlooked by planners and engineers who are seeking the lowest-cost solution to transportation problems. Because planners fail to consider the social costs of their projects, their efficient transportation solutions are often rejected as politically unworkable.

The solution? Include equity questions earlier in the process, he said.

"Just as the late 1960s and early 1970s questioned modal bias in the substance and form of transportation demand models, I suspect the 2000s will question the gender and demographic bias (or at least limitations) incorporated into our underlying travel behavior theories, databases, and model constructs," he said.

Some key fairness issues planners are likely to face in large metro areas in the next 25 years include tradeoffs in housing versus transportation costs, transportation for an aging population, spatial and modal distribution of investment, transit funding, demographics, external costs, and pricing.

All of these issues should be on the agenda both for transportation planners and the schools that train them, he said.

"Certainly it suggests we need to examine how we educate the next generation of transportation professionals," he said.

The lecture was sponsored by the Katherine and Arthur Sehlin family and CE. John Gulliver, CE department head, gave welcoming remarks, followed by an introduction by Assistant Professor David Levinson.