Accountability through Accessibility

Project summary:

Transportation systems in the U.S. are planned, built, and managed overwhelmingly to increase auto speeds and reduce auto delay. Congestion, which is a temporary delay in auto speeds, is used to justify enormous construction spending on roadway capacity, much of which can be counterproductive given the resulting induced demand. Other stated objectives including safety, equity, and climate goals, trade off against (can be prevented by) investments designed to increase auto speeds and reduce auto delay. And despite widespread recognition of this problem, funding structures and even amounts are opaque from the federal to state to local level, leading to low accountability for the decisions made by state and local agencies. What is the return on billions of dollars in transportation system investment? Is it really saving a few average seconds on a trip during peak travel times? Accessibility is not a new concept nor would this be the first attempt at convincing policymakers and agencies to adopt it as an effective prioritization or performance measure. But we believe we can offer a robust connection to policy and planning choices based in the data we have been producing and analyzing at the Accessibility Observatory since 2015. Accessibility measures supply of opportunity?this is separate from travel demand, and importantly, supply is much more under the control of transportation and land use planners. Accessibility integrates land use and transportation, which means there are a diversity of policy levers to consider to reveal the success of the transportation network in connecting residents to the places they desire to go. Transportation policy levers include modal prioritization, transitways, bike infrastructure, and roadway expansions. But other levers are in land use policy: infill housing, parking minima, transit-oriented development, employment center locations. We believe Accessibility holds promise for bringing accountability to transportation planning and management.