A People's History Of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation

Who are the people leading the charge in urban transportation? As our report explains, the short answer is that it takes leaders from three different sectors of urban society to make change happen quickly.First, there needs to be a robust civic vanguard, the more diverse their range of skills and participation, the better. Second, mayors, commissioners and other city leaders need to create the mandate and champion the change. The third sector is the agency staff. When these three sectors align, relatively quick transformation is possible. Several cities, including New York and Pittsburgh, recently experienced this alignment of a healthy civic community, a visionary and bold mayor and transportation head, and internal agency champions. Our report also highlighted the potential of other cities, such as Charlotte, where the civic sector continues to build on and widen their base

A Comprehensive Transit Accessibility and Equity Dashboard

The TransitCenter Equity Dashboard tracks how well public transit systems in seven densely populated urban regions in the United States serve their riders and how changes to transit service affect riders over space, time, and cost constraints. The dashboard presents a series of charts and interactive maps that can be used to evaluate variations in transit accessibility and equity. It was created using publicly available data and primarily open-source software. All measures can be accessed by users seeking to conduct their own analyses. Results demonstrate differences in agency responses to COVID-19 as well as baseline transit service levels provided to different demographic groups

Winning the Fight for Better Bus Service

The right to the city depends on the right to access the city, and U.S. regions are marked by profoundly unequal access. One of the clearest manifestations of this is the state of U.S. bus transit. Bus service is simple to improve and has vast potential to better people\u27s lives, but has been constrained by the racist planning and politics that shape every American city. How can we fulfill the promise of better buses and create abundant transit networks that expand access to opportunity? In this seminar, Higashide unpacks the elements of effective bus service – and cites examples from across the United States to show how elected leaders, heroic bureaucrats, and civic advocates can overcome the political challenges to achieving them.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/trec_seminar/1201/thumbnail.jp