Professor Steven Farber spoke at the Transportation Equity Summit presented by Transport Futures on December 9, 2019 at Innis Town Hall.
He was joined on the panel “Building Fair Transit: Balancing Investment, Fares and Service” by Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas of the Toronto Transit Commission and Dennis Kar of Dillon Consulting.
Farber’s contributions to the discussion centred around four main points:
- Canadian cities are growing, incomes are polarizing, and poverty is suburbanizing
- Many Canadians are at risk of transport-related social exclusion
- Transit accessibility helps eliminate the differences in daily activity participation rates between car-owning and zero-car households
- Low-income, inner-suburban neighbourhoods respond the most to transit investments in terms of increased participation
He ended his presentation with a proposed research agenda highlighting several areas where he feels more research and exploration are needed:
- Business case analysis: How should we value equity? Can we value new trip generation?
- Estimated values? Imputing values from elsewhere?
- Transport disadvantage in Canada
- We have only a bare minimum of data. No national data on automobile ownership, barriers to transit, needs, suppressed activity participation rates.
- Equity guidelines
- What levels of accessibility are needed to achieve barrier-free participation? What policy levers do we need to use to get there?
- Mobility and policy innovation
- We need more pilots to build evidence and support good ideas, and ignore bad ones.
Related content
- Farber explains “transportation poverty” in Global News TV interview
- Farber, Miller: The challenge of emerging urban mobilities
- Professor Steven Farber discusses transportation poverty on CBC Radio
- Planning for Transit Equity in the GTHA – Report – May 29 2019