Commuting patterns are spatial interactions that result from the location decisions of firms, households, and the availability of transportation. Empirical evidence shows that these patterns differ across income groups, reflecting different levels of access to economic opportunities, such as jobs and modes of transportation. Accounting for this variability is an important aspect of paradigms and policies that strive for fair and equitable distribution of benefits and dis-benefits of transportation projects. However, measurable and widely accepted measures that could assist in the assessment of this distribution of transportation impacts are limited. This paper proposes a measure of accessibility mismatch for various income groups based on a ratio between commuting and labor sheds derived from open-access observed data. The paper demonstrates this measure using a case study of counties in Indiana between 2005 and 2007. The results show significant differences in the accessibility ratio between high-, middle-, and low-income groups as well as across metropolitan, micropolitan, and non-core counties, a commonly used geographical classification. This accessibility ratio can be used to explain the differences between commuting patterns across socioeconomic groups and their occupations as well as the identification of areas of limited accessibility and job opportunities.
The Joint Transportation Research Program serves as a vehicle for INDOT collaboration with higher education institutions and industry in Indiana to facilitate innovation that results in continuous improvement in the planning, design, construction, operation, management and economic efficiency of the Indiana transportation infrastructure.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.