This paper compares two popular approaches to calculate access to jobs by public transport: gravity and cumulative opportunities. Using data on commute patterns and public transport schedules from Montreal, Canada, we find cumulative opportunities-based measures estimated at the mean transit commute time and gravity-based measures generated through various decay functions are highly correlated -all above 0.9. This finding holds even when replicating the analysis for low-and non-low-wage jobs available in the same metropolitan region. These findings strongly suggest that easy-to-communicate and -operationalize cumulative opportunities accessibility constructs measured at the mean commute time perform similarly to more theoretically-sound gravity-based measures. QuestionsAccessibility, the ease of reaching destinations, has been proposed as the goldstandard land-use and transport systems performance measure. Accessibility measures are instrumental in assessing the extent to which a land-use and transport system benefits some population groups more than others, thus generating a valuable urban socio-spatial report that can inform planning practice (El-Geneidy and Levinson 2022; Wachs and Kumagai 1973). Although the concept of accessibility has been discussed in academic circles for more than 60 years (Hansen 1959; Handy 2020), planning practitioners still face the challenge of selecting between multiple accessibility measures still debated in academia with no consensus on the horizon. When asked about accessibility measures, practitioners indicated that lack of knowledge and data were their main barriers to adopting accessibility in planning practice (Siddiq and Taylor 2021; Boisjoly and El-Geneidy 2017).This paper compares two place-based accessibility measures often debated in transport scholarship: gravity-based and cumulative opportunities. Gravitybased accessibility measures have been referred to by some in academic debates as more theoretically sound (as they are not restricted to a single time or distance threshold) and, therefore, superior to the cumulative opportunities approach (Geurs and van Wee 2004; Siddiq and Taylor 2021). By using a distance (or time) decay function inspired by Newtonian physics and observed travel behavior, gravity-based accessibility constructs penalize harder-to-reach

Express buses—characterized by limited stops and sometimes higher frequencies or priority traffic measures—offer a cost-effective and efficient way to boost service convenience and reliability for riders. This paper assesses how the accessibility benefits of express bus route policy are distributed in Montreal, Canada, while providing a pathway for public transportation agencies to assess their policies and plans. To isolate the impact of bus express routes, we use General Transit Speed Specification (GTFS) data, the Open Trip Planner multimodal routing engine, and the 2013 edition of Montreal’s origin-destination survey to contrast travel time and accessibility at the trip and census-tract levels under two scenarios: one with the existing, complete network and the second a counterfactual scenario with no express bus routes. Our results indicate that bus express routes enable an overall increase in accessibility for the overall population. However, the accessibility benefits do not accrue evenly, as expected, but also tend to benefit a more significant number of higher incomes. This occurs despite the location of low-income populations in some outlying areas of the city, which express bus routes are supposed to serve. This paper closes with policy recommendations that help planners balance economic, environmental, and equity goals, perhaps one of the most complex challenges they face nowadays.

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Bus rapid transit has become an increasingly popular investment in cities in the Global South, where policy discourse often positions BRT as a pro-poor investment. Planners usually expect BRT to reduce commute times in urban areas, particularly for economically disadvantaged populations, thus reducing mobility gaps between transit users across different socioeconomic population groups. Despite increased interest in BRT, there is surprisingly limited research testing these assumptions. Using data from a retrospective survey administered in Barranquilla, Colombia, and Cape Town, South Africa, we investigated whether BRT contributes to reducing commute time gaps between socioeconomic populations. Our comparative and distributional analyses indicate that, while BRT narrowed the gap in commute times in Cape Town, it did not contribute to closing the gap in Barranquilla. We argue that this contradiction may, in part, be explained by the degree to which BRT route configuration responded to the urban form and pre-BRT transit conditions in each city—two factors often overlooked in academic literature and discussions surrounding BRT planning. We close by providing policy recommendations that promote more equitable planning practices and recognize the links between transport and land uses in the Global South urban context.