Distributive justice and transportation equity: inequality in accessibility in Rio de Janeiro

Pereira, R

Abstract:: Public transport policies play a key role in shaping the social and spatial structure of cities. These policies influence how easily people can access opportunities, including health and educational services and job positions. The accessibility impacts of transport policies thus have important implications for social inequalities and for the promotion of just and inclusive cities. However, in the transportation literature, there is still little theoretically informed understanding of justi...
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APA Style

Pereira, R. (2018). Distributive justice and transportation equity: inequality in accessibility in Rio de Janeiro [PhD thesis]. University of Oxford.

MLA Style

Pereira, R. Distributive Justice and Transportation Equity: Inequality in Accessibility in Rio De Janeiro. University of Oxford, 2018.

Chicago Style

Pereira, R. 2018. “Distributive Justice and Transportation Equity: Inequality in Accessibility in Rio De Janeiro.” PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
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Authors

+ Pereira, R More by this author

Institution:: University of Oxford
Division:: SSD
Department:: SOGE
Sub department:: Transport Studies Unit
Role:: Author

Contributors

+ Schwanen, T

Institution:: University of Oxford
Division:: SSD
Department:: SOGE
Sub department:: Transport Studies Unit
Role:: Supervisor

+ Banister, D

Institution:: University of Oxford
Division:: SSD
Department:: SOGE
Sub department:: Transport Studies Unit
Role:: Supervisor

+ Akyelken, N

Department:: Oxford University
Role:: Examiner

+ van Wee, B

Department:: Delft University of Technology
Role:: Examiner

+ Capes Foundation, Ministry of Education, Brazil More from this funder

Funding agency for:: Pereira, R
Grant:: BEX 1397/13-3

+ WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities More from this funder

Grant:: 2017 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship

+ Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) More from this funder

Funding agency for:: Pereira, R

DOI:: 10.5287/ora-erd2nvaqv
Type of award:: DPhil
Level of award:: Doctoral
Awarding institution:: University of Oxford

Language:: English
Keywords:: equality of opportunity

public transportation

Equity

Accessibility

Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

legacy

transport policy

distributive justice

Mega-events

Olympic games

transportation equity
Subjects:: Urban Studies

Geography

Distributive Justice

Urban Geography

Transport geography

Urban Transportation

Ethics

Urban planning
UUID:: uuid:3552ca9f-25c0-4d2f-acdd-0649de911afc
Deposit date:: 2018-10-02

Related item:: Distributional effects of transport policies on inequalities in access to opportunities in Rio de Janeiro
Description:: The evaluation of the social impacts of transport policies is attracting growing attention in recent years. Yet, this literature is still predominately focused on developed countries. The goal of this research is to investigate how investments in public transport networks can reshape social and geographical inequalities in access to opportunities in a developing country, using the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a case study. Recent mega-events, including the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, have triggered substantial investment in the city’s transport system. More recently, though, bus services in Rio have been rationalized and reduced as a response to a fiscal crisis and a drop in passenger demand, giving a unique opportunity to look at the distributional effects this cycle of investment and disinvestment have had on peoples’ access to educational and employment opportunities. Based on a before-and-after comparison of Rio’s public transport network, this study uses a spatial regression model and cluster analysis to estimate how accessibility gains vary across different income groups and areas of the city between April 2014 and March 2017. The results show that recent cuts in service levels have offset the potential benefits of newly added public transport infrastructure in Rio. Average access by public transport to jobs and public high-schools decreased approximately 4% and 6% in the period, respectively. Nonetheless, wealthier areas had on average small but statistically significant higher gains in access to schools and job opportunities than poorer areas. These findings suggest that, contrary to the official discourses of transport legacy, recent transport policies in Rio have exacerbated rather than reduced socio-spatial inequalities in access to opportunities. These results also suggest that future research should consider how the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) can influence the equity assessment of transport projects.
Related item:: Transport legacy of mega-events and the redistribution of accessibility to urban destinations
Description:: Local governments increasingly justify the hosting of mega-events because of their legacy value, assuming that all local residents benefit from those events. Yet, little attention has been paid to the distributive question of who benefits from the transport legacy left by those events. This paper reflects on the delimitation of transport legacies and its social impacts in terms of how such developments can reshape urban accessibility to opportunities. It analyses the transformation in the transport system of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. That transformation involved substantial expansion in public transport infrastructure, followed by cuts in service levels and a reorganization of many bus lines to streamline the transport system. The paper examines whether those recent changes have increased the number of people from different income levels who could access Olympic sports venues and healthcare facilities by public transport within 15, 30, 60 and 90 min. The analysis uses a before-and-after comparison of Rio's transport network (2014–2017) and a quasi-counterfactual scenario to separate the effects of newly added infrastructure from the reorganization and cuts of transport services. The results show that the infrastructure expansion alone would have increased the number of people who could access the Olympic sports venues, but it would have only marginally improved people's access to healthcare facilities. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that the streamlined bus system have offset the benefits of infrastructure investments in a way that particularly penalizes the poor. The analysis of both the implemented changes to the public transport network and the counterfactual scenario show that the accessibility benefits from the recent cycle of investments and disinvestments in Rio generally accrued to middle- and higher-income groups, reinforcing existing patterns of urban inequality.
Related item:: Future accessibility impacts of transport policy scenarios: equity and sensitivity to travel time thresholds for Bus Rapid Transit expansion in Rio de Janeiro
Description:: The accessibility impacts of transport projects ex-post implementation are generally evaluated using cumulative opportunity measures based on a single travel time threshold. Fewer studies have explored how ex-ante accessibility appraisal of transport plans can be used to evaluate policy scenarios and their impacts for different social groups or examined whether the results of project appraisals are sensitive to the time threshold of choice. This paper analyzes how different scenarios of full and partial implementation of the TransBrasil BRT project in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) will likely impact the number of jobs accessible to the population of different income levels under various travel time thresholds of 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. Compared to a partial operation scenario, the full implementation of TransBrasil that extends this corridor into the city center would lead to higher accessibility gains due to network effects of connecting this BRT to other transport modes. Nonetheless, the size of the accessibility impacts of the proposed BRT as well as its distribution across income classes would significantly change depending on the time threshold chosen for the accessibility analysis. Considering cut-off times of 30 or 60 minutes, both scenarios of TransBrasil would lead to higher accessibility impacts in general and particularly for low-income groups, moving Rio towards a more equitable transportation system. However, under longer thresholds of 90 and 120 minutes, an evaluation of this project would find much smaller accessibility gains more evenly distributed by income levels. The paper highlights how time threshold choice in cumulative opportunity measures can have important but overlooked implications for policy evaluation.
Related item:: Distributive justice and equity in transportation
Description:: Over the past decades, transport researchers and policy-makers have devoted increasing attention to questions about justice and equity. Nonetheless, there is still little engagement with theories in political philosophy to frame what justice means in the context of transport policies. This paper reviews key theories of justice (utilitarianism, libertarianism, intuitionism, Rawls’ egalitarianism, and Capability Approaches (CAs)) and critically evaluates the insights they generate when applied to transport. Based on a combination of Rawlsian and CAs, we propose that distributive justice concerns over transport disadvantage and social exclusion should focus primarily on accessibility as a human capability. This means that, in policy evaluation, a detailed analysis of the distributional effects of transport policies should take account of the setting of minimum standards of accessibility to key destinations and the extent to which these policies respect individuals’ rights and prioritise disadvantaged groups, reduce inequalities of opportunities, and mitigate transport externalities. A full account of justice in transportation requires a more complete understanding of accessibility than traditional approaches have been able to deliver to date.

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Copyright holder:: Pereira, R; Rafael Henrique Moraes Pereira. Rafael Henrique Moraes Pereira

Licence:: CC Attribution (CC BY)

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Distributive justice and transportation equity: inequality in accessibility in Rio de Janeiro

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