مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد مقایسه دستیابی به مشاغل با حمل و نقل عمومی – الزویر 2018

Accessibility, the ease of reaching destinations, is a key land use and transport performance measure (Hansen, 1959) that has been used in various studies to assess the equitable distribution of public transport service in a region (Bocarejo and Oviedo, 2012; Foth et al., 2013; Golub and Martens, 2014; Guzman et al., 2017; Manaugh and El-Geneidy, 2012). Low accessibility to jobs has been shown to be related to higher risks of unemployment, especially in low-income areas (Korsu and Wenglenski, 2010). Furthermore, the absence of public transport in a neighborhood, even temporarily, can significantly impact unemployment rates in areas where people  depend on it to reach their desired destinations (Matas et al., 2010; Sari, 2015; Tyndall, 2015). Originally, accessibility studies have been conducted at the regional level to investigate the relationship between transport systems, land use development and economic indicators such as dwelling prices and labor outcomes (Coppola and Nuzzolo, 2011; Hansen, 1959; Levinson, 2007). To explore these economic trends at a macroscopic level, accessibility studies have typically considered the generalized costs of travel which include all available modes (Coppola and Nuzzolo, 2011). More recently, accessibility measures have been used to conduct social equity assessments. In such cases, studies have looked at accessibility in a more disaggregated manner, namely by focusing on a specific transportation mode and/or groups of users. For example, recent studies on accessibility and equity concentrated on the distribution of the public transport system for different income groups (Delmelle and Casas, 2012; Legrain et al., 2016). In this paper, accessibility by public transport for people in a wheelchair is considered. This specific population is studied because the public transport network that is available for a person in a wheelchair can be significantly different from the network available to the rest of the population, due to physical barriers such as stairs in subway stations or inaccessible buses. Such barriers and the associated difficulty with reaching employment opportunities impose significant challenges on a vulnerable group of people that have been found to be more likely to be unemployed or underemployed compared to the general population for a considerable time (BC Stats, 2009; Benoit et al., 2012; Lillie et al., 2013; Statistics Canada, 2016). To our knowledge, no previous study has considered the physical barriers present in a public transport network when measuring accessibility to jobs by public transport. Accordingly, this study presents a methodological approach to assess the level of accessibility to jobs using public transport for wheelchair users in the City of Toronto and the Island of Montreal, Canada on a typical weekday during the morning peak. We then contrast this level of accessibility with that of the general population, who we assume are able to access the entire public transport network. In particular, we examine job accessibility experienced by wheelchair users and the general population in the most socially vulnerable census tracts in both cities.