1st place in the undergraduate student poster competition at the 2017 AAG East Lakes Conference
Abstract:
Quality of transit is an indicator of how convenient a city’s public transportation system is for pedestrians based on accessibility (including walkability) and connectivity. In this study of the quality of Chicago’s CTA bus and train systems, ADA accessibility for the mobility impaired is also taken into account along with how many bus and train stations are within a quarter-mile radius of each station which is part of the connectivity aspect of quality. Furthermore, the number of direct transfers or connections from the same station are also measured as part of the connectivity index for the quality of transit. This study aims to compare the quality of transit with the spatial distribution Chicago’s underprivileged population to see if the CTA is doing a good enough job of providing transit those people and what the disparity is. To do this, side-by-side comparisons of an inverse distance weighted spatial interpolation map showing the quality of transit throughout the city are made with 3 other maps showing median household income, population over 65 years of age, and population with an ambulatory disability per census tract. The results show that the quality of transit is generally substantially poorer in areas where there are higher concentrations of households in poverty and people with an ambulatory disability which were mainly in the south and west sides of Chicago. The elderly population don’t seem to have it as bad, but there are still many places with low quality of transit in the northwestern and southeastern edges of the city. In contrast, areas in the Loop and the northside have significantly higher quality of transit where most of the high income households are which shows a great disparity in the quality of the CTA between the privileged and underprivileged populations of Chicago.