About the TransitCenter Equity Dashboard

Who made the dashboard?

All versions of the of the TransitCenter Equity Dashboard were funded by TransitCenter. Version 1.0 of the dashboard was completed in May 2021 by Sustainable Systems Research, LLC, SF2 Enterprises Inc, University of Vermont, and Klumpentown Consulting. The project team included Jeff Allen, Steven Farber, Alex Karner, Willem Klumpenhouwer, Lisa Li, Rick Liu, Mitchell Robinson, Diego Da Silva, Dana Rowangould and Amer Shalaby. The work was performed in collaboration with Mary Buchanan and Steven Higashide at TransitCenter. Community partners in the seven US regions provided feedback and guidance on the dashboard.

Version 2.0 was completed in 2024 and was built by Klumpentown Consulting. The project team included Willem Klumpenhouwer, Emily Janz, and Kai Herrero, in collaboration with Mary Buchanan at TransitCenter. Thanks to Chris Van Eyken, Hayley Richardson, Kapish Singla, and Maxwell Reinisch for their review of the website. You can read the methodology updates for TED 2 here.

How do I cite this dashboard?

Please reference the following paper: Klumpenhouwer, W., Allen, J., Li, L., Liu, R., Robinson, M., Da Silva, D. L., Farber, S., Karner, A., Rowangould, D., Shalaby, A., Buchanan, M., & Higashide, S. (2021). A Comprehensive Transit Accessibility and Equity Dashboard. Findings, July.

How is the dashboard data calculated?

Below we provide a brief description of the methods used to create the dashboard. A more detailed methodology is available here(PDF). Please contact dashboard at transitcenter.org for more information.

Accessibility represents the ease with which people can reach the places they want and need to go. Accessibility is a function of transportation and land use (where essential destinations are located). Access to opportunities measures, which represent the ease of reaching a specific type of destination, are a commonly used measure of accessibility. The dashboard evaluates access to opportunity on public transit with several measures, including number of jobs, low-wage jobs, or amount of park space accessible in a set amount of time. The dashboard also shows access to opportunity in terms of the travel times to nearby grocery stores, hospitals, urgent care facilities, pharmacies, and colleges or universities.

Measures of public transit accessibility can capture many characteristics of transit systems that affect people's ability to reach their destinations, including the location of stops and routes, what kinds of destinations can be reached on those routes, the speed or directness of routes, the frequency of service, fares, and time spent walking to and from a transit stop or transferring between routes. We estimate transit and car accessibility by calculating transit and car travel times to the locations of destinations across each region. For some measures, we also estimate accessibility using a fare constraint to represent lower-cost transit travel.

Transit travel times between all Census block groups in each region are estimated using the r5py tool powered by Conveyal's R5 routing engine. Underlying walking access data is provided by OpenStreet Map, and transit schedules are represented by General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data for transit operators in each region. These GTFS data are obtained from TransitLand (historical data) and from a repository provided by MobilityData. Transit travel times are capped at 120 minutes and include all parts of a door-to-door trip, including time walking to and from a transit stop, time spent waiting for a transit vehicle, time spent traveling in vehicle(s), and time spent transferring between transit vehicles. Areas where no destination can be reached within 120 minutes are displayed on maps in the "least access" quantile. Auto travel times are estimated using ArcGIS Network Analyst (ArcGIS Pro 2.7) and the ESRI Streetmap Premium network based on HERE data to represent typical road traffic conditions.

Transit fares are estimated using a simplified heuristic. We created a fare calculator that uses OTP to generate detailed transit itineraries for the shortest trip between all Census tracts in each region. The fare calculator estimates the cost of each itinerary based on a database of manually calibrated rules representing fare information from each transit operator's website. These fare rules include the cost of transfers within and between agencies. In a small number of cases these rules are simplified. We assume that transit travelers pay for a one-way ride with an intermediate purchase choice that is less expensive than cash, such as a ticket or card where available. We assume cash fares where no intermediate choice is available. We do not include discounted fares like student or senior fares or options that require a large up-front purchase like monthly or weekly passes. The fare constraints used in each region are determined based on the cost of living and base transit fares. They are set at $4 for a one-way trip in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia and $5 in Boston, the District of Columbia, New York City, and San Francisco-Oakland. The fastest transit time between each pair of tracts in the region and its accompanying fare is then estimated for two different transit networks: one that includes only low-cost modes (local bus plus comparable-cost modes) and the other including all modes (all available public transit options). When determining the travel time between two locations, we select the shortest of the two travel times that meets the fare constraint (if applicable). A full list of transit agencies and premium modes (which are excluded from the low-cost travel network) is included below.

Some regions' fares have been updated using 2023 fare data, including Boston, San Francisco - Oakland, and Washington.

Destination Types

We consider six categories of destinations, including:

• Jobs from the US Census LEHD,
• Supermarkets based on a database of SNAP retailers,
• Healthcare facilities including hospitals, urgent care facilities, and pharmacies, and
• Early voting locations

We combine travel times (fare-constrained transit, unconstrained transit, and car) and the location of these destinations to estimate how many destinations can be reached in a certain amount of time, e.g. jobs reachable within 30 minutes. These types of accessibility measures are estimated for destination types that are widely available, including jobs, low-wage jobs, and parks and greenspace.

We also estimate travel times reach a certain number of opportunities, e.g. travel time in minutes to one hospital or to three hospitals. The travel time to one hospital reflects the minimum possible time to reach a hospital. The travel time to three hospitals measures travel time to the third-closest hospital, capturing people's need for options, where the closest hospital may not match someone's needs in terms of the cost or type of care provided. These types of measures are used for healthcare facilities, grocery stores and supermarkets, and higher education.

Additional Measures

Transit service intensity represents how often an area is served by transit. Using transit schedules from GTFS feeds we estimate the total number of unique transit trips that visit stops within 200 meters of a block group, and estimate the average number of unique trips per hour over a 24-hour period.

Equity indicators shown on the charts pages summarize population-weighted access and transit service intensity for groups of people, weighting these outcomes based on where group members live across the entire region (including areas in the MSA, economic region, urban core, and equity neighborhoods). Data on race and ethnicity, income level, and parent-child status are obtained from the 2018 five-year American Community Survey data from the US Census. Essential workers are defined based on residential location of workers listed in the US Census LEHD data. The residential locations of each of these populations is also available as a demographic overlay in the map pages. The Story page also evaluates outcomes for people with specific travel constraints, including people traveling with limited fares or people traveling on weeknights.

For each region, accessibility and transit service intensity scores are computed for the entire urban area and also summarized for the urban centre (e.g. Chicago proper).

We also evaluate transit accessibility measures relative to car access to provide an indication of equity of access for different mode users.

Where can I find the data and source code?

Access scores and summaries along with supplemental data can be found on the data portal.

Code for computing travel times and other data analysis can be found at https://github.com/transitcenter/ted-data

Code for this website can be found at https://github.com/transitcenter/ted-dashboard

Glossary

• Transportation equity is equal and just transportation access to opportunity - regardless of race, gender, identity, culture, income, or ability - which can only be achieved by recognizing and repairing past transportation access gaps.
• We defined an affordable trip as a one-way trip with total fares less than $5 (in New York City, Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco) or less than $4 (in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles). If the fastest trip to access a job is more than the budget, then the analysis automatically removes all high-fare, “premium” transit service to see if the job could be accessed in 45 minutes, for less than the budget taking inexpensive transit modes. See Transit agencies and routes used section for list of “premium” transit service definition. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia data are based on fare policies from February 2020. Boston, San Francisco-Oakland, and Washington DC data are based on fare policies from 2019 for dates through August 2022, and 2023 for dates from March 2023 onward.
• Single mothers are female householders with children at home and no spouse or partner present, according to the 2021 five-year U.S. Census American Community Survey. Research suggests that single mothers have higher reliance on public transit for travel than other parents.
• Job locations are from the U.S. Census Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (most recent year available by state). Access to jobs signifies someone's ability to reach potential economic opportunities. Also, access to jobs can be a useful proxy for access to other destinations, since many jobs represent retail and service outlets that are important in people's everyday lives.
• We include travel times to the 3rd-nearest location of some destination types because people should have access to a variety of service options that offer different combinations of value, quality, and variety.
• Supermarkets include food retailers who belong to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as Food Stamps) and are defined as “supermarkets” or “superstores” by the USDA.
• Hospitals include healthcare facilities recognized as hospitals by the Department of Homeland Security. Hospital facilities for care of children, military personnel, and other specialty groups are included, but the data doesn’t include nursing homes or health centers.
• Urgent care facilities provide walk-in emergency medical care, surgery, or recuperative care outside of a hospital or emergency room setting.
• Parks include municipal, state, and national parks and other green space like cemeteries and school yards, etc.
• Pharmacies include pharmacy businesses and facilities in the RxOpen network.
• Colleges or universities include campuses of educational institutions that offer classes and degree programs, from the associate to the doctoral level.
• Early voting locations are designated by state and local governments as locations where voters can cast their ballots in person before Election Day. Early voting availability varies by state. Location data was collected by TransitCenter from state and local sources in Fall 2023.
• Transit service intensity is the number of transit trips scheduled to serve a location per hour, on average. It is a function of how many routes serve a location (service density) and how often those routes run (service frequency).
• The urban area region is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a continuously built-up area with a population of 50,000 or more that comprises one or more central place(s) and the adjacent densely settled surrounding area.
• Access by transit for a Saturday morning is based on transit schedules from 10am-12pm on Saturday during the week of data analysis.
• Access by transit for a weekday morning is based on transit schedules from 7am-9am on Wednesday during the week of data analysis.
• Access by transit for a weekday evening is based on transit schedules from 9pm-11pm on Wednesday during the week of data analysis.
• Compare to auto measures the ratio of transit access to auto access. For access to jobs and access to parks compared to auto, values are shown as a decimal (percent). Higher values are better in this case, a value of 1 would mean an equal number of jobs/park acres reachable by transit and driving in the same time frame. For travel time to other destinations, values are shown as multiples, and lower values are better. For example, a value of 2 indicates that travel time to a hospital is twice (2x) as long as the car travel time.

Data Dictionary

Opportunity	Measure Type	Unit	Code	Parameter 1		Parameter 2		Parameter 3		Auto Ratio		Affordable
				Description	Code	Description	Code	Description	Code	Yes	No	Yes	No
Jobs	Cumulative	Jobs	C000_P	30 min	c30	45 minutes	c45	60 minutes	c60	autoY	autoN	fareY	fareN
Groceries	Travel Time	Minutes	snap_M	Closest	t1	3rd Closest	t3	-		autoY	autoN	-	fareN
Hospitals	Travel Time	Minutes	hospitals_M	Closest	t1	3rd Closest	t3	-		autoY	autoN	-	fareN
Urgent Care	Travel Time	Minutes	urgentcare_M	Closest	t1	3rd Closest	t3	-		autoY	autoN	-	fareN
Pharmacies	Travel Time	Minutes	pharmacies_M	Closest	t1	3rd Closest	t3	-		autoY	autoN	-	fareN
Parks	Cumulative	Acres	parks_P	15 minutes	c15	30 minutes	c30	-		autoY	autoN	fareY	fareN
Post-Secondary Institutions	Travel Time	Minutes	schools_M	Closest	t1	3rd Closest	t3	-		autoY	autoN	-	fareN
Transit Service Intensity	Average Hourly Trips	Trips	los_trips	Options are WEDAM, WEDPM, and SATAM for weekday morning, nights, and Saturday morning respectively.

Transit Agencies and Routes Used

Note: Premium routes listed here are based on 2020 route naming conventions. 2023 fare values were updated using similar route names or modes.

Boston

Agency	Premium Routes
Brockton Area Transit Authority (BAT)	None
Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority (GATRA)	None
Lowell Regional Transit Authority (LRTA)	None
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)	Bus Routes: 170, 325, 326, 351, 352, 354, 426, 428, 434, 450, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 553, 554, 556, 558, 741, 742, 743 Commuter Rail: All
Massport	Bus Routes: Braintree, Framingham, Peabody, and Woburn
Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority (MVRTA)	Bus Routes: 10735, 10736, 70738
MetroWest Regional Transit Authority (MWRTA)	None
Montachusett Regional Transit Authority (MART)	Bus Routes: Boston Shuttle and Worcester Shuttle
Plymouth and Brockton Street Railway Co.	None
Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA)	None
Worcester Regional Transit Authority (WRTA)	None
Rhode Island Public Transit Authority	None
Yankee Line	Bus Routes: All

Chicago

Agency	Premium Routes
Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)	None
Metra	All Rail
Pace Bus	Bus Routes: 755, 850, 851, 855
South Shore Line	All Rail
Valparaiso Transit	None

Los Angeles

Agency	Premium Routes
Anaheim Resort Transportation (ART)	None
Beach Cities Transit	None
Bell Gardens Trolley	None
Bellflower Bus	None
Big Blue Bus	None
Commerce Municipal Bus Lines	None
Compton Renaissance	None
Culver City Bus	None
DowneyLINK	None
El Monte Transit	None
Foothill Transit	Bus Routes: 490, 493, 495, 498, 499, 699, 707
Get Around Town Express	None
Glendale Beeline	None
Glendora Transportation Division	None
GTrans	None
Huntington Park Express	None
LA Metro Rail	None
LA Metro Bus	Bus Routes: 442, 460, 487, 489, 501, 550, 577, and 910
Lawndale Beat	None
Long Beach Transit (LBT)	None
Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT, DASH, Commuter Express)	Bus Routes: 626, 627, 628, 629, 630, 631, 633, 634, 635, 636, 637, 638, 640
Lynwood Trolley/Breeze	None
Metrolink	All Rail
Norwalk Transit System (NTS)	None
OmniTrans	None
Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA)	Bus Routes: 206, 211, 213, 701, 721, 794, 53x, 57x, 64x
Palos Verdes Peninsula Transit Authority (PVPTA)	None
Pasadena Transit	None
Rosmead Explorer	None
Spirit Bus	None
Torrance Transit	None

New York City

Agency	Premium Routes
City of Long Beach Transportation	None
Downtown Alliance	None
Leprechaun Lines	None
Lower Hudson Valley Transit	None
MTA New York City Transit	Bus Routes: BM1, BM2, BM3, BM4, BM5, BXM1, BXM10, BXM11, BXM18, BXM2, BXM3, BXM4, BXM6, BXM7, BXM8, BXM9, QM1, QM10, QM11, QM12, QM15, QM16, QM17, QM18, QM2, QM20, QM21, QM24, QM25, QM3, QM31, QM32, QM34, QM35, QM36, QM4, QM40, QM42, QM44, QM5, QM6, QM7, QM8, SIM1, SIM10, SIM11, SIM15, SIM1C, SIM2, SIM22, SIM23, SIM24, SIM25, SIM26, SIM3, SIM30, SIM31, SIM32, SIM33, SIM33C, SIM34, SIM35, SIM3C, SIM4, SIM4C, SIM4X, SIM5, SIM6, SIM7, SIM8, SIM8X, SIM9, X27, X28, X37, X38, X63, X64, X68 Long Island Railroad: All Rail Metro North Railroad/Shore Line East/Hudson Rail Link: All Rail
Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE Bus)	None
New Jersey Transit	All Rail; Bus Routes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
NYC Ferry	All Ferries
Port Authority AirTrain JFK	All Rail
Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH)	None
Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Tramway (RIOC Tramway)	Bus Routes: 490, 493, 495, 498, 499, 699, 707-155
Westchester County Bee-Line System (WCDOT)	Bus Routes: BxM4C

Philadelphia

Agency	Premium Routes
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)	Bus: None Metro: None Regional Rail: All
PATCO Speedline	All Rail
New Jersey Transit	All Rail
Delaware Transit Corporation (DART First State)	None

San Francisco-Oakland

Agency	Premium Routes
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit)	Bus Routes: F, G, J, L, LA, NL, NX, NX1, NX2, O
Altamont Corridor Express	All Rail
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)	All Rail
Blue & Gold Fleet	All Ferries
Caltrain	All Rail
Emery Go-Round	None
Marin Transit	None
Mission Bay Transportation Management Association (TMA)	None
Mountain View Transportation Management Association (MVgo)	None
San Francisco Bay Ferry	All Ferries
San Francisco Municpal Transportation Agency (SFMTA, Muni)	Cable Tram Routes: California Street Cable Car, Powell-Hyde Cable Car, Powell-Mason Cable Car
San Mateo County Shuttles	None
San Mateo County Transit District (samTrans)	Bus Routes: FCX-184
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA)	Tram Routes: All; Bus Routes: 101, 102, 103, 104, 121, 168
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART)	None
Stanford Margeurite Shuttle (SMS)	None
Union City Transit	None
WestCAT	Bus Routes: LYNX Transbay

Washington D.C.

Agency	Premium Routes
Alexandria Transit Company (DASH)	None
Arlington Transit	None
DC Circulator	None
DC Streetcar	None
Fairfax Connector	Bus Routes: 393, 394, 395, 396, 599, 698, 699
Fairfax CUE Bus	None
Fredericksburg Regional Transit	None
Loudoun County Transit	None
Maryland Transit Administration	Rail: All MARC Routes
Montgomery County Department of Transportation (Ride On)	Bus Routes: 6461
Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commision (PRTC) Omniride	Bus Routes: 3335, 3336, 3337, 3338, 3339, 3340, 3341, 3346, 3348, 3349, 3350, 3351, 3354, 3355, 3356, 3357, 3358, 3360, 3361, 3365
Prince George's County (The Bus)	None
Regional Transportation Agency of Central Maryland (RTA)	None
Virginia Railway Express (VRE)	All Rail
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)	Bus Routes: 11Y, 17B, 17G, 17H, 17K, 17L, 17M, 18G, 18H, 18P, 29W, 5A, B30

Photo Credits

The banner style images on the home page are courtesy of the Chicago Transit Authority and Outfront/JCDecaux.