This article studies the equity of transit accessibility in the City of Chicago. We measure the accessibility of different cohorts including minority and low-income populations, the elderly, people with disabilities, those with lower education levels, and households without a car to six different destinations by public transit. The destinations are jobs, parks, groceries, hospitals, schools, and libraries. We show that there are clear inequalities across cohorts in the distribution of benefits that the transit system provides as measured by the number of reachable valued destinations. The results indicate that areas of low accessibility have a higher percentage of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, low-income workers, low-educated citizens, and the elderly. The most affected cohort are low-income workers, for whom access to jobs, parks, groceries, hospitals, and libraries decline as their number grows. The findings also highlight that inequities are most severe, in order, to jobs, hospitals, and grocery stores when examining the different cohorts. While transit agencies must deploy service with the existing demand in mind, the observed inequities behoove decision makers to make accessibility and equity considerations explicit in transit service decisions.

本文研究了芝加哥市公共交通的无障碍性。我们测量了不同人群的可及性，包括少数族裔和低收入人群，老年人，残疾人，文化程度较低的人群以及无车乘车的家庭通过公共交通到达六个不同目的地的可能性。目的地是工作，公园，杂货，医院，学校和图书馆。我们表明，按可到达的有价值目的地的数量来衡量，过境系统在各个群体之间的收益分配之间存在明显的不平等。结果表明，交通不便的地区中，非洲裔美国人，西班牙裔，亚洲人，低收入工人，低学历的公民和老年人所占的比例更高。受影响最大的人群是低收入工人，他们可以找到工作，公园，杂货，医院和图书馆随着数量的增加而下降。研究结果还突显出，在检查不同的人群时，不平等对工作，医院和杂货店最为严重。尽管过境机构必须在考虑现有需求的前提下部署服务，但观察到的不平等现象使决策者应该在过境服务决策中明确可访问性和公平考虑。