IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jotrge/v99y2022ics0966692322000047.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is accessibility inequality morally relevant?: An exploration using local residents' assessments in Modesto, California

Author

Listed:
  • Cooper, Erin
  • Vanoutrive, Thomas

Abstract

Research on transportation and accessibility disadvantage provides normative frameworks to assess and remedy accessibility disadvantages. In this paper, we focus on the concept of sufficient accessibility by exploring the ethical concept of sufficientarianism, and addressing questions such as what people value and when people have “enough” of a particular good. We include local perspectives from an understudied location, Modesto, California, through semi-structured interviews which address individual accessibility situations, challenges, and coping strategies. The interview results align with sufficientarianist ideas, which focus on people having access to basic needs and to what they value. Some respondents did not want major increases in their accessibility, only moderate or reasonable improvements. Respondents showed that they valued autonomy in accessibility decisions through choosing accessible housing locations and recognizing trade-offs among various options. The participants lived locally, and did not envy the long commutes of some of the higher income residents. These responses suggest positionality was not a main consideration for their mobility decisions. This reminds us that there is a limit to what accessibility can achieve, and general, societal improvements to accessibility may not provide needed resources. Additionally, the disparate lifestyles of residents can lead us to question the value of creating sufficiency thresholds, something often discussed in accessibility research. We conclude that from a sufficientarianist perspective, what matters most is not inequality in accessibility, but supporting local, convenient lifestyles, taking into account what people value. While, unethical inequalities do exist, inequalities in accessibility may not be morally relevant in all circumstances. This suggests we try to understand the cause behind observed inequalities, especially with regard to political decision making, to create a community of political equals who together shape their accessibility environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Cooper, Erin & Vanoutrive, Thomas, 2022. "Is accessibility inequality morally relevant?: An exploration using local residents' assessments in Modesto, California," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:99:y:2022:i:c:s0966692322000047
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2022.103281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692322000047
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2022.103281?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lättman, Katrin & Olsson, Lars E. & Friman, Margareta, 2018. "A new approach to accessibility – Examining perceived accessibility in contrast to objectively measured accessibility in daily travel," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 501-511.
    2. Hananel, Ravit & Berechman, Joseph, 2016. "Justice and transportation decision-making: The capabilities approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 78-85.
    3. Vecchio, Giovanni, 2020. "Microstories of everyday mobilities and opportunities in Bogotá: A tool for bringing capabilities into urban mobility planning," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    4. Vanoutrive, Thomas & Cooper, Erin, 2019. "How just is transportation justice theory? The issues of paternalism and production," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 112-119.
    5. Lasse Nielsen & David V. Axelsen, 2017. "Capabilitarian Sufficiency: Capabilities and Social Justice," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 46-59, January.
    6. Lucas, Karen, 2012. "Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 105-113.
    7. De Vos, Jonas & Singleton, Patrick A., 2020. "Travel and cognitive dissonance," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 525-536.
    8. Rafael H. M. Pereira & Tim Schwanen & David Banister, 2017. "Distributive justice and equity in transportation," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 170-191, March.
    9. Giovanni Vecchio & Karel Martens, 2021. "Accessibility and the Capabilities Approach: a review of the literature and proposal for conceptual advancements," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(6), pages 833-854, November.
    10. Theresa Enright, 2019. "Transit justice as spatial justice: learning from activists," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 665-680, September.
    11. Karen Lucas & Bert Wee & Kees Maat, 2016. "A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 473-490, May.
    12. Md. Kamruzzaman & Tan Yigitcanlar & Jay Yang & Mohd Afzan Mohamed, 2016. "Measures of Transport-Related Social Exclusion: A Critical Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-30, July.
    13. Luz, Gregorio & da Silva Portugal, Licinio, 2021. "Understanding Transport-Related Social Exclusion Through the Lens of Capabilities Approach," OSF Preprints 4d3uy, Center for Open Science.
    14. Miriam Teschl & Flavio Comim, 2005. "Adaptive Preferences and Capabilities: Some Preliminary Conceptual Explorations," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 63(2), pages 229-247.
    15. Mattioli, Giulio & Lucas, Karen & Marsden, Greg, 2017. "Transport poverty and fuel poverty in the UK: From analogy to comparison," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 93-105.
    16. Shields, Liam, 2012. "The Prospects for Sufficientarianism," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 101-117, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abouelela, Mohamed & Durán-Rodas, David & Antoniou, Constantinos, 2024. "Do we all need shared E-scooters? An accessibility-centered spatial equity evaluation approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    2. Azmoodeh, Mohammad & Haghighi, Farshidreza & Motieyan, Hamid, 2023. "The capability approach and social equity in transport: Understanding factors affecting capabilities of urban residents, using structural equation modeling," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 137-151.
    3. van Wee, Bert & de Jong, Tom, 2023. "Differences in levels of accessibility: The importance of spatial scale when measuring distributions of the accessibility of health and emergency services," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. van Wee, Bert, 2022. "Accessibility and equity: A conceptual framework and research agenda," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    5. Da Silva, Diego & Klumpenhouwer, Willem & Karner, Alex & Robinson, Mitchell & Liu, Rick & Shalaby, Amer, 2022. "Living on a fare: Modeling and quantifying the effects of fare budgets on transit access and equity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    6. Humberto, Mateus, 2023. "How to translate justice theory into urban transport metrics? Synchronic assessment of Latin American cities based on equality, priority and sufficiency," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    7. Cooper, Erin & Vanoutrive, Thomas, 2022. "Does MaaS address the challenges of multi-modal mothers? User perspectives from Brussels, Belgium," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 130-138.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vecchio, Giovanni, 2020. "Microstories of everyday mobilities and opportunities in Bogotá: A tool for bringing capabilities into urban mobility planning," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Mohammad Azmoodeh & Farshidreza Haghighi & Hamid Motieyan, 2023. "Capability Index: Applying a Fuzzy-Based Decision-Making Method to Evaluate Social Inclusion in Urban Areas Using the Capability Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 77-105, January.
    3. Luz, Gregório & Barboza, Matheus H.C. & Portugal, Licinio & Giannotti, Mariana & van Wee, Bert, 2022. "Does better accessibility help to reduce social exclusion? Evidence from the city of São Paulo, Brazil," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 186-217.
    4. Luz, Gregorio & Barboza, Matheus Henrique Cunha & da Silva Portugal, Licinio & Giannotti, Mariana & van Wee, Bert, 2022. "Does better accessibility help to reduce social exclusion? Evidence from the City of São Paulo, Brazil," SocArXiv 2p896, Center for Open Science.
    5. Pot, Felix Johan & Koster, Sierdjan & Tillema, Taede, 2023. "Perceived accessibility in Dutch rural areas: Bridging the gap with accessibility based on spatial data," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 170-184.
    6. Azmoodeh, Mohammad & Haghighi, Farshidreza & Motieyan, Hamid, 2023. "The capability approach and social equity in transport: Understanding factors affecting capabilities of urban residents, using structural equation modeling," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 137-151.
    7. Bantis, Thanos & Haworth, James, 2020. "Assessing transport related social exclusion using a capabilities approach to accessibility framework: A dynamic Bayesian network approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    8. Kębłowski, Wojciech & Dobruszkes, Frédéric & Boussauw, Kobe, 2022. "Moving past sustainable transport studies: Towards a critical perspective on urban transport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 74-83.
    9. Giovanni Vecchio & Ignacio Tiznado-Aitken & Bryan Castillo & Stefan Steiniger, 2024. "Fair transport policies for older people: accessibility and affordability of public transport in Santiago, Chile," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 689-715, April.
    10. Liu, Qiyang & Lucas, Karen & Marsden, Greg & Liu, Yang, 2019. "Egalitarianism and public perception of social inequities: A case study of Beijing congestion charge," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 47-62.
    11. Slovic, Anne Dorothée & Tomasiello, Diego Bogado & Giannotti, Mariana & Andrade, Maria de Fatima & Nardocci, Adelaide C., 2019. "The long road to achieving equity: Job accessibility restrictions and overlapping inequalities in the city of São Paulo," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 181-193.
    12. Zhang, Mengzhu & Zhao, Pengjun, 2021. "Literature review on urban transport equity in transitional China: From empirical studies to universal knowledge," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    13. Ryan, Jean & Martens, Karel, 2023. "Defining and implementing a sufficient level of accessibility: What’s stopping us?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    14. Wan, Zhengyue & Titheridge, Helena, 2024. "Socially sustainable transport in the context of different-sized cities in China:Conceptualisation and operationalisation of equity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    15. van Dülmen, Christoph & Šimon, Martin & Klärner, Andreas, 2022. "Transport poverty meets car dependency: A GPS tracking study of socially disadvantaged groups in European rural peripheries," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    16. Edward Randal & Caroline Shaw & Alistair Woodward & Philippa Howden-Chapman & Alex Macmillan & Jamie Hosking & Ralph Chapman & Andrew M. Waa & Michael Keall, 2020. "Fairness in Transport Policy: A New Approach to Applying Distributive Justice Theories," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-20, December.
    17. Humberto, Mateus, 2023. "How to translate justice theory into urban transport metrics? Synchronic assessment of Latin American cities based on equality, priority and sufficiency," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    18. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Serra, Bernardo & Oliveira, Gabriel T. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2020. "Accessibility measurements in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Recife, Brazil," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    19. Lin, Joanne Yuh-Jye & Jenelius, Erik & Cebecauer, Matej & Rubensson, Isak & Chen, Cynthia, 2023. "The equity of public transport crowding exposure," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    20. Freiberg, Germán & Giannotti, Mariana & Bittencourt, Taina A., 2024. "Are mass transit projects and public transport planning overlooking uneven distributional effects? Empirical evidence from Sao Paulo, Brazil," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:99:y:2022:i:c:s0966692322000047. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-transport-geography .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.