1371725 - Investigating Equity Biases in Transportation Data: A Literature Review Synthesis

Equity in transportation is an increasingly important field of study to transportation professionals. The transportation system in the United States does not adequately serve the needs of the entire of the population. With the growing emphasis on addressing equity, the advent of new data sources, is changing the field of transportation rapidly. Although there has been a significant increase in the understanding of equity implications of the transportation network, the understanding of such implications for the datasets that describe the transportation network has remained largely unexplored . As data sources have grown, without a thorough understanding of the biases inherent to these datasets, this disconnect has been reinforced. These discrepancies unequally describe the transportation network and therefore directly lead to equity concerns, which can be called equity biases. This presentation investigates the current state of practice relating to these equity biases.

This presentation begins with a thorough review of the history and current practices in the field of transportation equity. This provides a groundwork from which further ideas of transportation equity can be built. After the foundations of equity in transportation are shown, a review of transportation practice related to big data is presented to understand the fundamental changes that phenomenon has brought to transportation research and practice. The biases from the use of big data sets are highlighted to show the potentially present equity concerns. Finally, the presentation reviews the current practice related to data biases in transportation to understand what methods and practices are used to mitigate the concerns of data bias, and where these practices fall short in understanding the equity implications of these biases. The presentation concludes with a discussion of equity biases that reframes this concept, which presents a critical new perspective in understanding the use of big data in modern transportation practices, furthering the pursuit of transportation equity for professionals and researchers.