Distributive justice and equity in transportation

What is it about?

This study points out to why and how policy makers and researchers should take issues of equity more seriously when it comes to transport policies. The paper reviews how issues of equity and social exclusion have been covered in the transport and mobilities literatures. The study also reviews five key theories of justice, critically evaluates the insights they generate when applied to transport. Finally, the paper proposes a distributive justice framework for of policy evaluation, with a focus on transport accessibility and social exclusion

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Why is it important?

Transport planning has been traditionally concerned with improving the efficiency of transport systems. As similarly important question but nonetheless much less asked is: 'who' benefits from transport investments ? A more theoretically rigours understanding of social justice can greatly improve transport policy analysis for different reasons. Perhaps the most important is because it brings to light the complexity of the ethical issues involved in the transport context, making us better able to ponder the implications of different policy alternatives

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