Case Study:

San Francisco Bay Area, California

Conclusions

Strengths

Some noteworthy strengths of the MTC's application of accessibility measures include:

• Explicit comparisons were developed to characterize the "equity" of impacts. This involved dividing populations into two groups ("disadvantaged" and "non-disadvantaged") and examining baseline conditions and the impacts of the plan for each group. As a result, it was possible to say whether one group will be better or worse off than the other, and whether one group benefits more than the other from proposed projects.

• "Disadvantaged" populations were defined by local stakeholders, and therefore could potentially have more meaning to the community than an arbitrary definition developed by the analyst.

• The comparison was kept simple enough to provide understandable and useful information for the decision-making process. The equity analysis was discussed with various groups including the Commission's Minority Citizens Advisory Committee and the Commissions' Work Program Committee (WPC), in conjunction with the development of the draft RTP and Environmental Impact Review.

• Statistical tests were applied to the difference between population groups and to the difference between the project vs. no-project alternatives, to determine whether the differences were statistically significant.

• The analysis included both threshold-based and weighted (gravity-based) accessibility measures. As a result, the "intuitive" threshold-based measures could be compared amongst themselves and to the more theoretically sound weighted measure. The results among the various measures differed somewhat in their magnitude. In some cases, differences based on one measure were statistically significant while differences based on another measure were not. Since no single measure is ideal, this illustrates how multiple measures can be used to "validate" results.

[TOP]