Delivering Equity in Transit and Next Steps

Webinar Description:

Public transit has not regularly provide equal access to employment, education, health care, and other vital social services for millions across the US and Canada. Despite systemic, pandemic-driven changes to travel patterns, most transit systems continue to prioritize service for traditional, 9-5 white collar commuters. This persistent bias for suburban-to-city resources continues to exclude millions who do not work downtown or remotely, do not live near a frequent arterial bus route, or cannot afford to travel by other means.

These themes were explored at a high level in the 2022 ITE Conference session “Advancing Health Equity through Transit”. Now join session panelists Fred Neal (New Orleans Regional Transit Authority in New Orleans, LA), Heidi Guenin (IBI in Portland, OR), and Presenter Dan Ross (HDR in Vancouver, BC) as they dig deeper to outline critical and concrete actions transit agencies can take to actually do something about it. This follow-up webinar explores tangible steps to quantify the disbenefit value of inequity, frame resource allocation improvements, and manage structural change to drive equitable outcomes. This webinar will focus on concrete steps that transit professionals and managers can take to improve Equity outcomes in their respective organizations and communities.

Learning Objectives:
Attendees of this webinar will be able to:

• Recognize how transit’s traditional service model has fostered community inequity
• Identify ways to engage change within organizations often resistant to change
• Describe how to track and communicate alternative measures of success for communities and decision makers.

Presenters:

• Fred Neal, AICP, Commissioner, Regional Transit Authority of New Orleans | Regional Transit Authority of New Orleans | New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• Heidi Guenin, Mobility Strategist | IBI | Portland, Oregon, United States
• Dan Ross, Senior Project Manager | HDR | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada