Quantifying the impacts of horizontal and vertical equity in transit route planning

Equity refers to a fair sharing of costs or resources. Horizontal equity concerns distribution among individuals or groups with the same necessities, whereas vertical equity should be considered in situations with different levels of needs. This paper deals with transit service, looking at how to make it equitable from a spatial and social point of view. Traditionally equity has been neglected in transit planning, being in the best cases an afterthought during service provision. Hence, we propose a methodology to plan and design public transport routes, which meets the needs of communities fostering equitable accessibility. In this paper we put forward a method to incorporate horizontal and vertical equity goals in a Transit Network Design Problem. We study how the costs of the system change with the attained level of equity and found that higher overall costs may be born if more equitable service provision has to be pursued.