Track: Transportation
Equity in Public Transit: A Test Statistic for Buffer Problems
Dr. Robert WernerWould cutting a particular public transit route disproportionately affect the elderly, the young, minorities, or the low income? This study uses the GIS techniques of creating proximity buffers around transit routes and overlaying the buffers with census demography. The result is aggregation of demographic data inside and outside the transit route buffers. The Mann-Whitney test is used to test null hypotheses that there is no difference in race, age, or income according to location inside or outside the buffer. It is argued that the Mann-Whitney test is useful for many buffer problems because it does not assume normally distributed observations, and so it is useful for skewed variables such as income.
Dr. Robert Werner
University of St. Thomas
2115 Summit Ave
St. Paul, MN 55105-1096
USA
Telephone: 612-962-5565
Fax: 612-962-6410
E-mail: rjwerner@stthomas.edu