- Craig Gross, MSU
- All aboard! A mathematical study of transit equity in Baltimore
- 09/19/2022
- 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
- C117 Wells Hall
(Virtual Meeting Link)
- Craig Gross (grosscra@msu.edu)
In 2015, the governor of Maryland canceled a light rail project through the city of Baltimore that had been planned and funded for over a decade. Instead, the money was diverted to funding highways near the richer, whiter suburbs of the city. As Baltimore is home to some of the most extreme class-disparity and segregation in the country, this decision significantly hurt the potential for a more equitable transit system. But by how much?
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This talk will be a tour through a mathematical investigation of how the canceled light rail might have increased access to jobs across the city. In particular, we use some dimension-reduction and clustering algorithms on CDC Social Vulnerability Indices to explore which parts of the city may be socioeconomically disadvantaged. We then compute job accessibility metrics to determine how the light rail would have affected these regions. We also give some considerations for converting a collection of many relevant indicators into more interpretable, manageable metrics for future transit studies.
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This is joint work with Adam Lee, Kethaki Varadan, and Yangxinyu Xie.
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This will be a hybrid seminar and take place in C117 Wells Hall and via Zoom at https://msu.zoom.us/j/99426648081?pwd=ZEljM3BPUXg2MjVUMVM5TnlzK2NQZz09 .
