#EvaluatingTheEquityOfCompleteStreetsInMassachusetts

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Kelsey Tustin: UEP Thesis Award Nominee, 2022

Evaluating the Equity of Complete Streets in Massachusetts

More details to come on the UEP Practical Visionaries Blog

Abstract Complete Streets is a transportation policy that has been widely adopted in Massachusetts. It encourages planning for multimodal transportation by prioritizing bicycling, walking, and transit over single-occupancy cars. Communities can achieve several goals by enacting Complete Streets, such as reducing fatalities on roadways by implementing safe designs, achieving climate-related goals with less pollution from cars, and improving public health with more active transportation. However, research shows that municipalities and state agencies tend to make decisions about location of multimodal transportation projects by solely reviewing operational factors such as transit ridership, vehicular traffic, and lack of safe infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians. While these are important to consider, it is equally, if not more, essential to assess equity-based factors. Factors such as low-income neighborhoods and high minority communities often indicate a need for better street infrastructure due to the disproportionately low representation that those areas have experienced throughout history. 

This thesis uses a GIS-based spatial analysis to determine the equity of Complete Streets projects in three communities in the Greater Boston region: Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston. The factors addressed in the equity analysis include income, minority population, educational attainment, rate of zero-car households, elderly population, access to transit service, presence of separated bike infrastructure, walkability, crash rate involving non-motorists, and population of service workers. The study puts forth locations that deserve more attention from the equity perspective for future Complete Streets projects. It compares the resulting areas with a previous study that focuses on the operational factors when selecting the most suitable locations for Complete Streets in this region. The study also looks at the locations where Complete Streets projects have been implemented and examines the extent to which they have been equitably distributed. The findings of the thesis show that (1) the constructed Complete Streets projects do not consistently align with the most equitable locations and (2) the project location selection based only on operational factors do not consistently overlap with those when considering equity factors. The concluding recommendations advise cities to take a closer look at equity-based factors when planning for Complete Streets.