01598963

Component

The Capability Approach (CA) is a theoretical framework that stress the moral significance of individuals’ capability to “achieve outcomes that they value and have reason to value”. The CA is derived from the actual opportunities that people have, given their personal and social circumstances. This approach is grounded in an attempt to address fundamental theoretical limits that are inevitable in utilitarian approaches to welfare economics, and give rise to equity issues. CA has hardly been explored in the transportation field; it is this practical and empirical gap which this work seeks to address. The authors develop a new measure, "Value of Capability gains" (VOC), designed to account for both efficiency and equity considerations as the key benefit taken into account in Cost Benefit Analysis. They utilize Activity-Based Models (ABM) to assess travelers' capabilities under different transportation improvement scenarios. By using the ABA measure to reflect only person's abilities to reach alternatives that are potentially achievable, as the CA implies, the principle of diminishing marginal utility can be activated and applied to accessibility as quantity of good or service so that the more alternatives available to the traveler, the smaller the addition benefit from an extra destination. Through the VOC the authors examine different transportation scenarios in a simple synthetic case study and analyze how the proposed new measure serves as a measure of equity.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB40 Standing Committee on Transportation Demand Forecasting. Alternate title: Using Activity-Based Models and Capability Approach to Evaluate Equity Consideration in Transportation Projects.

01584066

16-4245

English

15p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Benefit cost analysis; Equity; Project management; Travel behavior

Activity based modeling

Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General)

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-4245

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 5:52PM