Equitable transportation and resilience hubs: Analysis of underserved population needs, usage, and travel behaviour

Abstract

Extreme weather events and other hazardous events often require a range of strategies to safely shelter people, distribute resources, and facilitate recovery efforts. This is particularly important for underserved populations who usually lack reliable access to shelters, transportation, and social networks. To begin addressing these problems and increase community capacity, resilience hubs – physical locations that support residents in emergencies and everyday conditions – have emerged as a possible equitable strategy. Despite potential benefits for underserved populations, research and practice have yet to consider how different demographic groups will use or travel to/from these hubs.

To address these gaps, we conducted an empirical study using survey data from 950 respondents in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region in Alberta, Canada. Of these respondents, we focused on several underserved groups. Simple descriptive statistics and statistical tests were used to understand the groups’ needs and observe similarities and divergences between groups. We also calculated spatial statistics to identify how mode choices varied with people’s preferred resilience hub locations. We found a high willingness of groups to use resilience hubs, especially in emergency conditions. However, differences between groups and with non-underserved groups were relatively moderate and varied. Respondents prioritized a range of basic services along with transportation-related elements, including accessibility for individuals with disabilities, transit connections, parking, and walkability. Moreover, our mode choice analysis highlighted the necessity of incorporating multimodal transportation options to resilience hubs. We offer several policy recommendations that inform the equitable development of resilience hubs, including the importance of local placement and needs-based services.