Urban Transportation Systems Are Essential

Transportation connects us to activities, to family, to services and to opportunities. With 95 percent of the U.S. under stay-at-home orders, urban public transportation demand and trip activity has evaporated. Transit agencies are operating barebones schedules, urging riders to avoid non-essential trips or find alternatives, while managing the crushing reality that their workforce risks potentially fatal exposure to the virus simply by going to work. Likewise, essential workers dependent on transit or without alternative options are susceptible to contracting the virus in confined transit vehicles—a risk disproportionately faced by minorities and individuals from low-socioeconomic households. This crisis underscores the core of transportation planning and practice—that equity and access are inherently entwined.

By constraining and disrupting our mobility habits, this pandemic highlights the absolute criticality of our urban transportation systems. In this unique moment—while streets are empty, most activities are paused, and an infusion of federal funding is expected—we have a moment to rethink how we use, prioritize, and invest in our transportation system. For example, cities across the U.S. are reclaiming car space for alternative, active transportation: the City of Oakland moved to restrict cars from 74 miles of their street network, while others are repurposing vehicular travel lanes as bike lanes and expanded walkways.

We have the opportunity and the responsibility to plan transportation systems so that they are accessible and equitable for all users, reliable, comprehensive, and safe. As a transportation planning scholar, this is the work I do in the field, and now from home: identify the large-scale infrastructure investments that will do the most good; develop metrics for cities and states to design urban roads that are safe for pedestrians and cyclists; and improve the design of our transportation system terminals so they are accessible to all.

I’m also currently homeschooling my eight-year-old twins and trying to weave math and science into lessons on social impact. We’ve begun an urban education exercise we call the “Philadelphia Daylighting Project”. We’re documenting how cars parked too close to an intersection block sightlines, potentially endangering pedestrians. By calculating the sight distance (and the blocked sight distance), we are helping our communities and our city design a safer and more accessible transportation system.

Megan Ryerson is the UPS Chair of Transportation, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Associate Dean for Research, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and a Penn IUR Faculty Fellow.

Return to Table of Contents