Transit desert on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
A transit desert is an area with limited
A transit desert is an area with limited transport
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipel ...
ation supply. Developed from the concept of food desert
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingest ...
s, various methods have been proposed to measure transit deserts. Transit deserts are generally characterized by poor public transport
Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typic ...
ation options and possibly poor bike, sidewalk, or road infrastructure. The lack of transportation options present in transit deserts may have negative effects of people’s health, job prospects, and economic mobility.
History
The term ‘desert’ has been variously applied to areas that lack key services like banks, food access, or evenbooks
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physica ...
. The idea of transit deserts was coined by Dr. Junfeng Jiao and Maxwell Dillivan, first appearing in print in 2013. Since that time the concept of transit deserts has been expanded upon and competing definitions and measurement techniques have emerged.
Definitions
Gap-based measurements
Gap-based measurement techniques are the most prominent and well-defined definition of transit deserts. Such methods typically use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based methods to measure the gap between transportation supply and demand. These methods quantify demand and supply and then subtract demand from supply in order to find the “gap” in transit service. Areas that fall below a certain threshold are termed "transit deserts". Using this method studies have found that nearly all cities in the United States have transit deserts. Studies