Reform Beijing to a public transit oriented city - from the view of transportation equity

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate and validate the necessity of reforming Beijing to a public transit oriented (PTO) city from the view of transportation equity. Equity is believed to be of significant importance to the development of sustainable transportation. This paper presents a comparison of the transportation structure in Beijing with that in other big cities around the world using Cluster Analysis. To accomplish the objective, a road spatial recourse analyzing model is used. This model describes how to distribute road spatial resources fairly to private cars, taxies, and buses. Furthermore, a survey on the satisfactory degree about the first bus rapid transit (BRT) line in Beijing from 8 aspects was conducted. An average score between 4.5 and 3.5 out of 5 demonstrates that the residents are satisfied with the BRT line. Results of this study show the feasibility and creditability in applying PTO transportation structure in Beijing. It is emphasized that more attention should be paid to public transit and it should be the orientation of Beijing's transportation system developed for the consideration of transportation equity. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.