Integrating equity in transportation project assessment: a philosophical exploration and its practical implications

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of the conceptual essence of a number of justice theories and their possible consequences for transport project appraisal. In this paper, we discuss three alternative philosophical approaches to the still-dominant approach of utilitarianism: Rawls’s approach, Walzer’s approach, and the capability approach (CA), as they have different practical implications. We discuss which of these approaches could potentially give guidance to transportation appraisal, and which approaches are not suited for this purpose. We demonstrate the use of the CA and compare it to utilitarianism in a case study, and discuss the implications of adopting the former for transport evaluation and policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• accessibility
• Rawls
• justice
• Walzer
• capability

Acknowledgements

This work is an outcome of the authors’ collaboration in the framework of COST Action TU 1208: Transport Equity Analysis: assessment and integration of equity criteria in transportation planning (TEA). The authors would like to thank the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the International Foundation for Education (ISEF) for their financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.