Mizuki Kawabata

Commuting Inequality between Cars and Public Transit: The Case of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1990-2000:

Equity in access to opportunities is increasingly recognised as an essential component of sustainable development and transport. This study presents a spatial and temporal examination of commuting inequality between cars and public transit in the San Francisco Bay Area. Results visualised in the maps show considerable inequality and temporal changes in job accessibility and commuting time between cars and public transit as well as among locations within the metropolitan area. Results from OLS and spatial regression models indicate that, in both 1990 and 2000, greater job accessibility was significantly associated with shorter commuting time for driving alone as well as for public transit, but the degree of this association was considerably greater for public transit than for driving alone. Urban and transport development that enhances mobility and accessibility for public transit relative to cars should be strongly encouraged.

Spatiotemporal dimensions of modal accessibility disparity in Boston and San Francisco

The disparity of accessibility between cars and public transit provides important information about the degree of auto orientation in urban spatial structure. Using spatial data from 1990 and 2000 and a geographical information system, the present study examined the degrees and spatial variations of accessibility disparity between commuting by car and public transit as well as the temporal changes in this disparity in the metropolitan areas of Boston and San Francisco. In both metropolitan areas there was a considerable disparity in job accessibility in a comparison between users of cars and public transit, which turned out to differ substantially by location. Between 1990 and 2000 regional levels of this accessibility disparity lessened in the two metropolitan areas, but the temporal changes in the accessibility disparity varied considerably among different locations within the metropolitan areas. The accessibility disparity decreased in the majority of central areas and in a number of suburban zones near rail stations, whereas the accessibility disparity increased in a number of suburban zones near major highways. Improving accessibility for public transit, relative to that for cars, should be a key strategy for redressing auto-orientation urban spatial structure, an important objective of sustainable development.

Multidisciplinary cooperation in gis education: A case study of us colleges and universities

This paper examines the degree of multidisplinary cooperation for Geographic Information Science (GIS) education programs that award GIS-related degrees or certificates at US colleges and universities. We classified departments and courses into ten major disciplines using Dewey Decimal Classification. In the 2007–2008 academic year, approximately 40 per cent of GIS education programs related to multiple disciplines and nearly 20 per cent were involved with more than three disciplines. Geography was the major provider of GIS education programs, but the ratio between geography-related discipline and other disciplines combined was approximately 1:3. Fostering multidisciplinary GIS education programs should strengthen geography in general as well as GIS education.