Toward Equitable Progress: A Review of Equity Assessment and Perspectives in Emerging Technologies and Mobility Innovations in Transportation

Transportation is evolving rapidly, as the world becomes smarter, faster, and more connected. From self-driving vehicles to e-bikes, electric cars, and other pedestrian hardware, how people move around cities is changing. But high-technology solutions do not impact all travelers equally-and some exacerbate existing inequities, with significant drawbacks for certain populations, including people with disabilities, women, and people from historically oppressed races and ethnicities. It is therefore vital that we develop a methodology to define equity-based performance measures that can help the field ensure that the new technology implementations are inclusive of all potential users. This paper takes a first, crucial step toward this methodology by providing a review of the current body of academic literature and government reports regarding equity issues and opportunities in four selected emerging technologies used in transportation, namely, artificial intelligence-based transportation solutions, electric vehicles, connected and automated vehicles, and shared micromobility. The paper explores the current status of equity practices in development and deployment, summarizes quantitative performance metrics that were used in the literature, and provides recommendations and an evaluation framework for emerging transportation technologies and mobility innovations moving forward.