The Transportation Data Equity Initiative officially kicked off on January 15, 2021. We will post updates to this site as the project gets under way. Sign up for one or more of our Stakeholder groups by selecting the Get Involved tab at the top of this page.
The initiative, a collaboration between the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT, led by Dr. Anat Caspi) and the Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC, led by Mark Hallenbeck and Ryan Avery), aims to supply valuable information to travelers, particularly people with disabilities. Currently, information relevant to pedestrians, such as data about infrastructure, is not stored in uniform, publicly accessible formats. The TDE initiative aims to provide target populations with detailed accounts of their local environments by streamlining the ways in which pedestrian data are recorded, stored, and dispersed.
Mapping applications have dramatically increased people’s ability to discover new transit options, except for people who rely on pedestrian information such as whether route sidewalks have curb ramps. The TDE Initiative will integrate data about different mobility methods into mapping applications so that a wider audience can experience their benefits. Importantly, the TDE Initiative will benefit more than just people with disabilities; it will benefit anyone who struggles to traverse pedestrian environments without infrastructure information. The goal is to create a universal data framework that enables mapping applications to customize the experience of individual users rather than merely categorizing them by disability.
The TDE Initiative will have three main phases. First, with community involvement, the TCAT team will release data standards for pedestrian infrastructure, transportations stations, and demand-responsive transit. Next, they will produce tools for data management and will operate them throughout six counties (two each in Maryland, Oregon, and Washington state) for five years, enabling any applications to use their data. Finally, they will publish and maintain three accessible mobility applications that demonstrate the scalability of their data tools and that serve three distinct populations of users.
The three applications are
- Multimodal AccessMap by TCAT (a trip planning app that addresses barriers for people with mobility disabilities)
- Soundscape by Microsoft (orientation and exploration software for people with visual disabilities), and
- 3-D Digital Twin by Unity Technologies (virtual-reality trip simulation that allows users to explore trip paths).
Products of the TDE Initiative will lead to future research. Applications such as AccessMap will be continually evaluated for user satisfaction and impacts on the complete trip. In addition, the TDE team will test whether their new data standards successfully relay relevant information to the target populations. The TDE Initiative will be the foundation of a transportation system that is sustainable and accessible to all.