The speed advantage of bicycling over walking supports it as a relatively better solution to the first-and-last-mile problem, thus for improving transit accessibility and advancing transit equity. The paper presents measures of pedestrian- and bicycle-transit accessibility to estimate and compare two transit access modes, that is, bicycling and walking. Meanwhile, the benefit of bicycling the first-and-last mile to improve transportation equity is investigated among social groups with formal indicators including Theil T, Theil L, Relative Mean Deviation, and Atkinson indices. Targeting at the case study of Hamilton County, Ohio, an examination of empirical travel behaviors shows that the transit access distance by bicycling is tripled compared with that by walking (2.72 miles vs. 0.81 mile). The extended transit access distance can therefore increase the job accessibility using transit by 43.70% in average. In particularly, the racial minority groups with a low-income level are expected to receive a significant improvement in their job accessibility level by transit. When using the pedestrian-transit mode, though low-income groups in the study area are advantaged in accessing jobs over other higher incomes, yet a certain percentage of them having very limited access to jobs. Using the bicycle-transit mode instead would reduce the share of the low-income population with low transit job accessibility. For example, the percent of low-income population that have poor transit job accessibility in the American African group is reduced from 15.4% to 8.2%. Therefore, the bicycling connection for the first-and-last mile gap allows people to receive a more equitable transit accessibility level reflected in a better level of transit job accessibility, especially for the low-income and minority groups.

CICTP