Grading bus routes in San Juan Metropolitan Area. Could it be correlated with the social vulnerability index of the communities receiving these transportation services?

Keywords: Transportation geography, social justice, urban geography, urban policy, urban planning, bus, population, Puerto Rican Geography
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

For decades, people in Puerto Rico have been demanding a better public transportation system. What the island has right now is a metro rail line going through three municipalities with only 16 stations, complemented by a system of buses. However, people still prefer to use cars because the current transportation system is far from ideal. For example, more than half the bus routes have a frequency of more than 30 minutes in peak hours, many routes are loops instead of lineal, and there is no tracking system for the buses. Nonetheless, two routes stand out for being the complete opposite of this; E10 and T3. They have the lowest frequency of all the routes (10 minutes), are point-to-point routes, and have a tracking application. What do these two routes have in common? They both run through more privileged areas than other routes like Old San Juan and Miramar. Based on this context, we pretend to do an evaluative study of Puerto Rico's State Bus Routes to grade the service each offers based on a series of elements of speed and comfortability. Once we have all the bus routes graded, we will proceed to see if there is any correlation between the grade of each route and the social vulnerability index of the communities they serve using data from the CDC.