The BALTO Toolkit - A New Approach to Ethical and Sustainable Data Collection for Equitable Public Transit

In most American cities commuters on public transit have disproportionately lower incomes than commuters who use automobiles. Given the proven link between geographic and economic mobility, it is critical to offer quality public transit to improve access to jobs, health care and education opportunities. Departments of Transportation (DOTs) routinely measure public transit performance and quality perceptions to assess the need for improvements in the transit systems. Nevertheless, the performance metrics used fail to capture the experiences of low-income individuals who often endure complex, lengthy trips, requiring several modes or transfers. We propose BALTO, a novel toolkit to characterize transit system performance and passenger's quality perceptions across all types of passengers and trips. We are designing the BALTO toolkit in collaboration with public housing residents from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) and together with two local transit advocacy groups and the departments of transportation in Baltimore and in the state of Maryland.