Transport Justice

by Karel Martens (Author)

Transport Justice develops a new paradigm for transportation planning based on principles of justice. Author Karel Martens starts from the observation that for the last fifty years the focus of transportation planning and policy has been on the performance of the transport system and ways to improve it, without much attention being paid to the persons actually using – or failing to use – that transport system.

There are far-reaching consequences of this approach, with some enjoying the fruits of the improvements in the transport system, while others have experienced a substantial deterioration in their situation. The growing body of academic evidence on the resulting disparities in mobility and accessibility, have been paralleled by increasingly vocal calls for policy changes to address the inequities that have developed over time. Drawing on philosophies of social justice, Transport Justice argues that governments have the fundamental duty of providing virtually every person with adequate transportation and thus of mitigating the social disparities that have been created over the past decades.

Critical reading for transport planners and students of transportation planning, this book develops a new approach to transportation planning that takes people as its starting point, and justice as its end.

"In Transport Justice Martens considers many dimensions of fairness in society’s provision of physical accessibility, demonstrating clearly how concepts of justice developed by renowned thinkers like Rawls and Dworkin can be extended to, and quantified in, the assessment of urban transport systems to improve the process of regional transport planning." Martin Wachs, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California Los Angeles, USA


"Transport Justice is an exceptionally important and original addition to urban studies literature. Combining theoretical and practical insights, it shows the way in which transportation policy, usually a technical domain focused on efficiency, can be a significant contributor to equity and sets up principles for evaluating transportation systems in terms of the distribution of benefits." Susan S. Fainstein, Author, The Just City


"Karel Martens has written an insightful, thoughtful book that will transform the field of equity analysis of transportation systems. By focusing on accessibility and establishing new thresholds for analysis, he presents a new analytical framework that focuses on justice." Deb Niemeier, Ph.D., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Los Angeles, USA

"Karel Martens observes that justice principles play a key role in the domains of housing, health care and education. In contrast, the domain of transport is dominated by one notion: efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. The choice of subject is therefore in itself already a revolution in our thinking about mobility… This book caters for readers who realize that scientific and societal progress benefits mostly from asking the right questions, even if sometimes there are no ready-made answers." Kris Peeters, Eindelijk, de essentie!

Karel Martens is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel) and at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). He also holds the Leona Chanin Career Development Chair at the Technion.



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