United States Department of Transportation
i
Investigating Walking and Biking Activities Among Low-Income African Americans
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2023-03-03
[PDF-3.25 MB]
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Active transportation has become popular in the United States and can reduce transportation’s negative effects on the environment. It also plays a critical role in sustainable transportation and reducing greenhouse emissions. To provide an equitable transportation system for the public, it is vital to fully understand low-income African Americans’ active transportation needs and challenges. The goal of this study was to investigate walking and biking activities among low-income African Americans. We first conducted a systematic review of all studies related to this subject using the PRISMA guidelines. The literature on this subject suggested that bike usage was low among minorities and those with lower incomes. Furthermore, communities with poor accessibility to bike infrastructure had a larger concentration of African Americans, low-wage employees, and the elderly. For the analysis, we used 2017 NHTS data, which is the main source of national data on American travel behaviors. We conducted an analysis of 11 variables related to biking and 12 variables related to walking. Moreover, to ensure the collected data represents the U.S. population, the applied weight provided in the NHTS dataset was used in this study to ensure that the results represent the U.S. population. The results of our analyses showed that African Americans have a lower number of bike trips per week compared to White Americans, which is in line with the results of previous studies. In general, African Americans use bicycles as a way to exercise rather than a mode to travel. African Americans also use active transportation as a way to reduce the financial burden of travel more than other racial groups. Moreover, African American students tend to use active transportation to travel to and from school more than other groups. Analyzing the 2017 California-NHTS database, we found that the most common reason given for why low-income African Americans did not walk or use a bike to travel was having no path and bad lighting. Moreover, the results of the regression models indicate that the number of drivers in household, the number of household vehicles, rural residency, and not being Hispanic all had relationship with the use of active transportation to reduce the financial burden of travel among low-income African Americans. This research provides a deeper understanding of bike travel behavior among different households and informs policies that prioritize high-need communities through appropriately planned bike infrastructure development.
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