Transportation systems play a pivotal role in facilitating access to out-of-home activities, enabling participation in various aspects of social life. But because of budgetary and physical limitations, they cannot provide equal access everywhere; inevitably, some locations will be better served than others. This realization gives rise to two fundamental concerns in transportation equity research and practice: (1) accessibility inequality and (2) accessibility poverty. Accessibility inequalities may rise to the level of injustice when some socioeconomic groups systematically have lower access to opportunities than others. Accessibility poverty occurs when people are unable to meet their daily needs and live a dignified and fulfilling life because of a lack of access to essential services and opportunities. In this paper, we review two of the most widely used approaches for evaluating transport justice concerns related to accessibility inequality and accessibility poverty: Gini coefficients/Lorenz curves and needs-gap/transit desert approaches, respectively. We discuss how their theoretical underpinnings are inconsistent with egalitarian and sufficientarian perspectives in transport justice and show how the underlying assumptions of these methods and their applications found in the transportation equity literature embody many previously unacknowledged limitations that severely limit their utility. We substantiate these concerns by analysing the equity impacts of Covid-19-related service cuts undertaken in Washington, D.C. during 2020. The paper also discusses how alternative methods for measuring transportation equity both better comport with the known impacts of such changes and are consistent with underlying moral concerns.

交通系统在促进户外活动、参与社会生活的各个方面发挥着关键作用。但由于预算和物质限制，他们无法在所有地方提供平等的机会；不可避免的是，某些地点的服务会比其他地点更好。这种认识引起了交通公平研究和实践中的两个基本问题：（1）可达性不平等和（2）可达性贫困。当某些社会经济群体获得机会的机会普遍低于其他群体时，可及性不平等可能会上升到不公正的程度。当人们由于缺乏基本服务和机会而无法满足日常需求并过上有尊严和充实的生活时，就会出现无障碍贫困。在本文中，我们回顾了两种最广泛使用的评估与可达性不平等和可达性贫困相关的交通正义问题的方法：分别是基尼系数/洛伦兹曲线和需求差距/过境沙漠方法。我们讨论了它们的理论基础如何与运输正义中的平等主义和充足主义观点不一致，并展示了这些方法的基本假设及其在运输公平文献中的应用如何体现了许多以前未被承认的限制，这些限制严重限制了它们的效用。我们通过分析 2020 年华盛顿特区与 Covid-19 相关的服务削减对公平的影响，证实了这些担忧。本文还讨论了衡量交通公平的替代方法如何更好地符合此类变化的已知影响，并与潜在的道德担忧。