An Assessment of Accessibility from a Socially Sustainable Urban Mobility Approach in Mass Transit Projects: Contributions from the Northern Central American Triangle

Abstract

This article aims to address the lack of research on the social dimension of sustainability, also known as social sustainability, in urban mobility projects, primarily in cities of the Global South. It proposes a strategy to partially assess social sustainability, focusing on accessibility, which is one of the key dimensions for conducting such an evaluation. To this end, a comparative analysis of three study cases is conducted in the capital cities of the Northern Central American Triangle (NCAT) before and after the construction of bus rapid transit (BRT) projects between 2000 and 2020. Accessibility is evaluated through equity and spatial efficiency indicators obtained through geographical information system (GIS) modeling, including layers representing transportation networks, populated areas, and locations of basic urban facilities. The result is an unprecedented assessment of accessibility in the NCAT capitals, which shows how the Guatemala City BRT project has improved the city’s social sustainability by reducing access times to basic urban facilities, mainly public health clinics and educational facilities, and narrowing the inequality gap as compared to projects in San Salvador and Tegucigalpa, the other capital cities in the NCAT. Additionally, it is emphasized that this methodology can be replicated in the Global South while considering the scarcity of information and the use of open-source software in the process.