What About Time in Transportation and Health Research?

Martin Wachs Lecture || May 10, 2012 || UCLA

Presented by: Mei-Po Kwan, The Ohio State University

The 6th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture featured Mei-Po Kwan, now Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Systems at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. In her lecture, the audience learned how transportation researchers have long recognized the role of time in influencing activity-travel behavior. In previous studies, time has been treated largely as a linear reference system for registering when events happen, or as a dimension for assessing how phenomena change over time and space. This presentation examined a different notion of time and its implications for transportation and health research, revisiting some fundamental concepts like distance, accessibility, and geographic context, while exploring new conceptualizations that take time into account. It suggests that time is at least as important as space for understanding how individuals of different social groups experience access to facilities and exposure to contextual or environmental influences. The lecture offers that a temporally integrated perspective would help shed new light on many issues transportation and health researchers have been examining for decades.

The full recording can be found here.