ACCESSIBILITY TO JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN RIO DE JANEIRO BASED ON THE SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE BRT SYSTEM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4215/rm2026.e25010Keywords:
Accessibility, Public transit, BRT system, socio-spatial inequality, Urban AnalyticsAbstract
Socio-spatial inequality is a core concern in Geography. Understanding the relationship between place of residence and job availability—through accessibility analysis—is a geographical issue of paramount importance for urban planning. This study examines employment accessibility via the BRT system in the city of Rio de Janeiro, considering travel-time windows (30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes) and socioeconomic variables (income and race/ethnicity). Employing corporate registry data to map firms, census tract data from the 2010 Census, and route simulations in a GIS environment using GTFS data, we computed cumulative job accessibility for residents located within a 15-minute walk of BRT stations. The results reveal a strong correlation between average income and accessibility in shorter time windows (30 minutes), with higher access levels observed in subcenters such as Madureira and Barra da Tijuca. Although coverage expands in longer time windows (60–120 minutes), persistent inequalities remain: peripheral tracts (e.g., Santa Cruz, Campo Grande), which have lower-income populations, continue to exhibit poorer access even during extended commutes. This analysis highlights socio-spatial inequities, exacerbated by the uneven distribution of opportunities and the prioritization of central corridors in the BRT network. We conclude that transport policies must explicitly integrate equity considerations – by expanding peripheral connections and accounting for temporal and socioeconomic dimensions – to mitigate urban segregation.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
\- \
- Authors retain the copyright and grant MERCATOR the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows the sharing of the work with recognition of the authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal. \
- Authors are authorized to sign additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g., publish in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal. \
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal page) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this can generate productive changes as well as increase the impact and citation of the published work (see The Effect of Free Access). \
- Authors are responsible for the content of the manuscript published in the journal. \
