While social segregation is often assessed using static data concerning residential areas, the extent to which people with diverse background travel to the same destinations may offer an additional perspective on the extent of urban segregation. This study further contributes to the measurement of activity-based social segregation between multiple groups using public transport smart card data. In particular, social segregation is quantified using the ordinal information theory index to measure the income group mix at public transport journey destination zones. The method is applied to the public transport smart card data of Stockholm County, Sweden. Applying the index on 2017–2020 data sets for a selected week, shows significant differences between income groups’ segregation along the radial public transport corridors following the opening of a major rail project in the summer of 2017. The overall slight decrease in segregation over the years can be linked to declining segregation in the city center as a travel destination and its public transport hubs. Increasing zonal segregation is observed in suburban and rural zones with commuter train stations. This method helps to quantify social segregation, enriching the analysis of urban segregation and can aid in evaluating policies based on the dynamics of social life.

A fair distribution of public transport benefits is a commonly stated goal of agencies and operators of public transport. However, it is less complicated and costly to provide accessibility in some parts of cities and their surroundings than in other parts. Densely populated areas, and areas situated closer to the city center therefore often have higher public transport accessibility than remote or sparsely populated areas. Neglecting these realities results with an unrealistic assessment of equity in service provision and hampers their consideration when setting policy goals. In this study, we propose a framework for investigating equity in the distribution of accessibility, where the suggested goal is to provide residents with equal accessibility for equally dense and central areas. For the Stockholm County, we show that accessibility may seem to be distributed horizontally inequitable and vertically regressive. However, once controlling for how dense and close to the city center residents live, while still being horizontally inequitable the distribution of accessibility in Stockholm County is found progressive, i.e., benefiting those with lower incomes. We demonstrate the proposed method for the case of skip-stop train operations and find that it shifts our constructed accessibility measure toward a more horizontally inequitable and vertically progressive state. We conclude that our proposed method can be a potent way for public transport agencies to measure and concretize equity goals and evaluate policy changes.

When Public Transport Administrations propose changes in fare schemes or increased fares, they are often met with concerns regarding the proposed fare schemes fairness. Implicit in these concerns is an understanding of relations governing land use and public transport, impacting equity. In this paper, we use socio-economic statistics of census areas in conjunction with public transport travel data from a transport forecast model to assess the geographical and distributional fairness of alternative fare schemes: flat, zone-based and distance-based. We discuss our result in relation to both the scientific literature and the known “truths” in the public debate. The method is applied to the Case study of Stockholm public transport. We find that high-income travelers benefit from all three fare schemes considered but, in contrast to much of the literature, least by flat fares. A strong distance-dependent fare could be horizontally equitable but has poor vertical equity.