This paper offers a straightforward and intuitive methodology using statistical and graphical tools to compare the relative difference in the travel adaptations of two distinct social groups to land use change. This approach seeks to enrich the study of land use and transportation to more explicitly consider the disparate social impacts of various public policies. To facilitate the incorporation of these ideas by planners and advocates, this method relies on the generation of basic descriptive statistics and a simple means comparison test. These measures are easily calculated without the need for specialized, and possibly intimidating, statistical software. The innovative graphical presentation makes the information on difference very easy to grasp and is particularly well suited for jointly representing distinct, yet related adaptations, such as trip frequency and activity duration. This approach is illustrated through application to the shopping trip frequency, activity duration, and modal choice behavioral responses among gender, income, age, and car ownership groups to the creation of new suburban shopping centers around Prague, Czech Republic. The findingsdemonstrate that this new retailing pattern has induced differentiated adaptations between transportation disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged social groups. These differences have generally led to a convergence of averageshopping trip frequencies and durations, but a divergence in modal choice, as weaker groups disproportionately shift to transit rather than privatevehicle travel.
Abstract