Transportation Alternatives is a non-profit organization focused on making New York City streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit users. The organization is one of the key advocates for the City’s Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to reduce traffic-based violence through intelligent urban design.
This project sought to explore suspected relationships between traffic crashes and poverty across New York City, and to examine whether poorer communities are more susceptible to traffic violence. Using geocoded crash data from Transportation Alternatives and socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Parker developed a regression model, written in the R statistical programming language, to test this hypothesis. The analysis showed that areas of New York with lower median incomes, higher individual and family poverty rates, higher population densities, and denser built environments were associated with a higher concentration of injurious traffic crashes.
To engage the public in exploring connections between traffic crashes and poverty, Parker developed an interactive web application built on CARTO and D3 that integrates geospatial and statistical views of the data. In addition, he authored a 23-page report integrating graphics, maps, and text to present the major findings across each of New York City’s boroughs.
Use the interactive map to visualize an analysis of traffic crashes and poverty in New York City.
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