Essays in Transportation and Electoral Politics

Abstract 1 – The Importance of Transportation Policies in Local Elections Building and maintaining transportation systems is one of the most important functions of local government. It is a subject that concerns local residents, jurisdictions spend a lot of money on, and local politicians use to their political advantage. This study helps us understand how transportation issues feature in local elections. Through evaluating a dataset of 542 candidates from 219 local election races from 2022, this study explores which candidates for local office are more likely to have transportation policies, what kind of content is included in these policies, and what are the factors that make including different transportation content more or less likely. The analysis primarily uses website campaign content and a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to answer these questions. I find a variety of factors affect the inclusion of transportation issues at the local level such as variations in governance, partisanship, and regional characteristics like a jurisdiction's size and transportation behavior. It was also evident that defining transportation issues was more common than proposing transportation policy solutions. Overall, this research provides more insight into how transportation policies are included in local elections.

Abstract 2 – Saliency of Transportation Policies in State Legislative Elections: The Case of Virginia Transportation systems are expensive and directly impact important issues like climate change, equity, and quality of life. However, it is not clear how important transportation policies are in state-level elections. Using the Virginia 2021 state legislative election, this research uses candidate website data, Twitter data, and data about Virginia House of Delegates districts to answer three questions: which candidates are more likely to have transportation polices, what issues or transportation modes are included, and what factors make candidates more or less likely to focus on certain issues. Using descriptive statistics, and regression methods, this research found transportation issues varied by political party with top overall issues including transportation funding as well as expanding or improving transportation systems. Public transportation was the top non-car mode. Candidates were more likely to include transportation issues if district households had higher car ownership or a lower percentage of single occupancy vehicle commuters. Finally, differences in transportation issues could be partly explained by political party, incumbency, population density, and transportation habits. These results will be helpful for understanding how state government transportation agendas change, can better inform transportation advocacy efforts, and could help transportation professionals better understand the impact of their work.

Abstract 3 – Does Voting Affect the Provision of Bus Service?

Inequalities in the distribution of bus services are important to understand. This chapter adds to previous literature by exploring why inequalities exist. Specifically, does voting for elected officials affect inequalities in the delivery of bus services? This study explores this question using a quantitative approach as part of a quasi-experimental research design focusing on GoRaleigh in North Carolina and the Milwaukee County Transit System in Wisconsin. The analysis provides evidence of a relationship between voting behavior and bus service. This finding is observed across cities and elections with the relationships holding even when controlling for factors associated with a bureaucratic explanation for changing bus service, like changes to population or jobs. However, the strength of the relationship can change between elections, the type of elected official, and cities. Overall, this work provides more evidence of the politics behind transit service planning, especially the political influences of voting behavior in representative democracies.