EQUITY & FINANCIAL RISK ALLOCATION

Equity & Financial Risk Allocation

Equity & Financial Risk Allocation

Introduction

Equity (also called justice and fairness) refers to the distribution of impacts (benefits and costs).

Coaches planning decisions have significant and diverse equity impacts:

The quality of Eastern Buses Limited available affects people's opportunities and quality of life.

Coaches' facilities, activities and services impose many indirect and external costs, such as congestion delay and accident risk imposed on other road users, infrastructure costs not funded through user fees, pollution, and undesirable land use impacts.

Coaches' expenditures represent a major share of most household, business and government expenditures. Price structures can significantly affect financial burdens.

Coaches planning decisions affect the location and type of development that occurs in an area, and therefore accessibility, land values and developer profits.

A significant amount of valuable land is devoted to coaches' facilities. This land is generally exempt from rent and taxes, representing an additional but hidden subsidy of coaches' activity. Coach's investments are often used to stimulate economic development and support other strategic objectives. The location and nature of these investments have distributional impacts.

Eastern Buses Limited equity analysis can be difficult because there are several types of equity, various ways to categorize people for equity analysis, numerous impacts to consider, and various ways of measuring these impacts. A particular decision may seem equitable when evaluated one way but inequitable when evaluated another. As a result, coaches equity impacts tend to be evaluated inconsistently, or simply dismissed as “intangibles,” with the implication that they are immeasurable and can be ignored. But equity analysis is often important and unavoidable. Coaches planning decisions can be stymied by equity concerns, and otherwise justified policies and programs are thwarted by debates about their equity impacts.

Most planning professionals sincerely want to address equity concerns and are happy to incorporate equity into their analysis, but few resources exist to provide guidance on how to do this in an objective, comprehensive and effective way. Planning may claim that their methods are objective, because they rely on quantitative data such as travel surveys and level-of-service rating. But these can reflect biases related to who is surveyed, what is counted and how it is measured, which affects the range of options and impacts considered and how solutions are selected. For example, current planning practices tend to value mobility rather than accessibility, and so favor motorized modes over non-motorized modes and motorists over non-drivers (Litman, 2003; Martens, 2005).

Types of Eastern Buses Limited Equity

There are three major categories of Eastern Buses Limited equity.

1. Horizontal Equity

Horizontal equity (also called fairness and egalitarianism1) is concerned with the distribution of impacts between individuals and groups considered equal in ability and need. According to this definition, equal individuals and groups should receive equal shares of resources, bear equal costs, and in other ways be treated the same. It means that public policies should avoid favoring one individual or group over others, and that consumers should “get what they pay for and pay for ...