Transportation Justice in Vermont Communities of High Environmental Risk

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

Your draft is highly sympathetic. However it needs major improvements on 4 levels';

a. the focus. In the introduction you bring up; health risks because of living near highways, bad road quality and accessibility issues. You basically only discuss the last one.

b. theoretical insights and relation to academic publications; for such an article you need to relate to the body of work of Mimi Sheller on Mobility Justice and of Karel Martens on Transport Justice

c. Differentiation; as it looks you have nice material, I would like you the differentiate in presenting your results between ; 1. BIPOC and low-income, 2 car owners and non- car owners. You can end up with four different groups. Why did you focus in conclusions on BIPOC more or less exclusively, where you had eight focus groups?

d. recommendations; I really would like to understand what you recommend. Understand your idea of minimum standards, but what is your advice in practical sense. Still set up a PT network, ride sharing? Completely unclear now.

So I hope you will take up the challenge. Major revisions needed , but I see a rather good article arising!

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for taking the time to review the article and providing very constructive feedback. Below are detailed responses to your comments. We have tried to address all of your concerns. We have completely reworked the introduction, done an additional analysis of car ownership and public transportation use as suggested, and revised our discussion and conclusion accordingly.  I hope you find that our paper that is greatly improved and you find our revisions satisfactory.  Below we provide detailed responses (right column) to the comments (left column) you provided.

Thanks much.

Bindu Panikkar and Qing Ren

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper investigates the distributive and procedural injustices associated with transportation in high environmental risk communities in Vermont. It is an interesting paper that investigates the disparities in transportation services for different income and race groups.

 1. Title of the research

 

•The title of the research is catchy and interesting.

 2. Abstract

 

• You would better discuss the methodology, result, and discussion before the recommendation.

 3. Introduction

 

• The literature is not well framed to show transportation justice studies, the current development on the distributive and procedural injustice related to transportation in high environmental risk communities.

• It lacks a theoretical framework and the way the problem was stated.

 4. Research Methods

 

• Sampling issues such as size, procedure, etc. should be discussed clearly.

•The binomial logistic regression model should be discussed in this section. Where is the “mathematical equation” for the model?

• Both the dependent and independent variables must be made clearer. 

 5. Results

 

• The binomial logistic regression model outputs (for the two equations, i.e., race and income equations) are not suitably presented. The odds ratio, standard error, and p-value are sufficient.

• The sample size (for each variable) is not consistent (for example, n is as small as =33, etc.).

 6. Discussion

 

• It would be preferable if the discussion was presented with results.

 7. Conclusions

•It is shallow.

• It is a good idea to give a title like “Conclusions and Policy Implications”. Improve it and be specific in line with your results.

• Otherwise, it lacks a section for policy implications, as it is relevant for policymakers.

 8. References

 

• Referencing and body citation are not consistent with the journal style.

• Rework on editorial issues seriously.  

• Please see colored ones for editorial issues in the pdf file attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for taking the time to review the article and providing very constructive feedback. Below are detailed responses to your comments. We have tried to address all of your concerns. We have completely reworked the introduction, done an additional analysis of car ownership and public transportation use as suggested, and revised our discussion and conclusion accordingly.  I hope you find that our paper that is greatly improved and you find our revisions satisfactory.  Below we provide detailed responses (right column) to the comments (left column) you provided.

Thanks much.

Bindu Panikkar and Qing Ren

Author Response File: Author Response.docx