Understanding the Opportunity-Centric Accessibility for Public Charging Infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of opportunity-based measures over simple distance metrics for assessing public charging station accessibility, revealing significant inequalities and guiding equitable deployment strategies.

Contribution

It introduces opportunity-centric accessibility measures for PCS evaluation and compares them with traditional distance-based methods using extensive U.S. city data.

Findings

Opportunity-based measures show greater disparities in access.

High-income neighborhoods have significantly better PCS access.

Distance-based deployment strategies may lead to less equitable outcomes.

Abstract

In this study, we utilize data from over 28,000 public charging stations (PCSs) and 5.5 million points of interest across twenty U.S. metropolitan areas to underscore the importance of considering the availability of opportunities when assessing accessibility to PCSs, rather than relying solely on spatial proximity. Specifically, we conduct comprehensive comparisons of opportunity-centric accessibility measures with distance-based measures and perform counterfactual analyses under various PCS deployment strategies. Our findings reveal significant inequalities in PCS access across different neighborhoods under distance-based and opportunity-centric measures. However, a greater disparity exists when considering opportunities, with high-income communities having significantly better access to PCSs. Counterfactual analyses suggest that equitable deployment based on distance measures result in the least equitable outcomes when considering opportunities, primarily due to the existing disparity in opportunity distributions in our cities. Our insights highlight the complexity of locating PCSs and can guide nationwide PCS deployment for long-term societal benefits.