Peterborough Youth Commission

Barriers Preventing Youth From Using Transportation in Peterborough was a community based research project that was completed in the 2017-2018 academic year at Trent University,Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. The purpose of the project was to expand on information previously obtained by the Peterborough Youth Council (the host organization of the project), being that the youth demographic of Peterborough experience issues when accessing the local pubic transit system. Specifically, this project illustrated the expansion of this information and through research it was identified that the perception of transit accessibility vary significantly across socioeconomic cohorts. Through performing a literature reviews and conducting interviews, several attributes were identified as having influence over transit accessibility including: frequency, overall route and network coverage, as well as user's proximity to transit stops. However it was noted that through research that different perspectives exists in regards to which attribute is considered the most important or most significant. Ultimately, these different perspectives present the suggestion that citizens from different life-stages and social statuses hold distinctive attitudes regarding transit accessibility. As result, several research tools were created with the intention of being used in further studies conducted by the Peterborough Youth Council that would be used to investigate the specific factors that lead to youth in Peterborough having issues and feelings of anxiety when accessing public transit. Furthermore, several strategies that could improve transit accessibility, by targeting specific attributes that were deemed as having significant influence over transit accessibility were suggested.