INTERSECTIONALITY IN TRANSPORTATION ACCESS: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL IDENTITIES

In the midst of a growing prominence of transportation equity in global development discussions, the importance of understanding how intersecting social identities influence transport accessibility has become imperative. This study presents a pioneering bibliometric and thematic review of intersectionality in transportation access, evaluating the scholarly usage of the concept and its critical depth. Drawing on 31 publications explicitly engaging intersectionality and 297 thematically related works, this study employed a dual-method approach incorporating VOSviewer-based bibliometric analysis as well as constructivist grounded thematic coding. Although results reveal a scholarly surge post-2020, there remains a fragmented field lacking dedicated publication outlets and scholarly leadership. While 68% of studies utilize intersectionality as a structural critique, 32% employ it descriptively, signaling the term’s partial conceptual maturity. Using thematic analysis, the study identified nine categories of intersecting barriers and found that the combination of such barriers related to race, gender, and socio-economic status was among the most common research intersections, while those involving age and disability have remained largely unexplored. Physical infrastructure and financing barriers emerged as the most prevalent obstacles, while legal, temporal, and informational issues were less salient. An intersectional coding matrix is recommended by this study as a diagnostic tool for quantifying identity-barrier interactions in order to facilitate mobility justice and spatial mismatch theorization. This review offers a methodological guide and critical foundation for incorporating intersectionality into transport research and practice, situating mobility systems in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030.