Winter 2025- I actually took Pub. Aff. 155 Equity in Transportation, but it was not listed on her class list for review.

Professor Bills is a very nice person and professor. Unfortunately, her classes are extremely unorganized. For example, Professor Bills was in Washington, D.C. to begin the quarter, including the first day of class when we were supposed to meet. However, we were only alerted to this important fact late in the evening the night before the first day, which was difficult for some of us who do not live on campus. Throughout the quarter, be prepared, as she often makes you aware of group projects and lab assignments with little time to complete them, sometimes on the same day they are due. Her lectures are lackluster, not inspiring, and sometimes hard to follow because she is disorganized. Lab assignments were even more challenging to follow along with, as clarity was often lacking. The final group paper is given with little time and vague instructions, where you will have to complete an entire 10-minute presentation and a 2000-word paper. Once again, she is a kind professor, just not recommended if you are looking for a well-structured class.

Dr. Bills is very knowledgeable in Transportation Equity, and her passion for it shines through her lectures. Her lectures are always packed with valuable concepts and case studies. The class assignments and workload are very manageable. A couple of tasks revolve around Python coding and reading research papers. The final term paper is to apply class concepts to evaluate real-world case studies. However, a side note is that she’s busy and might not be the most organized person. Still, I think you can overlook those things if you are interested in transportation planning and equity evaluation—I highly recommend it.

This is one of the best electives in the Public Affairs department, perfect for urban studies minor students! I highly recommend this class if you are interested in transportation planning. I found this class very interesting and practical. I learned so much about travel behavioral modeling to understand the trend of transit use to the measurement for planning a better transit through transportation equity analysis. Unlike transportation geography class, which focuses more on theory and history, this class offers you more tools to deal with real-world transportation planning challenges.

Every week, Dr. Bills dedicated one class period to the lecture and another to the lab session, where she demonstrated how to conduct the lab analyses. She mainly used Microsoft Excel for basic statistical analysis and data visualization. Even though Excel's functions are limited, the results in the lab have been interesting to me. There were six labs, with one midterm and one term paper (with a partner). Dr. Bills knows how to make slides well; her lectures have always fascinated me. She is one of the pioneers in the transportation equity field, so you can fully trust that she is extremely knowledgeable about the topic. The midterm was reasonable—open notes, but it could be somewhat tricky and required you to think to apply the knowledge. The term paper was expected to be around 2,500 - 4,000 words with a partner on any transportation equity topics in any country. Overall, I think this class had a manageable and reasonable workload. As I mentioned, this class is worthwhile for you to learn more about the transportation system, and it inspired me to expand my knowledge for more equitable transit planning in the future.