ABSTRACT
I have nearly come to the end of my explorations of fairness in the domain of transportation. It has taken a lengthy argument to draw a conclusion that perhaps seems obvious to the reader: a transportation system is fair if, and only if, it provides a sufficient level of accessibility to all under most circumstances. This strong correspondence between the outcome of a lengthy philosophical exploration and what are perhaps readers’ intuitions should not be seen as a failure of systematic argumentation. The goal of the entire effort has not been to prove wrong particular intuitions regarding justice in the domain of transportation. Its aim was rather to employ systematic reasoning to delineate a set of principles that could be defended on rational grounds. If this has led to a more solid footing for the often intuitive appeals to justice in transportation, all the better. In line with Rawls’ notion of reflective equilibrium, the strong correspondence between reasoned argumentation and considered intuitions suggests that the principles developed in the book may well be widely shared and robust in character (Rawls 1971; see also Daniels 1996).
