Mobility; Accessibility; Transport equity; Capability Approach; Distributive Justice.

There is a consensus, both in transport planning practice and in the academic literature, that improving people’s access to important and daily destinations should be among the main objectives of equitable transport policies. These policies are even more relevant in contexts with large socioeconomic disparities. Although the influence of transport on this issue has been discussed in the literature, there is a wide field of research to be explored. This thesis tries to analyze to what extent the low level of mobility and accessibility facilitates or deprives the ability of people in poverty situation to access the city’s territories and its opportunities. To this end, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaun's Capabilities Approach theory was applied as a theoretical basis to assess what individuals can access (capabilities) versus their actual journeys (functionings). The ability to access opportunities and participate in worthwhile everyday activities is the focus of this study, in which capacity limitation may be associated with a risk of social exclusion related to transport. The hypothesis tested is that mobility and accessibility inequalities are related not only to income inequality issues but also to characteristics (individual and social), the availability of transport services, and the diversity of urban functions within the local space where this population lives and, in its surroundings, which in turn, impacts their capacity. To test the hypothesis, an empirical study was carried out in two low-income communities in the city of João Pessoa, Brazil. The proposed study has a quantitative and qualitative approach concerning the processing of information collected through household surveys with the population residing in the studied areas. For the quantitative analysis, econometric and spatial techniques were used. The results showed that there was significant variation in mobility resources among residents of the areas under study, producing differences both in mobility capacity and in the elements of mobility functioning, particularly about reach ranges, accessibility, and carrying out valuable everyday activities. It is expected that the results obtained provide subsidies for a more detailed approach to transport equity analysis, thus providing the development of public policies for accessibility and urban mobility integrated with other public policies.