The Recovery Act invested millions in new projects that are improving our infrastructue, repairing homes, and much more. But it also provided millions in direct benefits for families, students, businesses, investors, and more including more than $288 million in various forms of tax relief. Guidance on how to access each of those benefits is below.
Submitted by Sierra Club on Sat, 05/28/2011 - 19:50
Public transportation investment should connect people to their workplaces, and the recently issued Brookings Institution report titled Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America examines what that means. As mentioned in the report, recent statistics show that the share of Americans commuting to work via public transit grew during the 2000s for the first time in decades.The current economic situation and rising fuel prices certainly make public transportation a more appealing option. A 2008 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report cited by the Brookings Institution titled Effects of Gasoline Prices on Driving Behavior and Vehicle Markets found that the increase in ridership on transit systems is just about the same as the decline in the number of vehicles on the roadways. This suggests that commuters will switch to transit if service is available that is convenient to employment destinations.
The Brookings Institution examined the accessibility of jobs via transit in the 100 largest cities in the country. The report measures how many people live within three quarters of a mile from a fixed route transit stop. Making transit work better as a long term option means looking at where people live and where their jobs are located. 63% of jobs and 69% of working age people live in suburbs outside the central city. Across all neighborhoods served by some form of transit in the 100 largest metro areas, the typical working-age resident can reach about 30 percent of metropolitan jobs within 90 minutes of travel time. More than two-thirds of jobs in the nation’s largest metro areas are inaccessible within an hour and a half by way of existing transit systems. The report also points to potentially large accessibility problems for workers in growing low-income suburban communities, who on average can access only about 22 percent of metropolitan jobs in low- and middle-skill industries for which they may be most qualified.
Tight budgets and dwindling stimulus funds threaten many public transportation providers. Increased fuel costs affect transit as well. Service reductions may be seen as the only way to make the numbers balance. However, policymakers should be careful not to sever the transportation lifelines between workers and jobs and undermine the efforts of the stimulus to improve the economy and generate new jobs. Covering service gaps between residential areas and job centers should be the guiding force in decisions by transit providers.In rural areas or where the population lacks the density to make public transportation efficient, other options such as ride sharing or carpools/vanpools may be able to serve as a more efficient means of transportation and increase job access at a lower cost to the commuter than private car ownership.
The Brookings Institution report concludes that land use planning and development codes can be more influential than anything a transit agency can do for long term improvement to job access via transit. Land use planning and municipal codes that make decentralized residential areas less appealing to construct and reward location efficiency near affordable and convenient transit are factors that contribute to the most successful cities examined.
Paying attention to the relation of household access and job skills is critical to closing the gap in job access via transit. As stated in the report:
"While coordinated long range comprehensive planning between transit agencies and other actors is a necessary step, our analysis demonstrates that those efforts must also explicitly address the apparent mismatch between household access and job skills. Most jobs in cities are oriented toward workers with higher levels of education, in industries like finance, professional services, and health care. Suburban areas host 69 percent of all metropolitan jobs in low- and middle-skill industries, such as retail, construction, manufacturing, and transportation. More highly educated workers are thus better served by high-capacity transit routes laid out in a hub-and-spoke form, typically converging in downtown neighborhoods rich with high-skill industries."
Modifying the route structure to include more options than the hub and spoke form would allow access from one suburban area to another without adding the additional time and expense of a transfer in the central city. Improved public transportation access for lower income families also allows for the families to make use of a larger variety of social services aimed at finding and maintaining employment, programs for seniors, and assistance for those with special needs.
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Twitter
Yahoo»
- Login to post comments
