Low Income Communities Can't Get to Jobs

May 12, 2011 – Oakland, CA. – A new report released today by the Brookings Institution presents a clear and dire picture of the significant transportation challenges facing low-income workers and job applicants.

The report, “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America,” reveals the stark and enduring obstacles faced by low-income people and communities of color in getting to regional job centers. This first-of-its-kind analysis of transit access in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan regions found that:

• Across all metro areas, the typical worker can reach only about 7 percent of their region’s jobs in a one-way, 45-minute transit commute.

• Three-quarters of low- and middle-skill jobs cannot be accessed even by a one-way, 90-minute transit commute.

• Residents of low-income suburban neighborhoods face some of the biggest challenges – they cannot access more than 77% of low- and middle-skill jobs via transit.

• Recent and looming cuts in local transit service pose a significant challenge for people who rely on public transportation to access jobs. For example, proposed transit cuts in Milwaukee, Wisc., would cut off 25,000 jobs from transit access.

Clearly, the impact of these challenges in metro regions is stark.

The Brookings study shows that low-income residents in the Kansas City metro area can only access 23 percent of the region’s jobs via transit. The region recently received a HUD-DOT-EPA regional Sustainable Communities Planning grant that they are using to develop a focused investment plan along key transportation corridors to better connect people to work, generate reinvestment and new jobs along these corridors, and re-attract residents to the urban centers that have been losing population.

In the Twin Cities region, Brookings found that low-income residents can access approximately 39 percent of the region’s jobs via transit. Their Metropolitan Council is using its Sustainable Communities Regional Planning grant to integrate a commuter rail, two light rail lines, and a bus rapid transit system to connect residents to newly created and currently existing job centers around each transit corridor.  To help ensure success, they are engaging communities along each corridor, conducting market studies, and developing a corridor-focused Economic/Workforce Development plan.

These efforts – focused on connecting workers to employment opportunities, developing jobs and ensuring affordable housing near transit – can all contribute to healthier regions and better economic outcomes for low-income workers and communities of color currently isolated from job access.