Creating A Transit Plan That Reduces Poverty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our last two posts, the first focused on public transit and the $7 billion, about 10% of the regional GDP, that largely flows out of our region as the cost of personal transportation and the second provided key metrics about MATA, including its ranking of #55 among 72 transit systems.

We wrote in the first post: “In this regard, it’s shortsighted that public transit is considered Memphis’ responsibility rather than a regional opportunity.  It results in companies receiving tax incentives even though their jobs lie out of reach of public transit, forcing Memphians with limited means to buy cars and spend more than one out of every four dollars they earn for fuel and upkeep.  It’s widely accepted that Memphis alone is at least $20 million away from a public transit system whose performance could fall into the middle of its peer systems.  Then again, driving this amount is a good dose of ‘it’s good enough for Memphis’ attitude that leads us often to define success by how little we can spend rather than by quality.”

As part of the Blueprint for Prosperity, the plan to reduce poverty in Memphis by 10 points in 10 years, 15 University of Memphis professors wrote policy briefs in 2015 in their areas of expertise.  Dr. Charles Santo, chair of city and regional planning, wrote the report on transportation, saying that our community is focused on moving packages, not people. “That means roads are designed to get goods into and out of the cit,” he said.  “But little attention in planning or funding is given to moving people and particularly in moving people from their homes to jobs.  Future planning should focus on connecting households to jobs by reducing travel times between the urban core and area job centers.”

The following is Dr. Santo’s issues brief summary followed by his full report:

Transportation Strategy Summary 

Social mobility is the term applied to the movement of people within the social strata of a society. The creation of wealth and reduction of poverty is a form of social mobility.

Recent research suggests that access to transportation may have even more effect on social mobility than factors like crime, education, and family structure. Access to transportation affect how one gets to a job, to a grocery store, to health care, and the whole panoply of resources needed for the creation of prosperity. Transportation therefore becomes an important part of the Blueprint for Prosperity.

In that regard, the Memphis metropolitan area offers a special challenge. Though the City of Memphis has expanded its geographic boundaries over the past few decades, its population has remained the same. Many residents moved outside those boundaries, adding to the metropolitan sprawl. The result has been a hollowing of the region’s core leaving residents disconnected from jobs and with increased ethnic and wealth disparities. According to the Brookings Institute, only 12% of the metropolitan area’s jobs are within 3 miles of the central business district while nearly half are located more than 10 miles from downtown. That sprawl is a barrier between connecting people and jobs.

Accordingly, that sprawl places an enormous burden on transportation access in the region.

In terms of public transportation, the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is the only provider. However, it is a local transit authority rather than a regional transit authority with no dedicated funding source. That means that all local funding for public transit comes from the City of Memphis. Buses may run to suburbs, but not in a way that provides convenient access to major job sites. As a consequence access to a car is important for economic opportunity.

Two transportation recommendations for the Blueprint therefore go beyond programming to strategic. One is to make transportation planning central to the city and region’s economic development planning. Current planning is driven by moving goods and packages, not people. That means roads are designed to get goods into and out of the city. But little attention in planning or funding is given to moving people and particularly moving people from their homes to jobs. Future planning should be focus on connecting households to jobs by reducing travel times between the urban core and area job centers.

The other strategic recommendation is to develop regional transit planning and funding. Jobs are outside of the city. Poverty is concentrated within the city. Wealth creation and the reduction of poverty can only meaningfully occur when transportation links connect city residents with those opportunities. A regional public transportation system would help to do so.

Programmatic recommendations include reducing the number of people who drive alone and expanding access to cars for low‐income persons.

Tactics for reducing the number of people driving alone include:

*  Employee

*  Transportation management

*  Employer subsidized transit passes

*  EDGE incentives for corporate subsidized transportation

*  Pay incentives to not drive

Tactics for expanding access to cars for low‐income persons include:

*  Expanding access to Uber and Lyft drivers

*  Combining rental housing vouchers with subsidies for automobile purchases

*  Excluding the value of a vehicle in determining eligibility for safety net programs

*  Waiving some court debts leading to a suspended driver’s license could assist access to a car.

Full Policy Brief: Transportation

“Transportation Emerges as Key to Escaping Poverty” – New York Times, May 5, 2015

This New York Times headline summarizes a common theme among current academic research – and confirms a common sense understanding of urban issues (Bouchard, 2015). The article refers to a Harvard study that concludes that transportation access has a more significant effect on social mobility than factors like crime, education, and family structure (Chetty & Hendren, 2015). In cities like Memphis – both poor and geographically sprawling – this connection between poverty and transportation is magnified.

Introduction

In Memphis, low‐income neighborhoods are anywhere and everywhere – they are not necessarily proximate to downtown or in high‐density areas like they are in older mono‐ centric cities. Residents in these communities are disconnected from entry‐level jobs both by distance and by inadequate transportation systems. In fact, this distance makes an adequate transit system more difficult to achieve, and a cyclical problem emerges: Limited municipal investment in transportation options exacerbates household underemployment and degrades quality of life, while continuing poverty and underemployment erodes the ability of local government to make adequate investment in transportation options.

Transportation, as a factor that affects financial resiliency, encompasses both mobility and accessibility. Mobility refers simply to one’s ability to move around (i.e., can I get there?). Accessibility refers to the ease with which one can reach desired destinations – and therefore considers proximity of destinations to one another and to home (Litman, 2010). For example, a person who has a job close to her home and a grocery store along the way to the job does not have better mobility, but does have better accessibility. Accessibility is a product of urban form and land use patterns.

In Memphis, the story of the transportation‐poverty relationship is the story of urban form, geographic stratification and spatial inefficiency. And it is conditioned by the geographic size of the city, historical patterns of population and wealth decentralizations, and the industrial structure of the local economy.

Current Local Conditions

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is the region’s only provider of public transit. The vast majority of its users are transit dependent. Recent census data show that 13 percent of Memphis households do not own a vehicle, which exceeds the national figure of 9 percent. According to the Memphis Bus Riders Union, 90 percent of Memphis bus riders are black and 60 percent have incomes of $18,000 or less. MATA buses and trolleys serve an area of 311 square miles located almost entirely in the City of Memphis with almost no access to suburban jobs or amenities.

Memphis’ current transit system is inadequate to meet the needs of low‐income residents. A 2011 analysis by the Brookings Institution (Tomer, Kneebone, Puentes, & Berube) explored how well public transit systems connect residents to jobs across the top 100 metropolitan areas; Memphis ranked 69th. The study found that for the typical Memphis commuter, only 26 percent of jobs are reachable by transit in less than 90 minutes, and only 5 percent are reachable in less than 45 minutes. But these findings are not simply a reflection of a poorly designed transit system – they are also a function of the area’s urban form and industrial makeup.

Over the last forty years, Memphis has experienced an unhealthy transformation of its urban form, with expansion of the built environment that has outpaced population growth. This has contributed to increasing fiscal burdens and inefficiency and has driven a growing inequality between parts of the region. Since 1970 the City of Memphis has annexed over 100 square miles of land, but its total population remains essentially the same, as households have shifted outward beyond the boundaries of a city that now covers over 300 square miles. Memphis now has twice the land area of Detroit, but only half the population density (approximately 2,050 persons per square mile). Shifting population and physical growth patterns have contributed to a hollowing out of the region’s core, left residents disconnected from jobs, and contributed to a crippling intraregional inequity. Dot‐density maps of Shelby County’s shifting population over time appear as if a string around the central city was loosened allowing marbles to spill out. The resulting lack of density makes efficient (in terms of both time and costs) transit difficult. Without a critical mass of potential riders (people) or destinations (e.g., jobs) along a corridor, it is difficult to provide service that is frequent enough to be convenient.

This deconcentration of population, as is typical, has been mirrored by a decentralization of wealth. Recent data show that the Memphis metropolitan area has the second highest level of income segregation among large metro areas (Florida, 2014). In 2010, the poverty rate of Memphis (27%) was nearly four times as high as that of the rest of Shelby County (7%) Table 1 illustrates the vast differences in median household income that exist between Memphis and Shelby County’s suburban municipalities. The typical household in Germantown, the county’s wealthiest suburb, lives on an income three times that of the typical Memphis household.

The sprawling, low‐density spatial arrangement of the Memphis metropolitan area – an effect of a suburbanizing population – has contributed to the area’s wealth and social disparities. Memphis is an auto‐centric metropolitan area with a high degree of job sprawl.

According to the Brookings Institution, only 12 percent of the metro area’s jobs are located within 3 miles of the central business district, and nearly half are located more than 10 miles from downtown (Kneebone, 2013). Simply put – a decentralized population means decentralized jobs and decentralized travel demand patterns. The Urbanized Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization’s travel demand model indicates travel demand for areas not served by MATA, including Germantown and Desoto County, as well as cross‐ town travel demand for trips not served well by transit (including trips between Hickory Hill and the airport, for example.)

The main driver of the greater Memphis economy is distribution and logistics. Memphis is home to FedEx and claims the world’s second busiest cargo airport and one the country’s largest inland ports. Since 1980, 20 percent of the metro area’s job growth has been in logistics. Related jobs tend to be low‐wage and difficult to access, with many located in warehouses that cluster near an intermodal freight transfer facility in the southeast corner of Memphis that is not well served by transit. The most common Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational category in Memphis is “material mover or hand laborer.” These jobs also require “off‐peak hour” shift times and tend to be coordinated through temp agencies – factors that make it difficult for potential workers to coordinate transportation.

The sprawl of the Memphis area has contributed to another kind of job growth because it has required new retail and service industry employment. These local‐serving industries (which don’t bring new money into an economy or drive economic growth) have represented 47 percent of Memphis job growth since 1980. Two‐thirds of those jobs have been in suburban localities. These patterns have contributed to a spatial mismatch between where low‐income residents live and where jobs are available. (The table in Appendix A shows the top ten block groups for employment in the Memphis MSA.)

Part and parcel with sprawl and the current industrial structure, transportation investments in Memphis have been primarily made to facilitate the movement of goods or cars, with little consideration of pedestrian infrastructure. An inadequate pedestrian environment makes it difficult for transit user to get to stops or to get from stops to final destinations. The warehouse jobs that are prevalent in Memphis exacerbate this problem because such facilities are large, located far from the street, and by their nature create low‐ density environments.

A final impediment to successful transit provision in the context of decentralized jobs is the fact that while MATA is the region’s only transit provider, it remains a local transit authority as opposed to a regional transit authority. This means that all of the local funding for transit operation comes from the City of Memphis, and MATA has no capacity to provide service to suburban areas despite the continuing decentralization of jobs.

What all of this means for the relationship between transportation and financial resilience can be summarized in one statistic: the median income for transit users versus that of drivers. National trends show only slight differences in median income for workers who commute via public transportation versus those who drive to work. (The national median income for driving commuters is about $35,000 compared to $31,000 for transit users.) But in Memphis, a low density, sprawling city, with a heavy reliance on logistics jobs, the earnings gap between transit riders and drivers is vast. Census data from 2012 shows that in the Memphis metro area, the median income of those who relied on public transportation was $16,450 – less than half the median income of those who drove to work ($34,200).

Existing Organizations in the Mix

In addition to MATA, there are three other local organizations to pay attention to in terms of addressing the poverty‐transportation connection.

1.  Memphis Bus Riders Union

The Memphis Bus Riders Union (MRBU) was founded in 2012 as a volunteer advocacy organization focused on promoting equity in transit, with recognition that current bus riders are overwhelmingly minority. The MBRU pushes for better service for current users and promotes policies that focus on the “transit dependent,” rather than the pursuit of “choice riders.” For example, the MBRU recently developed a report recommending improvements to the Hudson Transit Center (north end terminal). The organization is also urging MATA and the City to deprioritize spending on downtown trolleys in favor of a focus on expenditures that serve everyday users, like transit center improvements and repairing or adding bus shelters.

2.  Memphis‐Shelby County Office of Sustainability / Mid‐South Regional Greenprint

The Memphis‐Shelby County Office of Sustainability coordinated the development of the multi‐jurisdictional Mid‐South Regional Greenprint, a plan to create a network of green infrastructure and improve regional sustainability. The planning process included a Bus Transit to Workplace Study, which was prepared by Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates. This study includes recommendations for transit improvements based on employer and commuters surveys. A few key findings of the survey(Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, 2013) are:

About 1 in 3 employers reported transportation challenges for its employees. The majority of employees reported driving to work.

A few employers report offering alternative transportation support programs such as a ride matching program, but most prioritized providing free parking for their employees.

Most employees reported traditional shift times (i.e., weekdays between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM), but many employment centers have round the clock or overnight shifts.

Recommendations from the survey focus on the use of “Transportation Demand Management,” approaches, which will be discussed in the final section of this brief.

3.  Innovate Memphis / Transportation and Mobility Project Manager

The Transportation and Mobility Project Manager has been hired through Innovate Memphis to explore affordable, sustainable transportation choices in Memphis. As a first step, Nelson\Nygaard and Center for Neighborhood Technology prepared a Memphis Mobility Action Plan with “31 small steps” and a Transportation and Mobility Advisory Council was convened. Like the Greenprint Transit to Workplace study, the working recommendations are largely based on Transportation Demand Management.

Things to Consider in Moving Toward Solutions

The final section of this brief offers some general level recommendations. These should be considered as starting points for more detailed exploration and/or as referrals to relevant work that is currently underway in this area.

1.  Make Transportation Central to Economic Development Planning and Policy

Currently, when we think of transportation as it relates to economic development  in

Memphis, we think of the logistics industry and the Aerotropolis concept – transportation as a means of moving packages. But transportation is also what links households to jobs; therefor, improving inadequate mobility and accessibility should be considered essential and central to economic development policy. In fact, the city’s economic dependence on logistics contributes to spatial inefficiency and transit‐to‐work challenges: large warehouses limit density and make it difficult for transit to get users anywhere near the front door, and temp agency work placements and odd shift hours make it difficult for potential workers to plan for transit use.

This recommendation requires a mindset change, since transportation planning is typically considered a separate activity from economic development and since Memphis continues to focus economic development policy and actions on the pursuit of low‐wage logistics jobs. There is evidence of a growing awareness of the importance of accessibility in terms of economic development. The current plan of the city‐county economic development agency, Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), considers spatial efficiency and states that, “In its current form, Metro Memphis is better designed to move products than to move people, and to foster outward growth and development rather than nurture the proximity and connectivity that is the hallmark of the innovation economy.” However the EDGE plan

continues to emphasize logistics and has limited recommendations regarding spatial efficiency, with no recommendations regarding transit. A first step would be to include accessibility as a factor in making decisions regarding PILOTs and other incentives.

2.  Pursue Regional Transit Funding

As noted above, MATA is a local as opposed to regional transit authority. This means that all of the local funding for transit operation comes from the City of Memphis, and MATA has no capacity to provide service to suburban areas despite the continuing decentralizationof jobs. In addition, even within the city, there is no specifically dedicated local funding source for MATA. This is a paralyzing problem. While politically challenging, the creation of a regional, multi‐jurisdictional, dedicated funding source for MATA would improve the reach of transit in the Memphis area and open new employment opportunities for transit dependent residents.

Sales taxes are typically used to create such regional dedicated funding sources, but a campaign could be built around other alternatives as well, including gas taxes, “sin” taxes, etc. A state law created by Tennessee Senate Bill 1471 in 2009 allows for the creation of regional transportation authorities and for the development of dedicated revenue streams, subject to voter approval.

3.  Review and Pilot Select Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Approaches

Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates developed a number of TDM recommendations in their work for the Mid‐South Regional Greenprint and for the Transportation and Mobility Project of the Mayor’s Institute for Excellence in Government. As described in the Greenprint Document, “Introduction to Transportation Demand Management,” TDM actions are designed to reduce (or manage) the number of people who commute by driving alone, and to do so without large infrastructure investments. Implementation of TDM approaches can occur at the local area level, or at the employer level – making area businesses a partner in addressing transportation needs.

Examples of employer‐level TDM approaches include: employer shuttles, employer‐ subsidized transit passes, and parking cash‐outs (e.g., instead of providing “free parking ”to employees, employers can provide a pay incentive to employees who do not require a parking space.”

The Transportation and Mobility Project Manager of Innovate Memphis has convened an Advisory Council to pursue implementation of TDM approaches. These efforts should be supported and institutionalized for the long‐term.

(For more information on the TDM recommendations already developed for Memphis see the Memphis Mobility Action Plan and the Bus Transit to Workplace Study).

4.  Look Beyond the Bus and Fixed‐Route Transit

There is a tendency to think that addressing transportation needs for those in poverty means providing better bus service, but the implied notion that the car is for the middle‐ class and the bus is for the poor is regressive and limits the realm of imagined ­­­­solutions.

Nationally, about 8 percent of metropolitan area workers use transit to get to work. The figure of low‐income workers is not much higher than, at about 10 percent. Poor workers tend to rely on automobiles for the same reasons that middle class workers do – transit is less convenient. This is especially true in cities like Memphis where a lack of density limits transit frequency and traffic congestion is minimal (i.e., below the threshold at which driver would consider transit more convenient).

Substantial research indicates that cars are an important piece of the link between transportation and household financial resiliency. Research by the Brookings Institution provides the following summary:

Numerous scholars find that reliable transportation leads to increased access to employment, higher earnings, and greater employment stability among the poor. The most compelling evidence centers on the positive relationship between access to automobiles and employment rates, hours worked, and mean monthly earnings. Low‐income households are without cars are also more likely to experience unmet food and housing needs and have greater difficulty traveling for medical care (Blumenberg & Waller, 2003, pg. 6).

The most robust recent research on mobility and poverty was conducted by the Urban Institute for Driving to Opportunity (2014). The study examined outcomes among participants who received housing choice vouchers as part of the Moving to Opportunity Fair Housing program or the Welfare to Work Voucher Program. The findings indicate important differences in residential location and employment outcomes between participants who had access to automobiles and those who were transit dependent. Some key points are summarized below:

Families with access to cars found housing in neighborhoods where environmental and social quality consistently and significantly exceeded that of the neighborhoods of households without cars. Especially noteworthy, families with car access felt safer in their neighborhoods and were less likely to live in neighborhoods with high crime rates than those without car access.

Over time, households with automobiles experience less exposure to poverty and are less likely to return to high‐poverty neighborhoods than those without car access.

Among those relocating from their baseline neighborhoods, program participants with access to automobiles moved to areas with lower concentrations of poverty, higher concentrations of employed adults, higher median rents, more owner‐occupied housing, lower vacancy rates, greater access to open space, and lower levels of cancer risk.

Participants with access to automobiles move to neighborhoods with higher levelsof school performance by the time of the final survey.

Keeping or gaining access to automobiles is positively related to the likelihood of employment.

Improved access to public transit is positively associated with maintaining employment but not with transitions to employment.

On earnings, both cars and transit access have a positive effect, though the effect for auto ownership is considerably greater. (Pendall, Hayes, George, McDade, Dawkins, Jeon, etal., 2014, p. ii)

Suggesting strategies that could put more cars on the road is somewhat antithetical to sound planning ideology. However, past planning practices and development patterns have created a system that privileges those with automobiles. It would be inequitable to suggest that the poor carry the burden of planning principles and work their way out of poverty without the same opportunities available to the middle and upper class.

Strategies that fit this approach would include both car sharing programs and programs designed to put ownership of reliable personal vehicles within reach. Car sharing or short‐ term rental services such as ZipCar could provide expanded opportunities for low‐income residents because they require users to pay only for the transportation that they use.

Suggestions regarding expanding access to personal vehicle ownership will require policy change beyond the local level.Researchers with the Urban Institute suggest combining rental housing vouchers with subsidies for automobile purchases as a possible approach to expanding options for low‐ income households.

Current state “vehicle asset limitation” policies related to safety net programs raise the cost of car ownership for the poor, and must also be addressed. In Tennessee, the vehicle asset limit for SNAP and TANF benefits is $4,650. If a household owns a vehicle worth more than that, the value about the limit is counted as a liquid financial asset and eligibility for benefits. Many states have done away with vehicle asset limitation rules after federal policy changes in 1996 allowed more flexibility.

The state’s current policy of suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid criminal court debts creates an impassible barrier for many Memphians.

Finally, programs geared toward supporting personal vehicle ownership, such as must consider issues like reliability, insurance costs, lending practices. Low‐income car buyers might become subject to predatory lending or face subprime rates.

Measuring Change

In order to determine the extent of any progress in addressing the link between transportation and financial resilience, certain indicators can be tracked. The example indicators described below are designed to reflect the problems identified in this policy brief. Some of these will require the creation of baseline data.

1.  The Income Gap Between Transit Commuters and Drivers

In the Memphis metro area, the median income of those who rely on public transportation is currently less than half the median income of those who drive to work. Any improvements to the current fixed‐route transit system should be reflected in a closing of this gap.

2.  Transit Access

Recent analysis by the Brookings Institution found that for the typical Memphis commuter, only 26 percent of metro jobs are reachable by transit in less than 90 minutes, and only 5 percent are reachable in less than 45 minutes. These access figures can serve as benchmarks for future calculations made using the same methodology. Because these metrics include jobs in the entire metro area, improvement here will likely require expansion of the MATA service area and transition from local funding (Memphis‐only) to a dedicated regional funding source.

3.  Percent of Employers and Commuters Who Say Transportation is an Obstacle

The Bus Transit to Workplace study conducted as part of the Mid‐South Regional Greenprint planning process asked employer and commuter survey respondents “Is transportation a challenge,” and “Is transportation an obstacle to work?” As a baseline, 31 percent of employers and 16 percent of commuters said yes. Future surveys can track whether these figures have improved. (Of note: the survey only captured commuters and therefore did not include residents who are not working due to transportation challenges. Future surveys could seek to incorporate this demographic.)

4.  Percent of Time Devoted to Commute Among those in Poverty

Many transit dependent workers currently face long commute times (including multiple transfers) due to spatial mismatch between jobs and housing. Improvements in the fixed‐ route transit, success of TDM strategies, and an increase in access to car ownership would all be reflected in reduced figures here.

5.  Percent of Transit‐Dependent Bus Riders

If TDM strategies are successful, it will be reflected by an increase in bus ridership among commuters who have the option of driving (and a decrease in the percentage of riders who have no other option.)

6.  Transit Deserts

Using the methodology devised by Jiao and Dillivan (2013), baseline data can calculated to benchmark the current extent of “transit deserts” – areas a high number of transit dependent residents coupled with poor transit service – within Memphis.

7.  Percent of Households without a Car

If cars are an important piece of the link between transportation and household financial resiliency, programs designed to help low‐income households increase access to vehicle ownership might be necessary to create equity. This can easily tracked with American Community Survey data.

Litman’s (2015) Evaluating Transportation Equity offers a more thorough summary of approaches to measure transit equity and change.

Conclusion

This assessment of current conditions and general list of ideas to consider in moving toward solutions is based on an external perspective of the problem at hand. Confirming the understanding described here and uncovering more creative solutions will require direct input from Memphis residents who face transportation challenges. This wouldhelp reveal any alternative, informal, “organic” approaches to getting around that might be in use, and whether such approaches could be more effective/efficient at improving mobility in low‐income neighborhoods with the proper support.

Participating households could share their daily travel routines, through focus groups, face‐ to‐face interviews, and daily journals and address questions such as:

Do residents take the bus to work? What happens when they do? Does it get them there efficiently? Do they have to make multiple transfers? Does the bus stop a reasonable distance from their actual origin or destination? Do they feel secure?

What about residents who own a car? Are reliability issues and maintenance expenses an issue? What about the cost of gas and insurance?
Can residents bike or walk to where they need to be?

What are the informal alternatives? A neighbor with a car? A car shared by multiple family members? Etc. What policy solutions can be implemented to support these approaches?

A traditional data‐only approach to policy tends to lead to a one‐size fits all set of solutions and misses important nuances. These community conversations would help avoid suchan outcome. Mobility and accessibility challenges faced by low‐income residents are not the same everywhere. Letting residents tell their own stories can reveal appropriate solutions.

 

Works Cited

Blumenberg, E., & Waller, M. (2003). The long journey to work: A federal transportation policy for working families. Brookings Institution.

Bouchard, M. (2015, May 15). Transportation Emerges as Key to Escaping Poverty. The New York Times, p. A3.

Florida, R. (2014, March 18). The U.S. cities with the highest levels of income segregation. Retrieved May 3, 2014, from Atlantic CITYLAB: http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/03/us‐cities‐highest‐levels‐income‐ segregation/8632/

Jiao, J., & Dillivan, M. (2013). Transit deserts: The gap between demand and supply. Journal of Public Transportation,16 (3), 23‐39.

Kneebone, E. (2013). Job sprawl stall: The great recession and metropolitan employment location. Metropolitan Opportunity Series, Brookings Institution.

Litman, T. (2015). Evaluating transportation equity. World Transport Policy & Practice,8 (2), 50‐65.

Litman, T. (2010). Measuring transportation: Traffic, mobility, and accessibility. ITE Journal

, 73 (10), 28‐32.

Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates. (2013). Bus Transit to Workplace.

Pendall, R., Hayes, C., George, A., McDade, Z., Dawkins, C., Jeon, J., et al. (2014). Driving to opportunity: Understanding the links among transportation access, residential outcomes, and economic opportunity for housing voucher recipients. Urban Institute.

Tomer, A., & Kane, J. (2014). Car remains kings and barrier to economic opportunity. Brookings Institution.

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