When poor people can’t get on due to lack of public transport

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/26/los-angeles-social-mobility-lack-public-transport

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If I mention using buses or the LA metro to get around in the city, the reaction from friends and acquaintances will be something like: “Wow, you use public transport?” Or in jest: “There’s a metro?” In a city notorious for its car-dependency and clogged freeways, this reflects how people value their cars and are correspondingly reluctant to use public transport, but beneath the surface there’s something else going on.

When you use public transport in LA, it is impossible not to notice that unlike say, London’s tube or some other US cities’ provision, it’s not so much a network as a patchy attempt at one, which is overwhelmingly occupied by people on low incomes and the working poor. What is also evident is that, imperfect as it may be, buses and the underground nevertheless provide a vital artery to what society offers beyond poorer parts of town. LA is one of many US cities currently confronting the impact of deficient public transport. There is an argument to be made that if transport systems were better all round then a wider variety of people would use them, but for someone from a disadvantaged community, access to affordable, reliable buses and trains can be the difference between getting to a job or not, or being able to take advantage of education opportunities that might aid social mobility.

Without good transit for the less-advantaged, opportunity will pass them by, like overcrowded buses on a winter day.

In her new book Move: Putting America’s infrastructure back in the lead, Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter attempts to parse some of the daunting challenges facing people trying to get from A to B. One area she highlights is the link between public transport and inequality. The book refers to a selection of uncomfortable truths that illustrate modern America’s ailing infrastructure, ranging from bridge collapses and rail disasters to a chronic lack of functioning public transport options. It puts a timely spotlight on social justice. “The poor are often stuck in urban neighborhoods with the fewest transportation options for getting to jobs, childcare, healthcare, and … that makes it harder for them to climb out of poverty and exacerbates inequality,” Moss Kanter writes. “Without adequate transit for the less-advantaged, opportunity will tend to pass them by, like overcrowded buses on a cold winter day.”

It isn’t only urban areas where public transport is a factor in poverty. In the US, despite federal subsidies, non-urban transport options have been hit hard since the recession of 2008 while in Britain cuts to bus services and budgets, along with fare increases over the past few years have left many in rural areas vulnerable with limited services.

With the numbers using public transport in the US at their highest in 50 years, how and who uses it has come increasingly to the fore. For Moss Kanter, there is a hidden economic value of improving access to transport for poorer communities. “The case for public transit is not that it makes money from operating the service; it generally doesn’t, and even earn-as-you-operate services can be highly subsidised by taxpayers,” she argues. “What matters are the other benefits. Public transit is worth a great deal to a city.”

When half of the top 20 cities for “intergenerational social and economic mobility” are also half of the top 20 cities for public transit, she points out, making the connection between how one aids the other and establishing how they fit into possible future planning would be to everyone’s advantage.

“There is evidence that where public transit is better it’s also more likely that in those same areas people are going to be able to rise out of poverty over a generation,” she tells me.

When Moss Kanter wonders how it can be good for the individual or the economy if simply getting to and from somewhere on a daily basis can be so unnecessarily onerous she’s absolutely right. People with limited income may have limited options but where there are high concentrations of poverty there are many ways to mitigate this and public transport is certainly one of them.