2 NATION’S CITIES WEEKLY
May 30, 2011
COLUMNIST
Public Transit, Access to Jobs: Escaping Our ‘Exit
Ramp’ Economy
by Neal Peirce
Are we ready for a “transit
moment” in America?
There’s no question about transit demand — the share of
Americans opting for local bus or rail, while still small com-
pared to car use, now tops 10 billion trips a year.
exit ramp economy,” distances
becoming so long that “com-
muting has become a heroic act”
with people obliged to reach jobs
ever-farther from their homes.
There’s no question about
transit demand — the share of
Americans opting for local bus
or rail, while still small com-
pared to car use, now tops 10
billion trips a year. Public trans-
portation demand grew in the
last decade for the first time,
literally, in generations.
The turnaround was driven
not just by longer commutes but
by ugly traffic congestion along
the way. Plus aversion to higher
gas costs. As well as people’s
increasing interest in transit for
education, shopping, recreation
and health care — trends sure to
increase as the retiree segment of
the population balloons in the
next years.
Officially, transit serves many
parts of our metro areas — on
average, 94 percent of cities
proper, 58 percent in suburbs.
But whether that transit oper-
ates well enough for commut-
ing trips is another question.
Overall, Brookings found, the
typical metropolitan resident
can reach only 30 percent of jobs
in the metro region — and that
allows for a transit ride of up to
90 minutes.
Ninety minutes is a figure
middle-class folks would recoil
at. But it may be the only choice
for many low-income workers,
many so pinched that they’re
obliged to spend over 50 per-
cent of their budgets on housing
alone.
So where do we go from
here? It’s time, says Puentes,
for metros “to grow smart and
align transport, housing, land
and economic policy.”
Some ways to do that come
clear from the Brookings study
— unprecedented and massive,
covering 100 metros, 371 transit
providers and 500 gigabytes of
data. Some regions do substan-
tially better than others in con-
necting workers to jobs. And it’s
not just a function of the size of
transit budgets, modes of tran-
sit or total miles. The equally
big issue is how a region is laid
out — and how it has grown in
recent years.
By this measure, metros in
the Western states, on average,
score highest in the share of
working-age residents with job
access by transit. The Northeast
and Midwestern metros come
in next. And the South, which
has boasted of its big job gains
of recent decades, comes in last.
Neal Peirce’s e-mail address is
nrp@citistates.com.
© 2011, The Washington
Post Writers Group
The opinions expressed in this
column are not necessarily those of
the National League of Cities or
Nation’s Cities Weekly.
The National League of Cities
keeps you connected to the
information you need now!
Facebook.com/NationalLeagueofCities (Friend Us)
Twitter.com/leagueofcities (Follow Us)
Citiesspeak.org (Blog with Us)
NLC.org| NLCTV.org
Nation’s Cities Weekly
Volume 34 Number 21 | ISSN 0164-5935 | May 30, 2011
Official publication of the National League of Cities
Helping City Leaders Build Better Communities
Donald J. Borut, Executive Director
Publisher: Donald J. Borut; Editor: Amy Elsbree; Managing Editor:
Cyndy Liedtke Hogan; Coordinator, Editorial Services: Laura Turner
Advertising Information: Contact Laura Turner at the National League
of Cities; Phone: 202-626-3040;
