Low-income households commonly lack access to quality and affordable transportation options, impeding their access to opportunities. Low-income households with children face additional challenges. We draw on data from thirty-nine in-depth interviews to examine the effect of children on the travel behavior and experience of low-income adults. We find that low-income households with children experience increased financial and temporal burdens related to travel. These unique and complex challenges result in fewer socioeconomic opportunities and financial resources and reduced time for non-travel activities. The findings underscore the importance of programs and policies to develop a multimodal, affordable transportation safety net.

School choice offers families an opportunity for children to attend schools other than those they are zoned to by residential location. Most families live beyond walking distance to choice schools, so vehicular transportation is needed to attend. Yet, most choice programs have not been designed with such access in mind, and most school bus programs are designed only for neighborhood schools. Such diminished access for children in households without cars presents an equity issue. This study examines the relationship between household transportation resources—automobiles, transit, and walkability—and the likelihood that children attend a choice school. We match data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey California Add-On with school characteristics to identify the school each respondent ages 5–17 attends and the school to which school districts zoned them. We then fit a model that predicts choice of school type: neighborhood zone public, choice public, or private. Controlling for student, household, transportation, neighborhood, and assigned zone school characteristics, a student in a household with at least one vehicle had more than double the predicted probability of attending a choice public school compared with a student in a zero-vehicle household. The difference in predicted probabilities grew for students who were low-income, non-white, or zoned to low-performing schools. Living in neighborhoods with high-quality public transit access or high walkability did not affect the probabilities. These findings underscore the importance of transportation resources in enabling families to send their children to schools that best fit their needs.

Problem, research strategy, and findings Transportation agencies have historically focused on public transit as the solution to the mobility barriers facing low-income travelers. Transit is an essential service for those who do not own automobiles, but studies show it often fails to meet the travel needs of the poor. The Los Angeles (CA) Mobility Wallet Pilot Program is a novel approach to addressing this issue. The program provided low-income recipients with resources to spend flexibly on a variety of shared transportation services. In this study, we draw on interviews with 31 participants before, during, and after the 1-year pilot program to understand the effect of the mobility wallet on their travel behavior and quality of life. The findings are promising: increased travel frequency, decreased material hardship and stress, improved social connections, feelings of independence and autonomy, and improved wellbeing. The results suggest an important role for flexible, demand-side transportation subsidies in meeting the diverse transportation needs of low-income travelers.Takeaway for practice When seeking to achieve transportation equity, planners should recognize the value in adopting policies and programs, such as a mobility wallet, that allow travelers to take advantage of a variety of modes to meet their individual and household needs.

Historically, U.S. transportation policy efforts to meet the needs of those facing transportation insecurity focus on public transit supply. However, the provision of public transit alone has largely kept such travellers at a disadvantage in accessing opportunities. A growing number of U.S. agencies have begun to promote the notion of Universal Basic Mobility (UBM), a mode-agnostic concept that emphasises individuals' right to the mobility sufficient to meet their daily needs. In this review, we draw on the literature on social policy formation, previous transportation policy efforts, and theories of transportation and mobility justice to reflect on UBM and its potential. The research suggests three essential elements: (1) a recognition that mobility, or freedom of movement, is essential for human well-being; (2) the targeting of resources toward those disproportionately suffering from transportation insecurity; and (3) the inclusion of both supply and demand components to enable individuals to take advantage of the transportation services that best meet their travel needs. In so doing, UBM has the potential to avoid the shortcomings of previous transportation policy efforts - in the U.S. and elsewhere - and to significantly improve transportation outcomes for those most in need.

The percentage of people who work from home (WFH) skyrocketed with the onset of Covid-19. Today, many workers continue to WFH, either completely or a few days a week. One reason for the popularity of WFH is a desire to minimize the commute and its associated costs in time, money, discomfort, and danger. In fact, workers with longer commutes should theoretically receive “compensating differentials” of benefits from their employers that offset their high commute costs. That said, working at a workplace may have advantages, such as stronger connections to coworkers and supervisors, better chances to learn on the job, and improved opportunities for career advancement. Using European Social Survey data, we examine whether commute durations are associated with workers’ perceptions of their job characteristics and desirability, as well as their happiness, or “subjective well-being.” We find that, among those who commute, commute duration is unrelated to wages, job satisfaction, and overall subjective well-being. Workers who WFH report more freedom in setting hours, but face greater stress at work, more work at night, and longer hours, the latter of which may exceed the time they save by not having to commute. Importantly, people who WFH tend to report being more satisfied with their jobs, as well as being well-connected to coworkers and supervisors and having a good chance for professional advancement. Employers and society should work to accommodate WFH with such steps as developing team-building strategies for WFH workers, addressing the “digital divide” where some workers may lack at-home information and communications technology, and adapting cities to WFH, for example by facilitating the conversion of office space to other uses and accommodating the need for more spacious homes.

In the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced rapid job growth (17% from 2002 to 2015). Employment growth greatly exceeded housing production, resulting in rising housing prices. The mismatch between jobs and housing potentially contributed to an increase in commute distance, as workers relocated to outlying neighborhoods in search of affordable housing. In this paper, the authors analyze changes in commute distance over time, with a focus on the spatial location of employment and, in particular, downtown job growth. They find that commute distance increased slightly between 2002 and 2015 throughout the Bay Area (from 17.2 to 17.8 mi.), with the greatest increase among workers in job centers located in outlying parts of the region (from 19.1 to 20.8 mi.). Increases in census tract jobs was by far the strongest predictor of commute distance increase, though this overall relationship in the region was likely moderated by the increase in employment in downtown San Francisco (44%) where, all else being equal, workers travel shorter distances (14.4 mi. in 2002 and 15.4 mi. in 2015) relative to other workers. This relationship may be due to the demographic composition of San Francisco residents: high-wage, young, single workers who are able to afford high-priced housing close to downtown. A better balance between jobs and housing would allow workers the option of self-selecting into neighborhoods closer to their jobs, underscoring the importance of policies to spur housing production in high-cost metropolitan areas.

Homelessness continues to grow and to affect the lives of an increasingly diverse group of individuals. Many scholars have studied people living in homeless shelters and outdoors in tents. An overlooked population is the growing number of the unhoused living in vehicles. We draw on data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's Homeless Demographic Survey to understand the characteristics of people living in vehicles and the extent to which they differ from the nonvehicular unhoused population. Compared to those living in tents, in makeshift shelters, and in public spaces, people living in vehicles are more likely to be women and to live in larger households with children, and are less likely to be chronically unhoused. These findings will help effectively target policies and services. Safe parking programs can provide temporary relief to those living in vehicles and, if done well, the interventions necessary to transition into permanent housing.

Most U.S. metropolitan areas developed alongside the automobile, producing neighborhoods of relatively low density. Consequently, access to opportunities in these neighborhoods is predicated on having an automobile, yet many households do not have the resources to purchase one outright, relying on automobile loans to spread out the purchase price. While automobile loans can enable automobile ownership, they also significantly increase the vehicle purchase price, particularly for non-white consumers subject to discriminatory lending practices.In this study, we rely on data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel from Experian to examine the determinants and geography of automobile debt and its consequences in California, testing whether various automobile debt measures disproportionately affect non-white neighborhoods.We find that, controlling for other factors associated with automobile lending including income, Black and Latino/a neighborhoods have higher total automobile debt, debt burdens (debt relative to income), and automobile loan delinquency rates. In particular, Latino/a neighborhoods shoulder significant automobile debt, while borrowers in Black neighborhoods have the highest delinquency rates. Factors associated with lower total automobile debt and automobile debt burden include better credit ratings, higher residential densities, urban locations, and proximity to rail stations.The findings underscore the importance of policies to offset the costs of automobile ownership and access. As part of this, policymakers should adopt and enforce fair lending rules to combat discriminatory and predatory practices and facilitate access to high-quality financial institutions and products in communities of color.

Child care is essential infrastructure. Without child care—or without adequate access to child care—parents and household caregivers are unable to work or conduct other critical activities, which can adversely affect their outcomes. In the U.S., child care supply has long fallen short of demand, with variations across neighborhoods that differ by income, race, and ethnicity. Yet there is relatively little research on child care access, use, and travel. In this study, we test the relationship between formal child care supply and households' use of formal care and home-to-child-care travel distances in California. Using a two-step floating catchment area method, we develop a time-weighted spatial measure of child care access and apply this measure in statistical models to predict two outcome measures: the likelihood of making a home-to-child-care trip and travel distance to the child care center, controlling for other factors. We find that child care access is associated with an increased likelihood of using formal child care—and among households that use such care, access is associated with shorter travel distances. Our analysis underscores the importance of policies to address spatial barriers to child care, particularly in neighborhoods—low-income, Latinx, non-urban—where child care supply is limited.

COVID-19 altered travel patterns in the U.S. Studies have analyzed the effect of the pandemic on travel mode, including working from home, but few have focused on automobile ownership—a relationship with potentially long-term consequences for accessibility, household budgets and debt, and policy efforts to meet climate goals.To understand the association between the pandemic and automobile ownership, we rely on a unique credit panel dataset from Experian and examine three different automobile loan-related outcome measures: annualized growth rate of new automobile loan balances, average new loan size, and the number of new loans. We focus specifically on changes across loans in neighborhoods by race/ethnicity, hypothesizing larger increases in automobile debt in Black and Latino/a neighborhoods, where workers are less likely to be able to telework. The annualized growth rate of new automobile loans increased during the pandemic across all neighborhoods by race/ethnicity, increasing most rapidly in Latino/a neighborhoods. Controlling for other factors, loan size increased similarly across neighborhoods by race/ethnicity. The increase in automobile lending in Latino/a neighborhoods, therefore, likely was explained by a significant uptick in the number of new loans.The growth in automobile lending during the pandemic was potentially prompted by pandemic-induced changes in the need for automobiles and facilitated by an expanded social safety net. As the pandemic and its various forms of public financial assistance recede, the findings underscore the importance of ongoing assistance in enabling automobile ownership or shared access among households with limited means whose livelihoods depend on the access that vehicles provide.

Problem, research strategy, and findingsCarsharing programs-subscription-based car rentals-allow users to purchase only the automobility that they need. These programs may benefit low-income travelers by increasing access at lower prices than private auto ownership. Most carshare programs, however, disproportionately serve higher-income drivers. To assess carsharing's potential to address the accessibility needs of disadvantaged households, we interviewed members of BlueLA, an electric carsharing program in central Los Angeles (CA) that offers both subsidized and regular memberships. We found few differences in how travelers with different membership types used BlueLA. They both used the service to complement travel by other modes like public transit and ridehail. In addition, members cited the benefits of gaining car access without the financial burden of car ownership or the unpredictability of ridehail fares. Neighborhood context, including residential density and the availability of non-automobile transportation options, also increased BlueLA's appeal. However, due to limited and unreliable vehicle availability, most users did not rely on BlueLA for time-sensitive trips. BlueLA both eased and increased access to destinations outside of the commute and complemented public transit for subsidized and regular members.Takeaway for practiceServices like BlueLA cannot meet all transportation needs. However, subsidized electric carsharing-particularly targeted to central-city neighborhoods-may address some accessibility needs of low-income households without imposing the burdens of automobile ownership.

Child care travel is differentiated by sex: who makes such trips shapes the mode and distance to child care in relation to home and, for working parents, to jobs. To better understand the relationship between sex and child care travel, we analyze child care trips in California by sex while controlling for a variety of demographic and socio-economic factors. We find women are responsible for over 70% of all child care trips. Though most child care trips are taken by automobile, women are more likely to walk kids to child care centers than men. We also find that households choose child care centers that are closer to home than workplaces.

Since 1993, eighteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing unauthorized immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses. California is one of these states, passing the Safe and Responsible Drive Act (AB 60) in 2013. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the adoption of state driver’s licensing laws for unauthorized immigrants and commute mode—the likelihood of commuting by private vehicle, solo driving, and public transit. We focus on unauthorized Latin American immigrants in California, but also test the robustness of our models both by using additional samples from other states and by employing alternate modeling approaches. We find that AB 60 had a small positive effect on driving rates among unauthorized Latin American immigrants in California, but little or no effect in states outside of California. Results also show a decline in the rate of commuting by public transit after AB 60’s implementation. This drop, however, was modest, and only accounted for a small portion of the larger transit ridership declines in California prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study provides baseline data on the status of the racial/ethnic and gender diversity of the transit agency workforce in the U.S. and identifies potential barriers and promising practices for diversifying this workforce. Public transit agencies function best when the diversity of their workforce represents the communities they serve, yet previous research finds an underrepresentation of women and minorities in senior and managerial roles, along with an overconcentration of men and workers of color—particularly Black workers—in operational roles (e.g., drivers, janitors). The study updates those earlier studies with newer data drawn from five discrete research tasks: 1) review of the scholarly and professional literature on the topic; 2) review of the websites of the 50 largest transit operators; 3) analysis of employee demographic data submitted by 152 transit operators as part of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) program plans; 4) analysis of responses to an original survey sent to the human resources personnel of transit agencies (92 responses from staff at 68 agencies), and 5) interviews with 12 professionals selected for their expertise in transportation workforce diversity monitoring, management, and/or advocacy.

While patronage on most public transit systems around the world remains modestly to significantly depressed post-pandemic, transit ridership had mostly been declining across the US since 2014. Advocates, practitioners, and scholars have offered a range of explanations for pre-pandemic patronage decline. This analysis examines the demand-side of this phenomenon by focusing on high-propensity transit riders, and, in particular, immigrants in the most populous US state: California. Drawing on the California add-on to the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys, we evaluate changes in transit use among Hispanic and Asian immigrants. We find that during the study period, transit trip frequency of Hispanic immigrants declined, converging toward the ridership patterns of US-born Hispanics. While this trend was largely the result of rising incomes, increased vehicle ownership, and lower residential densities among non-US-born Hispanics, all else equal, Hispanic immigrants continued to use transit more than their US-born counterparts. By contrast, transit trip making by Asian immigrants diverged from that of US-born Asians. Notably, this divergence was not the result of declining per-person trip making by Asian immigrants, which was relatively stable during the study period. Instead, the growing gap was due to increases in transit trip frequency by US-born Asians.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the affordable housing crisis is forcing households in large, primarily coastal U.S. metropolitan areas to seek lower cost housing in peripheral neighborhoods distant from downtown, helping to explain recent increases in commute distance. In this study we examine whether the relative availability of housing in close proximity to jobs (jobs-housing balance) is associated with the commute distance of young workers (workers under 30), many of whom are relatively new to the labor market. We draw on data from two high-cost metropolitan areas in California, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. We find that commute distances are longer for both younger and older adults in neighborhoods where there are more jobs relative to housing. Despite the growing affordable housing crisis in the state, the strength of this relationship did not change over time in either region. However, as we might expect, jobs-housing balance is more strongly associated with commute distance in the San Francisco Bay Area—where housing is more constrained and expensive—than in Los Angeles. The findings suggest the importance of policies to greatly enhance housing availability in high-cost metropolitan areas. They also underscore the need to go beyond housing policy in efforts to significantly increase access to employment and reduce travel.

Problem, research strategy, and findings Shelter is a necessity, yet approximately 17 out of every 10,000 people in the United States are unhoused. Public attention to homelessness has centered on individuals sitting and sleeping in public spaces. However, as many as 50% of the unsheltered live in vehicles. For people sleeping in vehicles, finding a safe place to park is an ongoing challenge, further complicated by the growing number of ordinances restricting vehicular dwelling. We drew on point-in-time count data from the Los Angeles (CA) Homeless Services Authority to examine spatial patterns of vehicular homelessness in Los Angeles from 2016 to 2020. We tested the relationship between the presence of vehicle regulations and the number of people sleeping in vehicles. Although the data likely underestimated vehicular homelessness, we found that ordinances directly reduced the number of people living in vehicles in particular census tracts. On average, cities with citywide and overnight bans had greater impacts on people sleeping in vehicles than cities with less restrictive ordinances. However, the indirect effects in neighboring tracts were stronger and demonstrate the role of these ordinances in simply shifting the vehicular homeless between areas.Takeaway for practice Given the slow pace of delivering permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness, cities should reduce the harm and precariousness of living in vehicles. Strategies to do this include the reform of punitive vehicle towing and vehicle dwelling regulations. Safe parking programs can provide individuals with a safe place to park their vehicles at night, offer ancillary services, and deter harassment from neighborhood residents and the police. Longer term, transformative change will require additional policies and programs to place people into permanently affordable housing.

Researchers and policymakers often attempt to forecast trends in automobile ownership. But to understand recent changes in demand for cars, researchers must account for behaviors specific to different generations, while simultaneously controlling for the influence of lifecycle and historical effects. To overcome the analytical challenges of cross-sectional data in Age-Period-Cohort (APC) analysis, we apply three different approaches largely used by biostatisticians to isolate how cohort effects influence the likelihood that a U.S. adult lives in a zero-vehicle household.Our analyses draw on data from the U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) from 1970 to 2019. To test for cohort effects, we use constraint-based binary logistic regression, a nonlinear parametric approach to log-linear models, and median polish analysis. We find that people born from 1935 to 1944 experienced the strongest negative cohort effect of all groups, and thus were least likely to live in zero-vehicle households (after accounting for age and period effects). Compared to this cohort, persons born before 1924 and after 1955 saw higher likelihoods of living in zero-vehicle households, all else equal.The peak cohort effect of people born in the 1930s to 1940s may please those interested in reducing automobile use. But because automobiles offer access benefits, more recent cohorts may experience transportation challenges. Negative effects may be especially salient for Millennials, a group faring worse economically than previous generations. Further, recent changes in the transportation landscape – including the growth of services like carshare and ride-hail and behavioral changes emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic – complicate efforts to forecast demand for automobiles.