The Travel Behavior and Needs of the Poor: A Study of Welfare Recipients in Fresno County, California, MTI Report 01-23

The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 fundamentally transformed the provision of social assistance in the United States. Gone is Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a program that entitled needy families with children to an array of benefits and public services. In its place is Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a program that abolishes federal entitlements, provides flexible block grants to the states, mandates tough new work requirements, and imposes a five-year lifetime limit on the receipt of public assistance. Current welfare programs mandate employment for most recipients and offer temporary financial aid and short-term employment assistance to help recipients transition into the labor market. As a result of this fundamental restructuring of the U.S. welfare system, millions of welfare recipients are required to enter the paid labor market. Public agencies must establish programs to transition recipients into the labor market or risk dramatic increases in poverty rates. A growing number of studies suggest that reliable transportation-whether automobiles or public transit-is essential to linking welfare participants to employment opportunities. The purpose of this study is to: Understand the travel behavior of welfare participants; Examine strategies by which welfare participants overcome their transportation barriers; Identify the transportation needs of welfare participants living in the Central Valley; Examine the relationship between access to reliable transportation and employment status; and Develop a set of policy and planning recommendations to improve the transportation options of welfare recipients and other low-wage workers living in smaller, more rural, metropolitan areas

Getting Around When You’re Just Getting By: The Travel Behavior and Transportation Expenditures of Low-Income Adults, MTI Report 10-02

How much do people with limited resources pay for cars, public transit, and other means of travel? How does their transportation behavior change during periods of falling employment and rising fuel prices? This research uses in-depth interviews with 73 adults to examine how rising transportation costs impact low-income families. The interviews examine four general areas of interest: travel behavior and transportation spending patterns; the costs and benefits of alternative modes of travel; cost management strategies; and opinions about the effect of changing transportation prices on travel behavior. Key findings include: Most low-income household are concerned about their transportation costs. Low-income individuals actively and strategically manage their household resources in order to survive on very limited means and to respond to changes in income or transportation costs. In making mode-choice decisions, low-income travelers—like higher-income travelers—carefully evaluate the costs of travel (time and out-of-pocket expenses) against the benefits of each of the modes. Some low-income individuals in our sample were willing to endure higher transportation expenditures—such as the costs of auto ownership or congestion tolls—if they believed that they currently benefit or would potentially benefit from these increased expenses. Although low-income households find ways to cover their transportation expenditures, many of these strategies had negative effects on households. The report concludes with recommendations on how to increase transportation affordability, minimize the impact that new transportation taxes or fees have on low-income people, and develop new research and data collection to support the previous two efforts

Auto-Deficit Households: Determinants, Travel Behavior, and the Gender Division of Household Car Use

To explore the characteristics of car-deficit households, researchers at UCLA examined California household travel survey data.Their findings can inform discussions on the factors that lead to car-deficit households, the mobility outcomes of car-deficit households, and the role of gender in access to household vehicles. Planners and policymakers can use these findings to better accommodate car-deficit households in the transportation system

What’s Behind Recent Transit Ridership Trends in the Bay Area? Volume I: Overview and Analysis of Underlying Factors

Public transit ridership has been falling nationally and in California since 2014. The San Francisco Bay Area, with the state’s highest rates of transit use, had until recently resisted those trends, especially compared to Greater Los Angeles. However, in 2017 and 2018 the region lost over five percent (>27 million) of its annual riders, despite a booming economy and service increases. This report examines Bay Area transit ridership to understand the dimensions of changing transit use, its possible causes, and potential solutions. We find that: 1) the steepest ridership losses have come on buses, at off-peak times, on weekends, in non-commute directions, on outlying lines, and on operators that do not serve the region’s core employment clusters; 2) transit trips in the region are increasingly commute-focused, particularly into and out of downtown San Francisco; 3) transit commuters are increasingly non-traditional transit users, such as those with higher incomes and automobile access; 4) the growing job-housing imbalance in the Bay Area is related to rising housing costs and likely depressing transit ridership as more residents live less transit-friendly parts of the region; and 5) ridehail is substituting for some transit trips, particularly in the off-peak. Arresting falling transit use will likely require action both by transit operators (to address peak capacity constraints; improve off-peak service; ease fare payments; adopt fare structures that attract off-peak riders; and better integrate transit with new mobility options) and public policymakers in other realms (to better meter and manage private vehicle use and to increase the supply and affordability of housing near job centers)

Planning for the Transportation Needs of Welfare Participants: Institutional Challenges to Collaborative Planning

The responsibility for developing transportation programs for welfare participants spans multiple public agencies. Consequently, federal funding programs require that agencies work together to develop a coordinated response to addressing the transportation needs of welfare participants. Based on a survey of transportation, welfare and employment agencies in 19 California counties, this study examines the potential institutional obstacles to successful local collaboration and coordination among public agencies. The research shows that new sources of federal funds have encouraged interagency efforts to address the transportation needs of welfare participants. However, the divergent organizational goals, methods, and approaches of the participating agencies heavily influence these collaborative efforts. As a consequence, stakeholders may have difficulty moving beyond the narrow interests of their individual institutions to identify and plan for the transportation needs of welfare participants.&nbsp

Moving In and Moving Around: Immigrants, Travel Behavior, and Implications for Transport Policy

Despite the size and growth of the immigrant population in the U.S., only a handful of scholars have studied the travel behavior of immigrants and its impact on our nation’s roads, highways, and transit systems. Yet immigration has affected and will continue to affect our transportation infrastructure significantly. In particular, the data suggest that immigration has contributed to increased travel across all transportation modes, the growth in transit commuters, and a shift in the demographic composition of transit riders. These trends have implications for congestion, the future of transit ridership, and opportunities to better address the travel needs of immigrants