Public Transit – “It’s just another barrier to self-sufficiency”

[MRipley]

Program drives up access to vehicles for low-income households

By Robert Vitale

The Columbus Dispatch

Friday July 27, 2012 5:42 AM

Lost in all the talk about “alternative transportation” is the fact that getting around is especially difficult when buses, bikes and your own two feet are the only alternatives. So while Columbus officials, health experts and biking and transit advocates push for people with cars to leave them parked once in a while, another local group is helping carless Franklin County residents finally achieve the option to drive.

READ MORE: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/07/27/program-drives-up-access-to-vehicles.html

[lifeontwowheels]

Lest anything I say be taken out of context, misinterpreted or dicked with: this is actually pretty good. I agree not everyone can use transit, bikes or their own feet to access jobs. I think one concern is that, while they are promoting financial education to assist those in need to budget for maintenance, an $800 emergency car repair is going to push someone already on the edge right over it. It’ll be interesting to see what this program does long term.

Interesting bit from the article:

A 2011 study by the Brookings Institution found that 7 percent of central Ohio households had no car and that nearly 80 percent of those households were classified as low-income. Another study released this month by the Washington, D.C.-based policy-research group found that, though [b]70 percent of jobs in the Columbus area are accessible by public transit[/b], 73 percent of people would need to ride the bus for at least 90 minutes to get to them.

It seems with the right changes mid to long term, our transit system could provide a greater degree of self sufficiency rather than being a “barrier”. Programs like this are great short term to cover the existing gap.

[rus]

Despite its efforts to get people to drive less, officials with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission say they fully support the effort to help people get their own cars.

“Sometimes the only way you can have access to a job is to have a car,” said Kerstin Carr, the commission’s manager of active transportation and safety programs.

[Walker Evans]

Sounds like a good group doing good work.

Cars absolutely provide self-sufficiency for those with long commutes to work and difficult tasks to accomplish by bike, walking or public transit.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a statement that can be applied to all forms of public transit or public transit riders though, as the OP seems to be attempting to do. I don’t think that people who ride the subway in Manhattan or London or Tokyo are all necessarily less self sufficient compared to the people in those cities who drive.

[rus]

Walker said:
I don’t think that people who ride the subway in Manhattan or London or Tokyo are all necessarily less self sufficient compared to the people in those cities who drive.

At the same time, we’re not Manhattan, London or Tokyo.

[Walker Evans]

I didn’t say we were.

[Walker Evans]

Nobody said that we were…

[rus]

Walker said:
Nobody said that we were…

Which is good, since advocating something that works there ignores local differences in environment.

[cheap]

Walker said:
I don’t think that people who ride the subway in Manhattan or London or Tokyo are all necessarily less self sufficient compared to the people in those cities who drive.

rus said:
At the same time, we’re not Manhattan, London or Tokyo.

Walker said:
Nobody said that we were…

[geoyui]

rus said:
Which is good, since advocating something that works there ignores local differences in environment.

I think you can find a city closer in size and environment that has plenty of drivers as well as utilize mass transit systems. Pittsburgh and Charlotte come to mind.

[bucki12]

I think this is great.

[Tom Over]

No offense intended to anyone here, but suggest proponents of public transit spend more of our time and energy on helping to bring it to fruition and less, if any of it, on engaging in seemingly endless debates with those who seem to have presupposed positions about why it can’t or shouldn’t be done.

[ehill27]

:)

(like the 4 or 5 people on CU who spend their day looking for transit stories to crap on).

[MRipley]

Walker said:
Sounds like a good group doing good work.

Cars absolutely provide self-sufficiency for those with long commutes to work and difficult tasks to accomplish by bike, walking or public transit.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a statement that can be applied to all forms of public transit or public transit riders though, as the OP seems to be attempting to do. I don’t think that people who ride the subway in Manhattan or London or Tokyo are all necessarily less self sufficient compared to the people in those cities who drive.

From the article:

Christopher Jones, the Impact Community Action’s financial literacy manager, said that fact makes it more difficult for people who work two jobs to make ends meet, work and go to school, take children to day care or take care of their families. Relying solely on public transit makes it harder to work overtime, take shifts that begin or end when service is infrequent, or transfer to better opportunities in new locations.

Why would someone in Manhattan or London or Tokyo with those same situations (two jobs, work/school, day-care, shift-work, overtime, etc) find it any easier to rely on public transit?

[Walker Evans]

MRipley said:
Why would someone in Manhattan or London or Tokyo with those same situations (two jobs, work/school, day-care, shift-work, overtime, etc) find it any easier to rely on public transit?

I didn’t say that they would.

I’m saying that if you’re attempting to make a big blanket statement for all people across all types of public transit, it’s just not true.

Does the single guy in a suit with a nice job who ride the subway to work in any of those cities fall in line with the statement about self-sufficiency? Of course not.

[Author]

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