Transportation Reports:
The Suburbs and Job Access
Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America This May 2011 report takes a detailed look at transit coverage and connectivity across and within the nation’s major metro areas. The results of the analysis by the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution find several major trends with implications for policy leaders at all levels.
First Suburbs. The Brookings Institution released
a major report detailing the public policy challenges facing
the nation's older, inner-ring suburban communities, where one-fifth
of the nation's population now resides. The report addresses a number
of transportation issues, including improving transit for an aging
population, modernization of infrastructure, and fiscal policy.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH)
made remarks on the federal role in improving First Suburbs at an
event for the report's public release. Brooking
Institution Report: "One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide
to America's First Suburbs"
Brookings
Report on Access to Jobs in an Auto-Oriented World
An August 2003 report, "The Long Journey to Work: A Federal
Transportation Policy for Working Families" by Margy Waller
and Evelyn Bumenberg of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy
at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. focuses on the
transportation needs of low-income workers. The report finds that
low-income individuals face numerous challenges when trying to travel
to work in areas without fast, reliable transportation systems.
The authors argue that in most cities automobiles still represent
the fastest and most reliable mode of transportation, a frustrating
situation for low-income families who lack reliable automobile transportation.
Although the report focuses on access to automobiles to improve
economic outcomes, it makes a compelling case for improving the
transportation options of the poor by improving fixed-route transit
services and expanding paratransit and other door-to-door transit
services.
Slanted
Pavement--How Ohio's Transportation Spending Shortchanges Cities
and Suburbs
Brookings Institution, March 2003. This report examines transportation
spending patterns in the state of Ohio between 1980 and 1998. While
some transportation systems spend where there is a great need and
others spend where the contribution of tax revenue is higher, Ohio
does neither. It has allocated state transportation funds away from
cities and suburbs and placed a disproportionate fiscal burden on
urban areas. The paper identifies the locations in Ohio where current
highway contracts are placed and where gas and vehicle registration
taxes are collected and compares them to indicators of transportation
demand and need throughout the state. The paper concludes that Ohio's
highway dollars were spent disproportionately in rural counties,
while the most significant gas tax revenues were being generated
in the urban counties. The authors also explore the three primary
reasons for this “anti-urban bias,” demonstrate how
this system contributes to the spread of development into rural
areas and offer ways that Ohio and other states can reform their
transportation funding systems. Report by: Edward W. Hill, Billie
Geyer, Kevin O'Brien, Claudette Robey, John Brennan and Robert Puentes.
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