sessionI bullard

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JUST TRANSPORTATION Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D. Environmental Justice Resource Center Clark Atlanta University

Why Regional Equity Matters: 

Why Regional Equity Matters Public Investments Access to Jobs Physical and Economic Mobility Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights Public Subsidies Disparate Car Ownership Rates Public Health Transit-Oriented Development Urban Revitalization Representation and Decision Making

Importance of Transportation : 

Importance of Transportation Transportation touches every aspect of our lives – where we live, work, play, and go to school Transportation plays a pivotal role in shaping human interaction, economic mobility, and sustainability Transportation also provides access to opportunity and serves as a key component in addressing poverty, unemployment, and equal opportunity goals while ensuring access to education, health care, and other public services

Environmental Justice Principle: 

Environmental Justice Principle Environmental justice embraces the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection of our environmental, health, employment, housing, transportation, and civil rights laws

Benefits of Transit : 

Benefits of Transit Transit gives mobility to millions of Americans who do not or cannot drive Transit reduces air pollution Transit reduces traffic congestion Transit makes all Americans, even drivers, freer by giving them flexibility and options

Transportation Barriers : 

Transportation Barriers Lack of Personal Transportation (no privately owned car available to travel to work) Inadequate Public Transit (limited, unaffordable, or inaccessible service and routes, and security & safety) Spatial Mismatch (location of suitable jobs in areas that are inaccessible by public transportation)

Americans without Cars: 

Americans without Cars Lack of car ownership and inadequate public transit service in many central cities and metropolitan regions exacerbate social, economic, and racial isolation Nationally, 7 percent of white households own no car, compared with 24 percent of black households, 17 percent of Latino households, and 13 percent of Asian-American households Over 46.5% of blacks with incomes under $15,000 do not own cars compared with 14.9% of all U.S. households

Transportation Justice: 

Transportation Justice Other than housing, Americans spend more on transportation than any other household expense The average American household spends 19.2% of its annual income on transportation Americans spend more on driving than on health care, education, or food The nation’s poorest families spend about 40% of their take home pay on transportation Households earning less than $20,000 saw their transportation costs increase by 36.5% between 1992 and 2000. Households earning $70,000 and above only spent 16.7% more on transportation than they did in 1992

Transportation Equity: 

Transportation Equity Procedural Equity (Is the process fair, uniform, and consistent?) Geographic Equity (Are some spatial communities located on the “wrong side of the tracks?”) Social Equity (How are the benefits and costs distributed among population groups?)

Separate But Equal: 

Separate But Equal Transportation and Civil Rights have been linked for more than a century The 1896 U.S. Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision codified “Jim Crow” segregation

Frontal Assault on Transportation Apartheid : 

Frontal Assault on Transportation Apartheid U.S. Supreme Court overturned Plessy in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka The system was later challenged by Rosa Parks in December 1955 and Montgomery Boycott This December will mark the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Rosa Parks would have a difficult time sitting on the front or back of a Montgomery today. The city dismantled its public bus system, which served mostly blacks and poor people in 1997

Government Response : 

Government Response Executive Order 12898 – February 1994 U.S. DOT Order – April, 1997 FHWA Order – December, 1998

Executive Order 12898 February 11, 1994: 

Executive Order 12898 February 11, 1994 EJ Strategies and Guidance NEPA Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Research, Data Collection, Analysis Disproportionate and Cumulative Impact Assessment Subsistence Fishers and Wildlife Consumption Public Participation

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: 

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance”

Confronting Transit Injustice in Los Angeles: 

Confronting Transit Injustice in Los Angeles In 1996, the LA Bus Riders Union won a landmark Title VI Civil Rights Consent Decree $1.5 billion settlement for clean fuel buses Improved services Lowered fares Even though the Bus Riders Union has won repeatedly in court, as recent as January 2004, the group has had to wage an uphill battle to get the MTA to live up to the ten-year federal consent decree

Transit Racism Can Kill : 

Transit Racism Can Kill Transit discrimination killed 17-year old Cynthia Wiggins because Buffalo city buses were not allowed to stop at an upscale suburban mall The transit discrimination lawsuit was settled in November, 1999 for $2.55 million

Transit Investments: 

Transit Investments All transit is not created equal Some communities get buses, others get light rail, while some are left out altogether Transit equity analysis uses the “follow the dollars” approach

Follow the Dollars : 

Follow the Dollars Public transit has received roughly $50 billion since the creation of the Urban Mass Transit Administration over thirty years ago, while roadway projects have received over $205 billion since 1956 Generally, states spend less than 20 percent of federal transportation funding on transit Public transit is a $32 billion industry employing more than 350,000 people Every $1 invested in public transportation generates $6 in local economic activity. Every $1 billion invested in public transportation infrastructure supports approximately 47,500 jobs Just 6 percent of all federal highway dollars are suballocated directly to the metropolitan regions Although local governments within metropolitan areas own and maintain the vast majority of the transportation infrastructure, they receive only about 10 percent of every dollar they generate

Shortchanging Metro Areas: 

Shortchanging Metro Areas Commuters in 176 metro regions paid $20 billion more in federal gas tax than they received in federal highway trust fund money for both transit and highways from 1998 through 2003 Taxpayers in 54 metro areas lost over $100 million dollars the six year period The top gas tax losers were Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit, and New Orleans Such an uneven playing field creates “donor regions”

Creation of Donor Regions : 

Creation of Donor Regions From July 1999 thru September 2003, Georgia spent $620 for every resident in the 13-county Atlanta region, a region with the state’s worst congestion and dirtiest air In contrast, Georgia spent $1,000 per resident on the rest of the state During the late 1990s, only about 17 percent of the gas tax revenues were returned to the 13 Atlanta metropolitan counties—a region that generates 40 percent of the state’s collection

Getting There on Public Transportation: 

Getting There on Public Transportation Nationally, only about 5 percent of all Americans use public transit to get to work In urban areas, African Americans and Latinos comprise over 54 percent of transit users (62 percent of bus riders, 35 percent of subway riders, and 29 percent of commuter rail riders) Urban transit is especially important to African Americans where over 88 percent live in metropolitan areas and over 53 percent live inside central cities African Americans are almost six times as likely as whites to use transit to get around

MARTA – “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta”: 

MARTA – “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta” The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) was conceived as a five-county system in the 1960s However, the mostly white suburban counties opted out and several later created their own “separate and unequal” suburban bus systems

No State Support for MARTA: 

No State Support for MARTA MARTA is the nation’s largest transit agency that does not receive earmarked state funds MARTA has received a total of $15 million from the state of Georgia since 1993 or an average of $1.36 million per year MARTA is slated to receive a mere $2 million toward a new fare collection system in Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposed $15.5 billion transportation package By contrast, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (Boston) gets 20% of the state’s 5-cent sales tax, or about $680 million a year

The “Iron Triangle” of Suburban Sprawl: 

The “Iron Triangle” of Suburban Sprawl Sprawl is random unplanned growth characterized by inadequate accessibility to essential land uses such as housing, jobs, and public services, i.e., schools, parks, and mass transit Suburban sprawl is fueled by the “iron triangle” of finance, land use planning, and transportation service delivery

Building Roads to Everywhere: 

Building Roads to Everywhere Between fiscal year 1992 and 1999, states had more than $33.8 billion in federal funds available to spend on either highways or public transportation, but spent only 12.5% of that sum on public transit Nearly half of that 12.5% was spent by two states (New York and California)

Highways vs Transit : 

Highways vs Transit From 1998-2003, TEA-21 transportation spending amounted to over $217 billion Some 30 states (including Georgia) restrict use of the gas tax revenue to funding highways only Between fiscal year 1992 and 1999, states had more than $33.8 billion in federal funds available to spend on either highways or public transportation, but spent only 12.5% of that sum on public transit

Cars and Pollution : 

Cars and Pollution Transportation sources account for 80% of carbon monoxide, 45% of nitrogen oxide, 35% of hydrocarbons, 32% of carbon dioxide, 19% of particulate matter, and 5% of sulfur dioxide Over 24% of black households, 17% of Hispanic households, 13% of Asian American households, and 7% of white households do not own cars

Geography of Air Pollution: 

Geography of Air Pollution Nationally, 57% of whites, 65% of blacks, and 80% of Hispanics live in counties with substandard air Over 61.3% of Black children, 69.2% of Hispanic children and 67.7% of Asian-American children live in areas that exceed the 0.08 ppm ozone standard, while 50.8% of white children live in such areas Air pollution costs Americans $10 billion to $200 billion a year Air pollution claims 70,000 lives a year, nearly twice the number killed in traffic accidents

Paying for Ozone Pollution: 

Paying for Ozone Pollution Air pollution has been linked to rising asthma rates Asthma hits poor, inner city children the hardest African Americans are two to six times more likely than whites to die from asthma Asthma hospitalization rate for African Americans and Latinos is 3 to 4 times the rate for whites

An Asthma Epidemic: 

An Asthma Epidemic Asthma affects 15 to 17 million people, including 5 million children in the U.S. Six percent of U.S. children have asthma Asthma is now the nation’s number one childhood illness Asthma is the number one reason for childhood emergency room visits and school absenteeism

Widening Disparities: 

Widening Disparities Highway sprawl is aiding in the creation and perpetuation of separate and unequal housing and residential areas Sprawl is heightening the economic divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” Sprawl is also a threat to public health

Atlanta’s Heat Island: 

Atlanta’s Heat Island NASA scientists have discovered that Atlanta’s sprawl development pattern is creating thunder storms

Economic Activity Centers: 

Economic Activity Centers

Losing to the Suburbs: 

Losing to the Suburbs The city of Atlanta share of the region’s jobs dropped from 40% in 1980, 28% in 1990, and 19% in 1997 Between 1990-1997 Atlanta’s Northern suburbs added 272,915 jobs or 78% of all jobs add in the region Baltimore’s share of metro private jobs dropped from 33.3% in 1993 to 30.4% in 1996 Washington’s, DC’s share of metro private jobs dropped from 28.8% in 1993 to 26.0% in 1996

Spatial Mismatch BetweenBlacks/Whites and Jobs : 

Spatial Mismatch Between Blacks/Whites and Jobs In 2000, no group was more physically isolated from jobs than blacks Over 50% of blacks would have had to relocate to achieve an even distribution relative to jobs; the comparable figures for whites are 20 to 24 percentage points lower Black/white dissimilarity index for total employment 2000 – Atlanta (53.9%/39.6%); Los Angeles (61.2%/37.3%); Chicago (69.5%/34.5%); and Detroit (71.4%/36.5%)

Metro Jobs Location: 

Metro Jobs Location Washington, DC – (3-mile radius 18.9%; 10-mile radius 52.7%; outside 10-mile ring 47.3% Atlanta, GA – (3-mile radius 11.3%; 10-mile radius 38.1%;outside 10-mile ring 61.9% Baltimore, MD – (3-mile radius 17.6%; 10-mile radius 56.5%; outside 10-mile ring 43.5% Los Angeles, CA – (3-mile radius 6.9%; 10-mile radius 38.1%; outside 10-mile ring 61.9%)

Office Sprawl and Spatial Mismatch in Metro Areas : 

Office Sprawl and Spatial Mismatch in Metro Areas Share of office space located in suburbs: Detroit (69.5%), Atlanta (65.8%), Washington, DC (57.7%), Miami (57.4%), Philadelphia (55.2%), Los Angeles (48.5%) Nationally, 23 percent of Americans worked outside their county of residence in 2000 - up from 20 percent in 1990 and 18 percent in 1980 Across the largest 100 metro areas, only 22% of people work within three miles of the city center

Access to Entry Level Jobs: 

Access to Entry Level Jobs Only 54.4% of American households have any access to public transit, and only 28.8% claim to have satisfactory public transit More than one-third of all entry-level jobs in the Baltimore region cannot be reached without a car The majority of entry level jobs in metro Atlanta are not within a quarter mile of public transportation Metro Atlanta households pay an extra $300 per month for the lack of transportation choices or $3,600 per year African Americans in metro Atlanta earned only $700 per $1,000 earned by whites in 2000

Growing Smarter : 

Growing Smarter Smart Growth is defined as growth that is economically sound, environmentally friendly, and supportive of community livability - growth that enhances our quality of life Smart growth is development that serves the economy, the community and the environment

Linking Transportation Equity to Smart/Fair Growth : 

Linking Transportation Equity to Smart/Fair Growth Enforce Civil Rights and Anti-Discrimination Laws Broad Coalitions Across Political Jurisdictions Coordinated and Linked Regional Transportation More Funds for Public Transit Build Equity Analysis into Regional Planning (RTP/TIP) Making Metropolitan Planning Organizations Accountable Transit-Oriented Development In-Fill Development Plans to Minimize Displacement and “Gentrification” Streets for Walking, Bicycles, and Transit Gas Tax Reform Energy Efficient Vehicles and Clean Fuels

For Information on the EJRC Contact: : 

For Information on the EJRC Contact: Phone: 404/880-6911 Fax: 404/880-6909 E-Mail: ejrc@cau.edu Web Page: www.ejrc.cau.edu