What factors affect job access for low-income residents of the metro area? How can the transportation and transit system respond to the changing needs of low-income workers? Researcher Gary Barnes of the Center for Transportation Studies addressed these questions at a Transportation and Regional Growth Study presentation on November 12, "Job Access for Low-Income Households in the Twin Cities."

The trend of job growth in areas outside the urban core continues to impact workers at all income levels. To make it easier for low-income workers to hold jobs throughout the metropolitan area, many solutions have been proposed--ranging from more "affordable" housing in the suburbs to improvements to the transit system, especially serving suburban locations. However, there is no general agreement about the best way to increase job access for low-income workers, particularly those without access to cars.

Barnes defined accessibility in terms of travel time to and from the job site. Using data gathered during the 1990 Census (the latest comprehensive data available), he mapped low-income households and workers, filtering out members of non-working low income groups like college students and retirees. He performed a similar analysis to determine the locations of low-wage jobs.

However, physical access via the transportation system is only one factor affecting job accessibility. Although there are large numbers of low-wage jobs in inner-city areas, there are also many low-income workers nearby competing for these jobs. Therefore, jobs located near concentrations of low-income households may be less accessible to potential employees than jobs outside the urban core. Barnes developed a method of "weighting" his job-accessibility measurements to account for this competition for available jobs.

Barnes' research led him to conclude that the location of affordable housing is not the primary problem faced by low-income workers. In fact, even after weighting the results to account for job competition, Barnes found that the area with the highest concentration of no-car households has the best job access by transit.

A more pressing concern is the large disparity between job access for those with cars and those who must rely entirely on transit. Barnes found that low-income households with cars enjoy job access on par with the rest of the work force; low-income workers who rely entirely on transit, however, must cope with much worse access to jobs.

At the conclusion of his presentation, Barnes speculated that the essential problem facing low-income workers is not lack of transit coverage but lack of speed, because even though transit service may exist where it is needed, the fact that traveling by transit is so much slower and more complicated than going by car is a significant obstacle to potential workers. Therefore, he continued, more research is needed focusing on point-to-point travel times, not merely the existence of transit service. Barnes also speculated that, in this light, large buses may not be the best means of providing the required level of service.