Public Transit as Access to Employment

BY SEAN JANDA

In any contemporary American debate about how government can work to improve the prospects of the impoverished or the state of the urban environment, it is virtually certain that at least one participant—and, in many cases, both participants—will repeatedly circle back to the necessity of job creation. Unfortunately, creating more jobs is only part of the puzzle; for these jobs to have a positive impact on urban centers, individuals living in high-density low-income neighborhoods (who often may not have access to a car) must be able to reach them. In this article, I will use Philadelphia as a case-study in order to examine how publicly accessible various urban and suburban job centers are from low-income neighborhoods in the city.

In order to accomplish this task, I have picked eight sites in the Philadelphia region—five in low-income neighborhoods in the city and three in wealthier suburbs. From there, I have used Google Maps to analyze transportation times from these sites to various other locations; I will explain more about the exact destinations in each individual case as I move through the analysis.

I will begin by examining access to the Central Business District (also known in Philadelphia as Center City). This area, which is located between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers in the middle (in terms of the north-south axis) of the city, is the economic and cultural center of the region. In addition to housing a very large number of concentrated jobs, the area is also home to most local (city) government functions as well as the majority of the cultural draws of the area—the Philadelphia Symphony, most major theatres, etc. In addition, this district is clearly the area around which most of the regional rail and subway networks of the city are meant to revolve. Many of the rail lines in use today were originally built over a century ago in order to move goods and people into and out of the city, and this focus on the Central Business District is reflected in the location of these lines. In fact, every regional rail line comes together here before splitting and moving out to the suburbs.

Based on this focus on Center City dating back to the original construction of these rail lines, I think it would be reasonable to expect that the public transportation network would do a good job at connecting people to this area. The analysis of the data confirms this original hypothesis. From all eight locations, it is relatively easy to get into the Central Business District. From the city locations, commute times by car to Suburban Station (located in the CBD) ranged from 11 to 24 minutes, while public transportation commute times ranged from 23 to 53 minutes. From the suburban locations, car commute times varied from 24 to 42 minutes, while public transportation times ranged from 55 to 70 minutes. Therefore, public transportation provides reasonably fast—and relatively equal—access to Center City from both the wealthier suburban areas and the low-income urban neighborhoods, as public transportation commute times were generally two to two-and-a-half times as long as private, car-based, commute times.

Unfortunately for residents of low-income neighborhoods, while Center City may contain the most concentrated employment opportunities, in reality, most jobs in the region—and particularly most low-skill jobs—are located elsewhere. In fact, in the Philadelphia region, only 25 percent of low-wage jobs are located in the city (not just in Center City, but in the entire city), while 75 percent of low-wage jobs are located in the suburbs. In addition, the fact that this shift of employment opportunities out of the city is ongoing means that a disproportionately large number of new job openings are in the suburbs. Thus, if we wish to analyze how well public transportation connects low-income neighborhoods to employment opportunities, we need to expand our analysis to look at areas outside of Center City.

At first glance, it seems safe to assume that it will be relatively hard for residents of low-income neighborhoods to use public transportation to access job opportunities in the suburbs. As mentioned previously, most of the rail lines currently in use were specifically built to connect Center City to other areas; as a result, it appears as if lateral movement may be difficult. To test this hypothesis, I went back to the five urban locations that I had already identified and used in the previous analysis. Now, however, instead of examining transportation times to Suburban Station, I examined transportation times to five other areas—the King of Prussia Mall, the Franklin Mills Mall, an unnamed suburban office park, The Navy Yard, and the River Wards. These five areas—two malls, an office park, and two industrial areas—represent potential employment centers for low-income workers.

Across all 25 commutes from low-income neighborhoods to non-Center City low-skill employment hubs, public transportation takes substantially longer than a car commute would. In fact, on average, the public transportation commute is 3.5 times as long as the car commute: the average commute time across the 25 commutes goes from 23.24 minutes by car to 79.48 minutes by public transportation. To provide a point of comparison, from the three suburban locations that I identified before, the average commute time to the five employment centers was 29.66 minutes. Thus, the suburban locations are, on average, 128 percent as far away from the employment centers as the urban locations are, but a commuter with a car could complete the average commute from the suburban locations in 37 percent of the time that it would take a commuter without a car to complete the average commute from the urban locations. The inaccessibility of these employment locations is supported by actual commute data; according to data collected by the United States census, only about 20 percent of employed Philadelphia residents commute to jobs that are outside of the city.

In addition, it is important to note a few additional things. First, these commute times are one-way commute times. Thus, for the average urban resident looking to make a round-trip commute, public transportation would take an additional (nearly) two hours every day. Second, while I have focused on average commute ratios in the preceding paragraph, it is important to note the extreme variability in these ratios—they go from 1.96 all the way to 4.88. Thus, some employment centers are substantially easier than average to reach from certain neighborhoods (and, of course, some are substantially harder than average to reach from certain neighborhoods). For an individual who is already employed and is looking to move to one of these neighborhoods, this variability could be an asset; she could choose to focus her housing search on a neighborhood particularly well-connected to her employment location and, perhaps, end up with a public transportation commute time substantially less than 80 minutes. On the other hand, for an individual who is already living in one of these neighborhoods and is trying to find a job, this variability is problematic, because it means that his employment location possibilities could be restricted to the relatively small number of employment centers that have below-average commute ratios from his neighborhoods. Finally, moving beyond commute times, it is very important to recognize the upfront costs associated with taking advantage of these public transportation networks. A SEPTA TransPass, which allows the holder to ride on buses, costs $91 per month, while TrailPasses, which allow the holder to ride on buses and on regional rail, cost from $101 to $191 per month, depending on how far away from Center City the rider wishes to be able to travel. Generally speaking, it is probably safe to assume that for individuals to obtain employment in the suburbs, they must, at some point, visit the site in person—either to fill out an application or for an interview (or both). Thus, individuals who wish to be employed at jobs in the suburbs may often be forced to make investments in TransPasses or TrailPasses before they are able to seriously search for jobs, and the price of theses passes could potentially pose a significant barrier to individuals who are currently unemployed and searching for work.

The implications of this analysis are clear. For the 500,000 Philadelphia residents who live in households without a car, it is nearly impossible to access the vast majority of job openings for low-skill positions. As a result, if politicians wish to work on revitalizing urban neighborhoods and reducing unemployment in the urban environment, a simple focus on “job creation” will not be sufficient. Instead, policy makers must focus on creating new job opportunities that are easily accessible from high-density low-income neighborhoods, either by shifting incentives to spur job creation in and near these areas or by expanding public transportation programs in order to further residents’ ability to move to job centers beyond the central business district.