Transport Divide

Transport divide, also called transport exclusion, transport disadvantage, transport deprivation or mobility divide, refers to unequal access to transportation and the disadvantages that follow from it. In the United States, the bottom fifth of earners by income spend about 34 percent of their annual income on transportation, and one Los Angeles area study found that owning a car increased a person's odds of employment by 9 percent; people with a working vehicle also report being more satisfied with their neighborhood than people without one. Researchers studying the divide in Boston documented concrete barriers it creates for people without reliable transportation, including parents unable to afford bus fare or walk long distances to the nearest stop with young children in poor weather. In the United States specifically, 70 percent of entry level jobs are located in the suburbs while only 32 percent of those jobs sit within a quarter mile of public transit, so a household without a car can struggle to reach the jobs actually available to it.