TRANSPORTATION EQUITY: INEQUITABLE EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES ON MINORITIES

Authors: Thomas W. Sanchez, Rich Stolz, and Jacinta S. Ma

Draft: October 26, 2003

Total Words: Text (6,173) + figures (1 figure at 250 words) = 6,423 words

Thomas W. Sanchez, Associate Professor, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1021 Prince Street, Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA, 703-706-8112, fax: 703-518-8009, sanchezt@vt.edu

Rich Stolz, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Community Change, 1000 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20007, USA, 202-3339-9343, fax: 202-298-8542, rstolz@communitychange.org

Jacinta S. Ma, Legal and Policy Advocacy Associate, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, 125 Mt. Auburn Street, Third Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, 617-496-6367, fax: 617-495-5210, jma@law.harvard.edu

TRANSPORTATION EQUITY: INEQUITABLE EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES ON MINORITIES


ABSTRACT

Americans are increasingly mobile and ever more reliant on automobiles for meeting their travel needs, largely due to transportation policies adopted after World War II that emphasized highway development over public transportation. These and other transportation policies have had inequitable impacts on minority and low-income populations, often restricting their ability to access social and economic opportunities, including job opportunities, education, health care services, and other places such as grocery stores. Transportation policies limit access to opportunities through direct effects, such as inequitable costs, and indirect effects, such as residential segregation. Some indirect effects are caused in part by the combined effects of transportation policies and land use practices. This paper identifies areas where transportation policies have inequitable impacts. It briefly examines existing research in the area and highlights the critical need for more research and data collection related to the impact of transportation policies on minority and low-income communities.

INTRODUCTION

Transportation plays a vital role in our society. In fact, the Supreme Court recognized that the right to travel is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Given the important role of transportation, it would be expected that over transportation policy would be a contentious issue for policy makers. Too often, however, those battles are fought over what specific projects will be funded and in which states or congressional districts, and scant attention is paid to the larger social, environmental, and economic effects of transportation policies.

Americans have become increasingly mobile and more reliant on automobiles to meet their travel needs due largely to transportation and land use policies adopted after World War II that emphasized highway development over alternative modes. Those less likely to own cars often become dependent on public transportation to travel to work, also to get to school, obtain medical care, and shop for basic necessities such as groceries. The transit-dependent commonly have low incomes and thus, in addition to facing more difficulties getting around, they face economic inequities as a result of transportation policies oriented toward travel by car. This is an example of transportation inequality.

While many lament the trend toward "suburban sprawl" as unaesthetic or damaging to the environment, those who support social equity should also be concerned about this trend. Substantial investment in highway development and other transportation programs that encourage private automobile use has encouraged and supported low-density developments that extend increasingly farther and farther from the central city and to residential and commercial areas that are increasingly spread out-edgeless cities (1). In addition to being costly to state and local governments (2), transportation policies that encourage these growth patterns play a substantial role in producing some indirect, negative social and economic effects, including perpetuating residential segregation and exacerbating the inability of minorities to access entry-level employment, which is increasingly found in suburban areas (3).

The environmental justice movement has attempted to address some of the inequitable effects of transportation polices on racial minorities and brought attention to the issue of inequities. Environmental justice efforts, however, have primarily drawn attention to governmental policies that negatively and inequitably affect the natural environment in areas with concentrated minority populations (and consequently negative health effects). Historically, a range of transportation equity issues have been largely ignored by transportation planners and researchers, with only piece-meal efforts to improve access and mobility for low-income persons and racial minorities.

This paper briefly illustrates some of the economic and social effects of transportation policies. The objective is to highlight a range of issues that constitute "transportation equity", which otherwise have only been addressed by disjointed research efforts. An examination of these issues will contribute to a broader understanding of transportation equity. While the data suggest that U.S. transportation policies have inequitable effects on minority and low-income communities, more research is necessary to further understand the outcomes of these policies on minorities, particularly those with low incomes.


TRANSPORTATION COSTS AND INEQUITIES

Economic Impact of Transportation Policy on Low-Income and Minority Households

Transportation policies have a direct effect on low-income, minority communities by making it difficult to access transportation to various places. Federal, state, and local transportation and land use policies emphasizing highway construction have led to dependency on automobiles. On the federal level, 80 cents of every dollar spent on federal surface transportation programs is earmarked for highways, while only 20 cents is earmarked for public transportation (which includes both bus and rail transit). Although 20 percent of federal transportation funding is generally allocated to public transit, for various reasons, states are unlikely to devote 20 percent of their overall transportation expenditures to public transportation (4).

Thirty states restrict use of their gasoline tax revenues to funding highway programs only (4). Revenues from gas taxes are the single largest funding source for transportation programs. Similarly, several other states allow only a small portion of gas tax revenues to be spent on transit. For example, Michigan allocates for public transportation 10 percent or less of its state gas tax and related transportation revenue (5). In Alabama, the Birmingham metropolitan region has struggled to raise state and local revenue to match more than $80 million in federal grants for public transportation largely because the state constitution prohibits the use of gas tax revenue for these purposes (6).

At the local level, funds for bus transit capital and operating expenses sometimes add up to a small percentage of funds spent on all different types of transit programs and may be much less than the 20 percent allocated by federal policy (7).

Policies that restrict allocation of public funds to public transit contribute to increasing household transportation expenses, particularly for low-income families. Data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey suggest that low-income households devote a greater proportion of their income to transportation-related expenses regardless of whether they use public transportation or own a car. A Surface Transportation Policy Project report found that in 1998, those in the lowest income quintile spent 36 percent of their household budget on transportation, compared with those in the highest income quintile, who spent only 14 percent on transportation (see Figure 1). Low-income workers who use a vehicle to commute spend 7 percent more of their income on transportation costs compared with those using public transportation (8). In some metropolitan areas, households spend as much for transportation as they do for housing (9).
Figure 1 about here]

An individual's ability to own a car and the type of transportation they use generally corresponds with their income level. While the vast majority of Americans rely on cars to meet their transportation needs, racial minorities have significantly lower rates of car ownership. Only 7 percent of white households own no cars, while 24 percent of African-American households, 17 percent of Latino households, and 13 percent of Asian-American households own no cars (10).

And as people of color have higher poverty rates, they also have higher rates of using public transportation to travel to work. Only 3 percent of whites rely on public transportation to get to work compared with 12 percent of African Americans, 9 percent of Latinos, and 10 percent of Asian Americans (see Figure 1) (10). In urban areas, African Americans and Latinos together comprise 54 percent of public transportation users (62 percent of all bus riders, 35 percent of all subway riders, and 29 percent of all commuter rail riders) (11).

Another measure of the impact of transportation costs on low-income and minority households is the rate of increase in transportation expenditures. Between 1992 and 2000, households with incomes of less than $20,000 saw the amount of their income spent on transportation increase by 36.5 percent or more (households with incomes between $5,000 and $9,999 spent 57 percent more on transportation than they did in 1992). In comparison, households with incomes of $70,000 and above only spent 16.8 percent more on transportation expenses than they did in 1992. This research suggests not only that low-income families are spending more of their incomes on transportation, but also that transportation costs are increasing at a faster rate for these households.

As household transportation costs increase over time, meaning that households have less to spend on housing, food, health care, insurance, education, and other needs. Other evidence suggests that the debt incurred by families related to car ownership makes buying a home more difficult. Cars represent a major household expenditure but quickly depreciate as an asset compared with real property (8).

A major factor contributing to these rising costs is the increase in sprawling development patterns manifest in U.S. metropolitan areas. Sprawling development translates into longer travel distances and more auto dependency. Low-density, noncontiguous development also makes public transit an infeasible option for many commuters. As public transit service diminishes, a household's auto dependency increases. In addition, much research links inefficient land use patterns to negative impacts on air quality, public health, and energy consumption (9).


Transportation Policy Favors Higher-Income Public Transit Riders

Research also suggests that low-income riders of transportation tend to subsidize their higher-income counterparts for a couple of reasons. First, fare structures are often designed in such a way that short trips subsidize longer trips, and low-income and central-city riders generally make short trips compared with higher-income suburban users who make long trips (12). One researcher noted that a user who travels one mile pays more than twice the true cost of the trip, whereas a user who travels 20 miles pays only 20 percent of the cost (9). Second, the amount of revenue gained from passenger fares, including passes, tends to be higher on central-city transit routes than suburban routes, and more low-income transit riders tend to make trips on central-city routes (12).

A notable example of subsidization can be seen by comparing bus and rail service. Data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey show that in urban areas, households earning less than $20,000 comprised 47 percent of bus riders, 20 percent of subway riders, and 6 percent of commuter rail riders (11). Households earning $100,000 or more comprised 42 percent of commuter rail riders, 27 percent of subway riders, and only 7 percent of bus riders (11). Clearly, more individuals with low incomes rely on bus service and more high-income individuals rely on rail service.

Bus transit receives only 31 percent of the capital funds spent nationwide for transit, although it carries more than 60 percent of the trips (12). This disparity is exacerbated by requirements that federal funding for transit generally must be used only for capital expenditures, not operating expenses. Because rail transit is capital-intensive and bus transit is labor-intensive, a greater emphasis on capital subsidies favors rail service over bus service, and consequently generally favors higher-income over lower-income riders.


TRANSPORTATION POLICIES' INDIRECT ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL EFFECTS

The previous section examined some direct effects of some transportation policies on low-income minorities' finances and their ability simply to get around. This section examines the indirect effects of transportation policies.

One of the central indirect effects is the reinforcement of residential segregation. The form that we currently think of as "the city" is a product of both transportation and land use decisions. Highway investments in combination with federal housing and lending policies leading to post-World War II suburbanization played a significant role in "white flight" from central cities to suburbs, which had a profound impact in defining urban form and racial segregation patterns (13, 14). Highway investment encourages the development of suburbs located increasingly farther away from central cities and has played an important role in fostering residential segregation patterns and income inequalities (13, 14). Inequitable or inefficient land use patterns such as those resulting in residential segregation often are reinforced by policies, such as transportation investment decisions, that were established several decades ago.

As many researchers have documented, residential segregation greatly influences minorities' access to housing, education, and economic opportunities (15, 16). More research, however, needs to be performed examining the relationship between transportation policies and residential segregation and how it should be addressed.


Spatial Mismatch

Of all the issues in transportation equity, the perceived spatial mismatch between the residential locations of low-income, urban (and often minority) households and the location of low-skill jobs has received the most attention in the academic literature (17). It has been documented that a major factor underlying the spatial mismatch hypothesis was the deconcentration of jobs from central cities. Despite the trend of businesses relocating in suburban zones, a large proportion of metropolitan employment remains in downtowns.

Managerial and information processing services have tended to remain in downtown areas while entry-level, low-skill jobs are flowing to the urban fringe and beyond. Research suggests that the average distance between a central-city resident's home and potential employment locations has been increasing over time (18). As this distance increases, low-skill workers with few transportation options are unable to travel to these new, dispersed locations. In theory, when job locations are concentrated, commute times and distances are shorter than when jobs are located in dispersed locations-that is, commuting to jobs in dispersed locations is inefficient. Some argue, however, that dispersing residences and jobs leads to more efficient transportation because the negative effects of transportation will also be dispersed, resulting in less congestion (19). Such theories ignore the fact that transit-dependent populations have limited travel mode options which then limit social and economic opportunities.

Related to the spatial mismatch between jobs and central-city residents are reverse commuting travel patterns. While a majority of commute trips flow to the central city from outlying areas, a portion of trips must flow in the opposite direction to connect workers with job opportunities located at the urban fringe and suburbs. In 2000, 1.6 million people per day made reverse commutes in the 10 largest metropolitan areas. Recently released data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census on county-to-county commute flows in the 10 largest metropolitan areas show that the volume of reverse commuting increased from 3.4 percent to 4.0 percent of all commute trips (10). This translates into 320,000 new reverse commute trips for those 10 areas. While this may not appear to be a significant increase in reverse commuting, compared with other commute trip types, reverse commutes represented nearly 13 percent of new commute trips in the past 10 years. Also, these figures provide no insight into the number of additional reverse commute trips that might be taken if there were better transportation options serving these travel patterns.

Some argue that transportation policies and people's preferences are so strongly in favor of traveling by automobiles that mobility benefits from public transportation are considered negligible (20, 21, 22, 23, 24). Some also argue that public transit is not a viable alternative to the personal automobile due to the geographic imbalance between affordable housing and job locations (25, 26). As mentioned earlier, the fact that small investments are made in transit (relative to roads and highways) while metropolitan areas continue to sprawl leads to further auto-dependency that imposes a disproportionate burden on low-income persons (11). Many low-income and minority households lack access to an automobile and thus depend on public transit, which limits the location and types of employment that are available to them (24, 28, 29).


Transportation Policies and Access to Housing

Displacement and gentrification because of transportation project construction are two examples of the negative impacts that have been inflicted on low-income neighborhoods of color. Residential location and housing are directly related to the need for equitable and efficient transportation systems, especially for persons with limited mobility. When housing is acquired for freeway projects in minority and low-income communities or becomes unaffordable, the displaced individuals have fewer options for seeking alternative housing and may end up living farther away from their jobs and social networks. This will be especially burdensome if their transportation options are limited. An individual's residential location is crucial and encompasses not only issues of affordability, but also access to public schools, police and fire protection, and public transportation (30).


Displacement

Transportation policies and practices of locating freeway projects in minority neighborhoods have, in a number of cases, impeded the ability of minorities to access housing. Although there are no empirical data on the number of communities or people affected or the extent of the impact, historical and current examples of disproportionate impacts of transportation projects on minority neighborhoods exist and are discussed in this section.
Freeway construction and expansions in urban areas typically occur where land prices are depressed-which frequently corresponds with the residential neighborhoods of low-income and minority households. Such neighborhoods generally have low levels of political power resulting from institutional discrimination over time. In some respects, freeway locations in cities are the philosophical progeny of "Negro removal" or "urban renewal" programs that were thought to cure "urban blight" by tearing down minorities' homes (31).

Some freeway construction projects have destroyed thousands of residential units occupied by minority and low-income households. In some cases, community objections to proposed projects have prevented widespread displacement and other inequitable effects. For example, in 1972, individuals and organizations concerned about people who would be displaced by the proposed I-105 "Century Freeway" construction in Los Angeles brought a lawsuit against state and federal government officials seeking injunctive relief. In 1982, the U.S. District Court approved a final consent decree requiring the state and federal defendants to provide 3,700 units of decent, safe, and sanitary replacement housing to residents who were displaced by the freeway (32).

In addition to destroying thriving neighborhoods, some freeway construction has posed physical hazards to minorities and low-income individuals living near them. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, there were detrimental impacts from the construction of Interstate 95 had on vibrant African-American communities and business districts in the 1950s and 1960s. The decision to widen I-95 in the 1990s exacerbated the negative impact of the highway on local residents. The community had never recovered from the original highway construction and the neighborhood's property values declined significantly over the subsequent decades as blight crept into the community. The highway is now within feet of residents' houses and the only barrier protecting homes from the noise, vibration, and danger of potential accidents was a wire fence.

Local residents, who were predominantly minority and low to middle income, argued that the placement of the freeway and the proposed expansion was a clear case of discrimination and environmental injustice. Their accusations were further supported by the observation that other stretches of I-95 in Miami-Dade County in areas that were typically affluent and less likely to be predominantly minority had well-built and sturdy sound mitigation walls protecting property from the highway. In response to the residents' concerns and allegations of discrimination, Florida officials quickly pulled together the financial resources to build a mitigation wall (33).

In other large construction projects-such as I-670 in Columbus, Ohio; I-94 in Detroit; I-5 in Portland, Oregon; and I-43 in Milwaukee-evidence suggests that minority and low-income communities have been unable to prevent large numbers of individuals from being displaced, and the resulting disintegration of their neighborhoods.


Gentrification

Another housing-related impact of transportation policies is gentrification. Gentrification is commonly characterized as a transformation of neighborhood conditions that encompass physical, economic, and demographic dimensions and can be defined as "the process by which higher income households displace lower income residents of a neighborhood, changing the essential character and flavor of that neighborhood" (34). It occurs for a number of reasons, including increased desirability of an area due to a transportation investment such as extension of a commuter rail line, new or improved train service or station, or addition of a highway ramp or exit.

While some consider property value increases resulting from gentrification to be positive, such changes have also been criticized for worsening the well-being of low-income persons, especially in neighborhoods of color. Some have argued that increases in property values are capitalized in rent increases, which then push households that are less able to pay to other neighborhoods or to undesirable housing arrangements (35). In particular, some argue that certain anti-sprawl land use policies that direct housing development away from the urban fringe reduce housing affordability and limit housing choice, especially for low-income households. Others have argued, in addition to causing displacement, that gentrification is undesirable because it leads to homogenous neighborhoods that are not socioeconomically or culturally diverse (36, 37). However, there is insufficient data to draw specific conclusions about the net social and economic impacts of transportation investments on gentrification and displacement.


Access to Education

Creating barriers to access to education is another indirect effect of transportation policies. Following the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, "busing" and yellow school buses became well-known symbols of the fight for equal educational opportunities for African Americans. The significance of these symbols is diminishing because more and more school systems are returning to the idea of neighborhood schools and courts are declaring school districts "unitary," meaning they have eliminated the effects of past segregation as far as they are able. Today's transportation policies, however, still have an effect on access to educational opportunities for a number of minorities and individuals from low-income communities.

No longer do most students rely on yellow school buses to get to school. Many students depend on public transportation to attend school and college as well as participate in extracurricular activities. A recent study of this issue estimated that nationally, during normal school hours, the majority-60 percent-of all student trips were made by car and that these were primarily trips to and from school (38). One study found that students traveling to or from school in cities of more than 500,000 accounted for 15 percent of all public transportation trips (52). It was estimated in 1996 that 20 percent of school children in California were using public transportation or other special transportation service to go to school and that growing numbers of students were relying on public transportation in other states such as Ohio (38).

As The National Academies' Transportation Research Board stated, "transit services in large urban areas have long been used to transport students, particularly those in high school and junior high school" (38). While there is no research documenting how many of these students taking public transportation are minorities, it stands to reason that many of the K-12 students who depend on public transportation are minorities located in urban areas with a developed public transportation system. Supporting this idea is the fact that Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington, DC-cities with significant minority populations-provide discounted public bus fares for students.


TRANSPORTATION POLICIES AND HEALTH EFFECTS

Beyond access to social and economic opportunities, transportation policies can create or help to perpetuate health risk disparities. That racial minorities face health disparities compared with whites is widely recognized. Health professionals also recognize that addressing the inequities requires both health treatment and prevention programs for individuals and social policy changes to address the root causes of inequity (39). As a National Association of County and City Health Officials paper states, "Socioeconomic conditions such as polluted
environments, inadequate housing, absence of mass transportation, lack of educational and employment opportunities, and unsafe working conditions are implicated in producing inequitable health outcomes" (39).

Several articles published in the field of public health have suggested that residential racial segregation is a primary cause of racial disparities in health (40). One article examined the link between segregation and health disparities in Detroit (40), which has a population that is approximately 83 percent African American (10). The article suggests that the transportation policies of the 1950s and 1960s-which supported highway system expansions and location of heavily traveled roads in impoverished neighborhoods in Detroit-led to residents' higher risks for a variety of diseases (40).


Air Pollution

Like Detroit, many urban areas have significant pollution, much of which can be traced to transportation policies that favor highway development and automobile travel over public transportation. In addition, these transportation policies combined with land use or zoning policies lead to more toxic usage of land in poor and minority neighborhoods than in affluent areas and areas with fewer minorities (41). Higher percentages of African Americans (65%) and Latinos (80%) compared with whites (57%) live in areas with substandard air quality (42). Research suggests that these polluted environments in turn result in higher rates of respiratory diseases, such as asthma (43, 44).

It is known that the occurrence of asthma and asthma-related deaths is higher in African Americans and Latinos than in whites (42, 45). Asthma is almost twice as common among African Americans as it is among whites. Even more disturbing are the disparities in asthma deaths among African Americans and whites: Though African Americans make up approximately 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for about 24 percent of all asthma deaths (46). A report by the Environmental Protection Agency found that non-Hispanic African-American children who live in families with incomes below the poverty level have the highest rate (8.3%) of asthma of all racial groups (47).

While it is not known to what extent these disparities are due to outdoor pollution, research studies have found a strong and significant correlation between residing near heavy automobile and truck traffic and increased difficulties with respiratory function and higher incidence of disease, such as asthma, in children (43, 44). Specifically, studies have found that high concentrations of air pollutants from vehicles are linked to asthma (48, 49). A study of Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics when alternative transportation strategies were implemented found that hospitals and doctors saw significantly fewer children for serious asthma problems (63). A study examining the effect of daily air pollution levels on asthmatic children living in the Bronx and East Harlem, New York; Baltimore; Washington, DC; Detroit; Cleveland; Chicago; and St. Louis found that increased exposure to certain air pollution was associated with asthma (44).


Personal Safety

Transportation policies that favor reliance on automobiles and building busy roads in minority communities also raise another public health concern: personal safety—particularly that of minorities and low-income individuals who live in urban areas. Overall, African Americans and Latinos have a pedestrian fatality rate that is almost twice as high as that of whites (50), and they have a higher percentage of pedestrian fatalities than their percentage of the population in the United States (51). One study found that the most dangerous metropolitan areas for walking were Orlando, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Miami, and Jacksonville, Florida; Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; and Phoenix (51). Each of these areas has a significant minority population with high levels of exposure (i.e., walking near heavy traffic areas). A study of Atlanta pedestrian fatality rates during 1994-1998 found that whites had a significantly lower pedestrian fatality rate of 1.64 per 100,000 than Latinos (3.85) and African Americans (9.74) (42). Newspaper accounts have reported that in Orange County, California and in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, Latinos suffer a greater percentage of pedestrian fatalities than their population in those areas (42, 51).

Disparities in the number of pedestrian deaths are exacerbated because higher percentages of people of color than of whites do not own a car and must rely on walking as a primary mode of transportation. An analysis of 2000 census data show that these minorities are much more likely than whites to walk to work. While 2.6 percent of non-Hispanic white workers walked to work in 2000, 3.2 percent of African American workers, and nearly 4 percent of Latino and Asian American workers, walked to work (52).

Walking and bicycling have been widely promoted as efficient, low-cost ways to increase physical activity and thus improve overall health (53). However, minorities and those who live in areas of poverty do not live in areas conducive to walking and bicycling. The Centers for Disease Control identified the most common barriers preventing children from walking and bicycling to school as dangerous motor-vehicle traffic and long distances (53).

States are spending very little federal transportation funding to improve conditions for walking (51). As documented by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a national organization concerned with improving the nation's transportation system, "less than one percent (0.7 percent) of federal transportation construction, operations, and maintenance funds are spent to ensure a safe walking environment" (51).


CONCLUSION

Transportation policies not only have inequitable effects on the ability of low-income individuals and minorities to access places, but also have serious indirect effects such as encouraging and reinforcing residential segregation; restricting access to employment and other economic opportunities, housing, and education; and causing health disparities. This paper identifies some of these effects to illustrate the need for those who work on transportation issues to address seriously the inequitable effects of transportation policies.

A vital step is the development of measures or indicators through research on whether the burdens and benefits of transportation policies and decisions are equitable to minority and low-income communities. These communities have suffered many of the burdens of transportation policies, and it is unclear how many of the benefits they have gained. Once measures are established, individuals and government officials must be able to easily enforce such measures, including in the courts if necessary; otherwise, equity cannot be ensured.

Another critical need identified in this report is for additional research and data collection on transportation equity issues. Existing research provides some strong indications of the links between transportation policies and inequitable effects on minorities and low-income individuals, but some significant gaps remain. Although TEA-21 allocated $3.3 billion over six years for surface transportation research and development to ensure that the United States will be a world leader in these areas, only a very small fraction of those funds are spent on research examining transportation's effect on social equity.

Policymakers, researchers, and advocates should recognize the interaction between transportation, land use, and social equity and support programs that understand and address this interaction. There are many opportunities for policymakers to address some of the inequitable effects of transportation policies on minority and low-income communities. The upcoming reauthorization of TEA-21 is one such opportunity. Housing development policies are another. "Smart growth" initiatives are yet another, but smart growth initiatives have not always incorporated principles of equity. Policymakers should use these many opportunities to move us toward equity for all. Integrating transportation and land use policies that incorporate social equity objectives are being utilized internationally, and could also serve as examples for policy makers in the U.S.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to the Ford Foundation for its generous support.


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List of Tables and Figures

Figure 1 Household Transportation Spending, by Income Group

(NB: MTCwatch.com has eliminated the chart and substitutes figures.)

Figure 1 Household Transportation Spending, by Income Group

36% $0 to $11,943
27% $11,944 to $22,945
19% $22,946 to $38,204
18% $38,205 to $60,534
14% $60,535 and Greater

Source: (9)