As TEN points out in their release, infrastructure investment continues to present an untapped opportunity for job creation — if Washington chooses to act. And with women and minorities among the hardest hit by the economic downturn, states ought to do what they can to broaden opportunity.

On-the-job-training and apprenticeship programs in highway construction are an indispensable tool for state departments of transportation because they prepare workers for careers as opposed to just short-term jobs. And, as TEN’s research demonstrates, some states are already seeing results.

The good news: four states — Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut and Minnesota successfully upped the percentage of both women and minorities in training programs between 2008 and 2010. Minnesota and Illinois, along with Missouri and Michigan, have seen the greatest improvement, due in part to active organizing by TEN coalition members in-state. In Maine, 75 percent of participants in apprenticeship or on-the-job training programs were women, along with 55 of North Dakotans, both impressive results.

The bad news: more often than not, states are failing to take advantage of these programs and not showing initiative in increasing opportunity for those hurting the most. And, while a six-month extension of the current transportation law was a welcome reprieve for states, it is far from clear what can pass Congress in March. As a package, President Obama’s American Jobs Act may not be moving, but might the infrastructure component survive?

You can find out more about the report, titled “The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work,” or read it in its entirety at TEN’s website. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a TEN event in St. Louis yesterday.

Transportation is what connects us all to the things we need each day, making life possible. But the decisions we’ve made about where and how to spend our transportation dollars have extended that opportunity to some people at the expense of others.

Setting the stage for two days of activities and Congressional office visits on that very topic, Cynthia Jarrold asked Transportation for America Deputy Director Lea Schuster this morning: “How long have we been in this battle?”

“45 years,” Schuster responded, only half-joking. Indeed, while T4 and many of our partners are relatively new, the fight to ensure that our nation’s transportation system expands access and opportunity to everyone has gone on for decades. And it’s far from over.

Jarrold is the Rosa Parks Federal Policy Coordinator for the Transportation Equity Network, one of several sponsors of this week’s activities alongside T4, the American Public Health Association, PolicyLink, the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living and several others.

With both the House and Senate actively deliberating over a new transportation bill, the more than 70 advocates who traveled to DC this week are pushing to ensure federal investments reach those who need access the most — seniors, the economically disadvantaged and people with disabilities.

Several advocates noted that the proposed 35 percent reduction in spending unveiled by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica last week would force more painful service cuts and fare hikes in public transportation, hitting vulnerable populations who rely on transit the most.

“This is the fight of our lives. We can win big or we can lose big,” Jarrold told the group this morning, adding that her own experience with her ailing mother was a prime motivator for her own involvement.

“My mother is 73 years old. She will not be able to drive in a few years and she has chosen to stay in her home,” Jarrold said. “Very soon, she will be isolated from her community.”

Other advocates offered examples from their own communities as motivators.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” said Midge Purcell, Director of Advocacy and Public Policy for the Urban League of Portland. “There’s an 18 percent unemployment rate among African-Americans in Portland, and we see this as an opportunity.”

Tim Sheehan, who works with largely rural and disabled residents as director of the Center for Independent Living of Western Wisconsin, personalized the implications of transit access and its absence.

“You can’t articulate a vision for your life if you can’t go further than what you can see outside your kitchen window,” he told fellow participants.

Public health was another recurring theme, with Noah Budnick, Deputy Director of Transportation Alternatives, saying of his experience in New York City: “The neighborhoods with the worst transportation access have the highest levels of diabetes and obesity.”

Today’s activities include a survey of the current policy landscape for transportation and a lunch discussion with USDOT Undersecretary for Policy Roy Kienitz. Tomorrow, participants will attend two panels with key Congressional staffers and then head to the Hill to meet with their legislators.

The Equity Caucus was formed to stress transportation’s role as a crucial link to ensuring opportunity for all, and recognizing that the choices made in Washington about what to build and where have an enormous impact on people’s health, employment and quality of life. Some of the nation’s leading civil rights, community development, faith-based, labor and transportation organization that are part of the caucus were represented at last night’s event, from groups like The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

In his keynote address, Cummings — tired from a long day of votes on the House floor, but still fired up — praised the wide-ranging participants in the caucus.

“I’ve often said our diversity isn’t our problem, our diversity is our promise,” he said.

Cummings, who was introduced by two pastors from his Maryland district, singled out access to transportation as a crucial quality of life issue to his Baltimore constituents, and the difference between working and not working for many.

“A lot of people in my district — they could get a job, but they couldn’t get to the job,” Cummings said, adding that transportation is a vital link for all aspects of life. His constituents in Baltimore are “not necessarily trying to get to Disneyworld, they’re just trying to get to the local park.”

Gesturing to a childhood friend who was in the audience, Cummings noted that Baltimore’s bus system was crucial to his and his friend’s own success growing up by allowing them to access a better education, and the bus helped Cummings’ mother get to work and support her family as well. Getting transportation policy right is important, he said, even though most who benefit are people we will never meet.

Tom Woodruff, international executive vice president at SEIU and a leader in the Change to Win coalition, noted that “so many workers when they go to work rely on public transportation.” Woodruff also put equity in a startling context — the fact that United States is the richest nation in the world, but one-fifth of our residents are living in poverty. In addition to helping people get to their jobs, investments in transportation also have the potential to put tens of thousands to work at decent wages and good benefits.

Congresswoman Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she would push for a transportation bill that promotes livable communities and is a “pathway out of poverty” for millions of Americans,and Florida’s Brown noted flawed arguments that public transit should pay for itself when “no transportation anywhere in the world pays for itself,” including road and highway projects.

Join us to take a stand for transportation policies that advance economic and social equity in America. Sign the transportation equity pledge.

It connects us to schools, housing, health care, grocery stores, and most importantly, jobs. But millions of poor people and people of color live in communities where quality transportation options are unaffordable, unreliable, or just totally nonexistent. We believe this fact must change.

America should a place where everyone has access to opportunity, where everyone can get to work or a grocery store without breaking the bank or enduring long, brutal commutes. Everyone should have access to a variety of transportation options. The air should be clean and the streets safe for everyone, no matter their zip code, income level or skin color.

Isn’t America supposed to be the land of opportunity?

Today, Transportation for America is proud to join the nation’s leading civil rights, community development, racial justice, economic justice, faith-based, health, housing, labor, environmental justice, tribal, and transportation organizations to launch the Equity Caucus at Transportation for America.

Join us to take a stand for transportation policies that advance economic and social equity in America. Sign the transportation equity pledge.

Each year, the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars on transportation projects. What we build, where we put it, who builds it, how we operate it, what energy powers it — all of these decisions have an enormous impact on our communities, economy, health, and climate. Today our investments have left many Americans behind.

We’re calling for transportation policies that build a nation where all people can participate and prosper. Together, we endorse these simple 4 steps toward making our transportation system work for everyone:

• Create affordable transportation options for all people.
• Ensure fair access to quality jobs, workforce development, and contracting opportunities in the transportation industry.
• Promote healthy, safe, and inclusive communities.
• Invest equitably and focus on results.

Join us in calling for a new direction for our nation’s transportation policy – one that ensures everyone participates and prospers. Sign the pledge and become part of the growing coalition of people fighting for transportation justice across the country.

A healthier transportation system for America’s kids requires change in federal policy. But change will remain out of our grasp absent a sense of urgency from the everyday people on the ground.

The need for a meeting point between policymakers in Washington and citizens in their neighborhoods was evident in today’s roundtable on childhood obesity, titled “Keeping Kids Moving,” sponsored by Transportation for America, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, The Convergence Partnership and PolicyLink.

We’re facing an epidemic of childhood obesity and poor health, and as a few people pointed out, this could very well be a generation of children who live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents if we don’t act now to change things.

The shape and structure of streets, sidewalks and the ability to safely use them has an enormous impact on whether children become overweight or obese. Kids get more physical activity and lead healthier lives when they can bike and walk to school, play in local parks and reach recreational opportunities with ease. Among American children between the ages of 10 and 17, 32 percent are overweight or obese, and many are at risk for more serious conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Obesity rates are disproportionately high among low-income and minority children.

In search of a solution, many routes invariably lead to transportation policy.

During the panel, several federal officials stressed the need for partnerships that cross departments and jurisdictions, with Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation quipping, “transportation is too important to be left to transportation professionals.” Kienitz also emphasized the need for Americans to speak up and utilize the democratic process, noting that “the distance between the top [at DOT] and that sidewalk on your street is vast.”

Chip Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Mississippi, knows just how much of a difference one repair can make. As part of a broader push to repair his town’s streets, Johnson oversaw the pouring of concrete for a new sidewalk right outside his office window. On the old, cracked sidewalk, Johnson used to see a handful of pedestrians every morning, but he saw dozens more walking by once the improvements were completed.

“People want to exercise,” said Johnson, a Republican first elected mayor in 2005, adding that it’s up to officials like him to provide them the chance to do it.

keepkidsmoving2 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

While people like Undersecretary Kienitz, Special Assistant to the President Martha Coven and others are moving the levers where they can in Washington, local officials like Johnson are stepping up and refusing to wait, behavior encouraged by the federal officials who were present.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean didn’t wait for Washington. He made safe and accessible streets for all users a top priority and hired a director of healthy living initiatives — Adetonkunbo Omishakin, also a panel participant — to help make it happen in Nashville. Child wellness advocate Julia Lopez, herself a teenager, didn’t wait either. Along with being an instigator of change on the ground around her home of southern California, she has traveled the country to bring a youth perspective to the obesity challenge, calling on elected officials to step up and help make healthy transportation the norm, not the exception.

It’s clear that these advocates on the ground and policymakers at the top can meet in the middle to make real change, but it will take continued pressure on Congress from both ends to get the job done.

Our congratulations go out to Dr. Crawford — a true hero for Jackson.

–

For years, the capital of Mississippi ran a public transit system that was largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. Fixed route buses routinely ran without working wheelchair lifts and the complementary paratransit vans were booked up at least a week in advance. The system was slowly allowed to deteriorate as the existing fleet aged and became unreliable for even able-bodied people.

Three years ago, a group of people with disabilities in the Jackson metro area began a movement to change things. When phone calls and letters failed to make an impression or a difference, we protested outside city hall, forcing the city to appoint an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance officer. That was just the beginning. As lead plaintiff in the case and a wheelchair user myself with multiple sclerosis, I photographically documented countless times I was left on the side of the road by non-working bus lifts.

Bus Lift Failure Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Dewone Banks waves goodbye to a bus operator who is forced to leave him after his lift fails to work. The bus was more than a decade old. Photo by Scott Crawford

After sending complaints to the Federal Transit Administration’s Office of Civil Rights and seeing little in the way of progress, in September 2008, Disability Rights Mississippi filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of myself and others. Not for money, but for compliance with the ADA. In the summer of 2009, the Federal Department of Justice’s Section on Disability Rights got involved and intervened on behalf of the plaintiffs and joined the lawsuit. The City threatened to shut down JATRAN altogether and serve no one rather than comply with the equity requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They eventually relented at the last possible minute at the urging of the plaintiffs and the Department of Justice.

Stranded at night Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

The author is stranded into the night (December 10th, 2007) after three buses failed to pick him up. After about six hours, the police from a neighboring jurisdiction loaded him into a pickup truck to get him home (about 10:30pm). Credit photo to Scott Crawford

More than two years later, Jackson’s Public Transit (JATRAN) has eight new paratransit buses to take people with disabilities to their doctor’s appointments, shopping centers, and jobs.  In addition, there are now thirteen brand new regular fixed route buses with reliable ramps and lifts so that people in wheelchairs will no longer be forced to watch others board while they are left stranded on the side of the road.

I was on a bus several weeks ago when I met an older woman in a power wheelchair. She asked me if I rode the buses frequently, and I told her, “All the time!” The woman replied, “This is my first time — they never used to pick me up.” She added that she was so happy to be out of her apartment and going places again. “I want to get an all-day pass and just ride!”

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  - Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978).

New Paratransit Buses Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Dr. Scott Crawford tests out the lift on a new paratransit bus for JATRAN in Jackson, Mississippi.

The event, sponsored jointly by Transportation for American and Policy Link, brought a mix of labor, faith-based, environmental, civil rights, health and other groups to Washington to address the need for equal access to transportation options throughout the country.

PolicyLink’s Radhika Fox pointed out that recent cuts to transit agencies throughout the country have hit America’s most vulnerable communities hardest. Indeed, it is these communities that rely most upon transit. Transportation for America’s transit funding crisis map takes a closer look at these painful cuts.

The event also highlighted how transportation issues should be looked at through a number of lenses. Transportation is, as PolicyLink founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell put it, “a civil rights issue.” It is often forgotten, Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights pointed out, how central transportation issues have been to the struggle for civil rights, from Plessy vs. Ferguson, to Rosa Parks and the ensuing Montgomery Bus Boycotts.

Walkability and livability are important for all income levels, whether rural, suburban, or urban. Places with these two qualities can help avoid concentrations of poverty that lead to massive health, safety, and environmental disparity. At a time when goods and services are increasingly expensive for many families, and jobs scarce, the cost of accessibility to these necessities should not be prohibitive.

Other speakers articulated the methods in which the Obama Administration has worked to ensure that all Americans have access to services and jobs. Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, noted that walkable, transit-accessible environments are expensive precisely because they are in high demand, and more need to be built. This fact makes DOT programs that promote livability, such as the TIGER Grant Programs, all the more important.

Central to the overarching message was the need for strong advocates were outside of the federal government, people who can push and prod when things aren’t moving. “In many ways we’re counting on you as much as you’re counting on us,” said Derek Douglas, Special Assistant to the President on Urban Affairs.

The briefing, titled “Get Moving! Mobilizing for a Healthier Transportation System” showcased four high level experts on health and transportation including a youth wellness advocate and Transportation for America Director James Corless.

“America’s transportation system affects our health in profound ways, and we have a unique opportunity to forge a new direction that makes us healthier and saves us money over the long term,” Corless said.

Joining Corless as panelists were Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association; Dr. Richard Jackson, Chair and Professor of Environmental Health and Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles; Dr. Joe Thompson, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity; Shireen Malekafzali, Senior Associate at PolicyLink and editor of “The Transportation Prescription;” and 14-year-old Julia Lopez, a youth wellness advocate.

“We are fortunate to have these innovators and forward-thinkers with us as we push for transportation policies that fit the needs of 21st Century America,” Corless added.

Briefing topics included the relationship between vehicle-generated pollution and respiratory complications; access to health care services, groceries and other essential destinations; active living and obesity prevention; the safety implications of our transportation policies; the health effects of greenhouse gas emissions; and overarching equity concerns among low-income and minority populations.

“We really are at a transportation crossroads,” said Dr. Benjamin. “Without transformational change in our priorities, we will perpetuate a transportation status quo that puts our health at risk, exacerbates health inequities and clouds our future. I am excited to be a part of this discussion and look forward to our continued participation in Transportation for America’s diverse coalition.”

A few key facts about the relationship between transportation policy and health:

• In the United States traffic fatalities kill just over 40,000 per year, costing the nation $230.6 billion, or 2.3 percent of the gross domestic product, since 2000.
• People in more compact metropolitan areas suffer from significantly fewer chronic medical conditions than their counterparts in more sprawling regions.  For example people who live in neighborhoods with a mix of shops and businesses within easy walking distance have a 35 percent lower risk of obesity.
• Each year air pollution triggers over a million asthma attacks, more than 47,000 cases of chronic bronchitis in adults and 540,000 cases of acute bronchitis in children and kills 70,000 people.
• Vulnerable populations, such as seniors and minorities, who cannot or choose not to drive have a higher risk of being killed as a pedestrian. African-Americans make up approximately 12 percent of that population, but they account for 20 percent of pedestrian deaths. Native Americans are 1.5 times more likely to die from traffic crashes than anyone else.

“It is critical that our nation’s policies promote healthy living,” said 14-year-old youth wellness advocate, Julia Lopez. “Improving the access people have to goods and services will help many people maintain an active lifestyle and prevent obesity.”

Communities and their transit systems are stuck in a difficult quandary: they’re facing booming, historic ridership and levels of demand for service, while also facing the worst funding crisis in decades.

Stranded at the Station: The Impact of the Financial Crisis in Public Transportation is the first systematic analysis of the issue, and the story is not a pretty one. Nearly 90 percent of transit systems have had to raise fares or cut service in the past year and among the 25 largest transit operators, 10 agencies are raising fares more than 13 percent.

Many transit agencies across the country have cut service, raised fares or laid off workers to deal with shrinking budgets, severely affecting the people who depend on regular, reliable service in order to access jobs, social services and education everyday. Nationwide demand for public transportation is at historic levels and growing, but funding for the day-to-day operations of these transit services is built on an unstable foundation. This report shows that without federal support, many will likely will be unable to meet the demand now and in the future.

Download and read the full report at http://t4america.org/resources/stranded

Relatedly, we’ve updated the United States of Transit Cutbacks map to reflect the data in this new report, and the map now includes 21 case studies from the report, highlighting 21 of the many communities facing the most significant budget deficits and those with the highest fare increases for 2009. We’ll be continuing to track the issue and cuts across the nation with that map, so keep us posted if we don’t have your city on the map.

So we want to know: how have these drastic cuts in public transportation service affected your everyday life? Tell us your story and we’ll help share it with Congress.

• A new study looks how to address equity concerns in congestion pricing. (Environmental Defense Fund)

• Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm suggests that old car factories to be retooled to make trains, while the state cuts 137 transportation projects because of lack of funds. (Infrastcturist)