**Table of Contents Contents 1ac – Mass Transit

Residential Segregation

Thomas W. Sanchez, Associate Professor, Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, Rich Stolz, and Jacinta S. Ma, MOVING TO EQUITY: ADDRESSING INEQUITABLE EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES ON MINORITIES, Center for Community Change and The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2003, p. 17.

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 land use and transportation investment 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.96 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.97 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. More research, however, needs to be performed examining the relationship between transportation policies and residential segregation and how it should be addressed.

Current transit policy spurs housing segregation—limits economic, educational opportunities

Leadership Conference Education Fund, GETTING HOME: TRANSPORTATION EQUITY AND ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING, 7—11, p. 3.

In spite of fair housing laws and decades of efforts toward integration, many Americans live in communities that are segregated by race and income.7 While segregation has multiple causes and serious effects for low-income people and people of color, it is clear that transportation policy has played a key role in developing our segregated landscape. Segregation and lack of affordable housing result from several government actions and the private decisions that they motivate. Investments in highways and corridors out of urban cores have encouraged sprawl. They have not been the only drivers: Several federal housing policies and private sector practices, such as redlining by banks and insurance companies and racial steering by the real estate industry, have also enabled sprawl and explicitly excluded people of color.8 White flight reinforced the preference for suburban and exurban building. Relatively cheap land and limited regulation of land use made building on the periphery a sensible choice for developers—and gave home buyers seemingly high value for their investment. And local financing of services and schools cemented the middleclass preference for leaving urban cores: schools in white, middle-class suburbs are financed by property taxes and bond issues from within their jurisdictions. Schools in poorer jurisdictions are penalized by the low tax base that their jurisdictions can generate. As a result, the choice of which home to purchase is more than a housing choice: it is also a choice of schools—a choice that drives many middle-class families’ decisions.9 In short, the real cost of segregation goes beyond living conditions and access to job opportunity. It also interferes with access to education and drives up nonhousing costs for the people whom it affects. Segregated communities result from several policy choices and the private decisions they incentivized. To achieve integrated, affordable communities, strategies are needed that address the multiple causes and effects of our policy choices to date.

Economic Opportunity

Transit is key to employment equity—many persons lack access to transportation to employment opportunities
Leadership Conference Education Fund, GETTING TO WORK: TRANSPORTATION POLICY AND ACCESS TO JOB OPPORTUNITIES, 7—11, p. 1.
Equal access to employment opportunity is a cornerstone of civil rights law and policy. Federal statutes such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are designed to level the playing field by combating discriminatory practices by employers. However, employers are not the only decision makers who affect equal access to opportunity. For decades, metropolitan areas have been expanding outward, and jobs have been moving farther away from the low-income and minority people who disproportionately remain in urban cores. For many of these people, inadequate or unaffordable transportation is a significant barrier to employment. As jobs move to auto-dependent suburbs, those without access to cars—including low-income workers and people with disabilities—lose out on employment opportunities. Many workers without access to a car spend hours on multiple buses traveling to remote work places; some are unable to get to these jobs at all. Low-income people who do have access to cars spend a large percentage of their household resources on transportation at the expense of other necessities. Congress is now considering the surface transportation reauthorization bill, which will allocate funds for highways, rail, bus, and other modes of transportation across this country. The projects that it funds will not only affect Americans’ access to existing jobs, they will generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs. For these reasons, the transportation bill will have a significant impact on employment opportunity. Congress must address the issue of equal access to job opportunity as it considers the surface transportation reauthorization bill. This authorization process presents civil and human rights advocates with an opportunity to engage members of Congress, educate stakeholders, and elevate the visibility of social justice concerns in transportation policy.

Transportation equity is vital to economic opportunity
Leadership Conference Education Fund, WHERE WE NEED TO GO: A CIVIL RIGHTS ROADMAP FOR TRANSPORTATION EQUITY, 3—11, p. 2.
Our civil rights laws bar employers, federal, state, and local governments, and public accommodations from discriminating in access to health care, employment opportunities, housing, education, and voting. Although our laws promise to open doors to opportunity, this is a hollow promise for people who are physically isolated from jobs, schools, stores that sell healthy food, and health care providers. As our metropolitan areas have expanded and jobs and services have become more diffuse, equal opportunity depends upon equal access to affordable transportation. Transportation investment to date has produced an inhospitable landscape for low-income people, people with disabilities, seniors, and many people in rural areas. People of color are disproportionately disadvantaged by the current state of transportation. The cost of car ownership, underinvestment in public transportation, and a paucity of pedestrian and bicycle-accessible thoroughfares have isolated urban and low-income people from jobs and services. Because many people with disabilities do not have the option to drive cars, lack of access to other modes of transportation disproportionately harms them. Similarly, seniors and people in rural areas often have limited transportation choices. This is the civil rights dilemma: Our laws purport to level the playing field, but our transportation choices have effectively barred millions of people from accessing it. Traditional nondiscrimination protections cannot protect people for whom opportunities are literally out of reach.

The current transportation system creates special divides – prevents residents of color from getting good jobs.

Themba-Nixon et al -- 2001.(Makani Themba-Nixon, Julie Quiroz-Martinez, Vernellia R. Randall, and Gavin Kearney work for Transnational Racial Justice Initiative (TRJI), a program of the Applied Research Center in partnership with the Committee Against Anti Asian Violence (CAAAV), CAUSA and the Center for Third World Organizing.. “The Persistence of White Privilege and Institutional Racism in US Policy”. 2001. PDF)
Across the US, there is a migration of job opportunities from the central cities to the periphery of metropolitan areas. This is partly in response to demographic shifts discussed earlier and also due to the ability of exclusive suburban municipalities to offer tax incentives to business and industry.109 A recent report by a Minnesota state agency found that approximately three-fourths of all job opportunities in the Twin Cities are located outside of the central cities where affordable housing is often scarce, while the majority of people of color live in the central cities.110 This is consistent with national trends. In the five-year span between 1993 and 1998, 14 million jobs were created in the US, but only 13 percent of these jobs were located in central cities.111 Similarly, by 1993, 60 percent of all offices in the US were located in suburban municipalities as compared to only 25 percent in 1970.112 The effect of this spatial divide between residents of color and employment opportunities is exacerbated by inadequate, often discriminatory, metropolitan transportation systems in the Twin Cities and around the country.

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