Get Me to the
Job on Time;
For
many low-skill workers, commutes are long and frustrating
as
they struggle to get to where the jobs are.
By Dan Gordon, Special to The Times
When everything goes as it's supposed to, Barbara Lott-Holland can get from her
home near USC to her job in Torrance in an hour and 45 minutes.
But the 50-year-old clerical worker has learned to build more time than that
into her commute. At least once a week, one of the three buses on her route
breaks down.
Her average wait for a transfer is 15 minutes, but there's no guarantee the bus
that arrives will have any room. If it's full and passes her by, she waits for
the next one.
If there's room only for standing on the next bus, Lott-Holland arrives at work
fatigued, having started her daily commute around 6:30 a.m.
Lott-Holland has been looking for a job closer to home for the last year. But
she's been unable to find anything approaching her current $30,000 annual
salary.
And more than once, a would-be employer's inaccessibility by public transit has
stood in the way.
"Sometimes I'll have a friend drive me to an interview and if I don't see
a bus stop anywhere, I put that job out of my mind," she said.
As many as 450,000
Researchers refer to it as spatial mismatch: In virtually every major
"Jobs are decentralizing but affordable housing is not," said Bruce
Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings
Institution in
"It's not rocket science." Los Angeles doesn't fit the classic
spatial mismatch pattern, in which a dense central city is surrounded by a less
dense suburban periphery.
In fact, some experts argue that
But many transit-dependent workers still are feeling the effects. L.A. County's
Urban Research Division studied the transportation needs of participants in
CalWORKS, the county's welfare-to-work program, and concluded that more than a
third of these individuals live in areas in which both job accessibility and
transit are limited.
These areas include many communities in the southeastern section of the county,
stretching from
Workers who tend to fill entry-level and low-skill jobs are heavily
concentrated in
For these people, areas with high job growth--such as
In
And the growing number of businesses reaching into
In the Inland Empire, the problem is the opposite--plenty of affordable housing
and not enough jobs, sending many residents on commutes of as long as two hours
to Los Angeles and Orange counties, noted Steve Oller, deputy general manager
for operations at the Riverside Transit Agency.
Commuting has become particularly heavy on the
"The problem is that it can't carry enough people to make that big an
impact," Urch said. For public transit users in
"You can get from downtown or South-Central to the west San Fernando Valley,
but with the transfers and the time it takes, it becomes prohibitive for
certain workers to get jobs in those areas," UCLA's Stoll said.
In fact, the county's employed CalWORKS participants travel an average of only
seven miles to work, according to the welfare-to-work transportation needs
assessment by the Urban Research Division.
The average one-way commute for all American workers is nearly double that.
"Improved transportation would result in a wider job search and pool of
better-paid jobs," said Manuel Moreno, director of the assessment project.
The pool of potential jobs is further reduced for transit-dependent workers who
need child-care services. Transportation lines don't necessarily run near
available child-care providers, and even if they do, any task that involves
leaving the bus and later boarding another one adds significantly to the time
to make the journey,
Hours are another consideration. Many low-wage jobs require employees to work
evening or weekend hours, when bus service is infrequent. "I've
occasionally been asked to work weekends, or to come in earlier, but I can't
leave any earlier than I do," Lott-Holland said.
For Lott-Holland and others in her situation, even if they identify a job with
a difficult but manageable commute, they might face skepticism from the
prospective employer.
"If you say, 'It's going to take me three hours to get here, and that's
only if I'm lucky enough to catch each bus on time and there are no
breakdowns,' that potential employer is going to laugh at you," said
Kikanza Ramsey, an organizer for the Bus Riders
More likely, Ramsey said, the prospective employee will minimize the
transportation burden, but face reprimand or worse if the problem leads to
excessive tardiness.
Transportation can be a problem for employers as well. Mike Puetz, owner of
Henri's Restaurant in Canoga Park, has experienced high turnover among
minimum-wage kitchen workers who ride the bus across the Valley.
"They'll take the job, and then quickly figure out that it's not really
worth it to them," Puetz said. Puetz is generally able to find applicants
within the vicinity of the restaurant.
But that's not the case for
Lewin has gone everywhere from churches to coin laundries to recruit candidates.
Since most of the workers hired for these positions lack their own cars, Lewin
said it is not uncommon to see employees dropped off several hours before their
shift because that was the only ride they could get.
"My unskilled workers can barely afford to pay rent, let alone own a car
and insurance," he said. "So they struggle--they carpool, they
hitchhike--Lord knows the things they do to get to work, but it's a real
challenge."
At
Express bus lines have been established from the Antelope, Santa Clarita,
Conejo and Simi valleys. The organization also helps to organize vanpools and
carpools from various parts of
"Obviously, there are jobs out here, but not everyone can afford to live
by where their jobs are," said Christopher Park, executive director of the
organization, one of about a dozen such groups in the region. "And the
money the government spends on transit is typically focused on getting people
downtown."
But that is beginning to change, particularly as the requirements of the new
welfare system focus greater attention on the transportation difficulties that
prevent low-skill workers from getting to suburban jobs.
"Welfare reform has led to much more sophisticated analyses of where
low-skill jobs are located, where the working poor live and the ability of the
transit system to connect the two--or, alternatively, whether programs are in
place to help people get cars," said Katz of the Brookings Institution.
For example, the federal Job Access and Reverse Commute program provides
funding to states and localities for new transit services targeting
welfare-to-work participants.
In
Other innovations include the two Metro Rapid bus lines the MTA started last
year as a demonstration program with the Los Angeles Department of
Transportation.
The buses--one running along Wilshire and Whittier boulevards from
The MTA is considering expanding Metro Rapid to as many as 20 routes. MTA
critics such as the Bus Riders
The Bus Riders Union's new service plan, written after the union reached a
consent decree with the MTA in 1996 that required the agency to improve bus
service for minority riders, calls for, among other things, 544 new buses and
50 shuttles.
The MTA recently asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside the
consent decree, citing a recent civil rights ruling by the
"There is tremendous overcrowding in the system because there are not
enough buses in the fleet and there are so many obsolete, dysfunctional buses,"
Ramsey said.
But many analysts believe the best way to help transit-dependent workers, at
least in the short run, is with programs to help them gain access to cars.
"It's important as a long-term strategy to make major transit investments
that help create better-managed, less automobile-dependent commutes," said
Mark Alan Hughes, a professor at the
"But we need short-term solutions as well. And the short-term solutions
that make the most sense for welfare-to-work participants, especially in
He pointed out that many social services agencies and nonprofit organizations
across the country have begun programs to support car ownership, providing help
with either the purchase of an automobile or the cost of insurance and
maintenance. Christy Johnson could not have kept her job without one such
program.
As an in-home caregiver, she drives her elderly client to frequent doctor
appointments. But the 36-year-old
With a gross income of around $1,000 a month, she was having trouble getting
loan approval for another car.
Johnson benefited from a program run by the nonprofit Los Angeles Mission, in which
donated cars are repaired and sold below market value to needy individuals.
Johnson paid $300 for a 1987 Nissan Maxima in good running condition. Through
CalWORKS, she obtained insurance for $450 a year. Of course, strategies to
increase car ownership have their own drawbacks.
Besides the cost issues, such programs run counter to clean-air goals--and more
cars mean more traffic congestion and longer commutes.
But, Hughes said, "When middle-class people start getting into the bus at
the same rate as poor people in the service of these broad goals of reducing
highway congestion and air pollution, then we can talk.
Until then, I think we need to make a special exemption for people for whom
this can make the difference in being able to get a job."