To help get America back to work, there is one critically important element that is often overlooked: the fact that today, simply getting from home to work and back again has become a growing challenge for many Americans.
Over the past several decades, jobs in general have moved away from city centers and from mass transit. Today, some three-quarters of all jobs are located outside the city center, and lower-skilled workers bear the heaviest commuting burden as their jobs have moved to outer urban rings that often lack access to public transportation. Low-income workers increasingly must buy cars and gasoline they can ill afford or spend hours on circuitous commutes.
This places a heavy burden on American families at a significant economic cost to the nation: $100 billion lost each year in time and fuel because of lengthy and inconvenient commutes, according to the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. Even for families that try to cope with financial difficulties by moving to lower-cost housing, 77 cents out of every dollar saved is still consumed by the costs of commuting back to their jobs. Many are spending more money and more time getting to and from work. And, as commutes become longer, more demanding and increasingly expensive, some will decide they simply cannot get to available jobs and drop out of the workforce, creating additional costs for the U.S. economy.
To truly get America back to work, we have to focus on more than jobs, jobs, jobs. It is about integrating jobs, transportation, housing and community services in ways that work equally well for lower- and upper-income families.
Vibrant communities where residents can walk to shops, restaurants, grocery stores and community services; and where public transportation provides convenient connections between home and work can be built. Planning community development with public transportation as a central consideration -- transit-oriented development or TOD -- can spur economic growth, sometimes dramatically. But that approach has not been systematically applied to communities of all income levels.
For these reasons, it is important for government, public transit agencies, nonprofits, foundations and the private sector to come together so that thriving communities for families of all economic levels can be created.
While coordination seems obvious, in practice it can be tremendously difficult among disparate stakeholders accustomed to -- and best at -- planning and executing their own mandates rather than integrating their efforts with those of other agencies and firms. This is especially challenging when trying to create affordable and accessible communities for families of all economic levels. Pulling these players together to create an integrated plan requires leadership and tenacity, particularly in incentivizing the coordination and co-location of different stakeholders' developments.
In the Bay Area, several stakeholders, including the regional transportation authority, local nonprofits and foundations and private investors, came together to create the Bay Area Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing (TOAH) Fund in 2011. The TOAH Fund was the result of several years of negotiation and strategic planning -- a specially structured fund that made possible large-scale land acquisitions needed to develop mixed-use/mixed-income projects around transit stations.
Within a few months of its formation, the TOAH Fund's first community loan was originated -- $7.2 million for a project in the Tenderloin district. This loan will support an attractive, affordable 150-apartment development just two blocks from the Bay Area Rapid Transit station. It will provide families with community services, housing and the ability to hop on public transportation to work. The project also includes convenient access to fresh food through the first full-service grocery store in the Tenderloin.
We can work together to envision a new era of American life, in which families of all economic levels have convenient, safe, affordable access to transportation systems -- and in the process, save the nation $1 trillion each decade in lost time and fuel. By pairing transportation investment decisions with plans to create affordable housing and essential services, such as schools and childcare, health care, healthy food stores, libraries and retail services, we can help communities grow in a balanced manner, with opportunities for families of all economic levels.
Note: To learn more about equitable transit-oriented development and the authors' report "How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America to Work," please visit http://www.morganstanley.com/globalcitizen/community_dev.html.
Nancy Andrews is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Low Income Investment Fund. Audrey Choi is Managing Director and Head of Morgan Stanley Global Sustainable Finance.
Morgan Stanley is a pledge company of A Billion + Change.
Institute a National Telecommuting Policy to get as many people off the road as possible. We need those roadways as un-congested as possible. The taxpayers already bought all the right of way access needed. No need to buy more land for routes.
Pass a National Right to Work Law so all 50 states can compete with each other. Union Labor and Non Union Labor get the same pay scales and benefits. Have Americans COMPETE head to head for a change.
Use a mega Google Maps tool to map everybody's commuting route they take to and from work and build a big picture of the routes needing Mass Transit
Redirect 20% of the funds from the Military Budget to build several steel mills and hire and train some workers. Convert some Rust Belt Factories to build Mass Transit rail system components. Train Engineers from the Auto Industry to engineer the system. If they can't be trained - then BUY the plans from Europe where they have solutions already.
Build the Rail engines, Passenger Cars and lay the rail tracks. Work up a price schedule.
Convert some of the failed gasoline stations (there are 130,000 of them) into Rail Stations. Replace those underground Gas tanks with Flow Cell Batteries to capture cheap electrical power at night. They can also be used for Emergency Power in case of regional or localized black outs.
Have people start using the system and reduce our need for foreign oil.
Telework can increase productivity and worker morale and lets companies hire the best workers no matter where they are, without uprooting them and their families. That helps address the housing problem by avoiding moves. It also helps workers find and accept better jobs. And it gets cars off of roads during rush hour, addressing congestion and energy consumption.
But one problem is that telework relies on fast Internet access, and access is much faster & cheaper in India than Indiana, making it easy for companies to outsource there instead. Actually, S.Korea and Japan lead. The U.S. invented the Internet but lost its broadband lead and has since fallen to something like 23rd in the world. 'Disgraceful.
I strongly endorse telework but even more strongly want a broadband plan that restores our competitiveness with this critical infrastructure. It's not just the core of telework, but also telehealth, distance learning, e-commerce, and participation in government. And the demographic mostly effected is the poor and those in rural communities, because AT&T and Verizon don't see them as profitable. To make matters worse, these telecom companies have convinced some 18 states to ban or severely limit municipal broadband networks, even survival of the town depends on it and no service provider will deliver it. Maybe all of this was deliberate to disenfranchise voters, but it's hurting our economy and average Americans.
Americans cant afford to drive to a minimum wage job, but they have no choice.
Lower the bar
is it better than walking?
standing room only in a pickup beats walking