Transportation
Transportation systems impact communities’ ability to access essential goods and services such as food, employment, health-related services, and community programs as well as shape environmental outcomes. Transportation, whether public or private, is especially important in communities where these resources are not readily available. Public transportation that is fast, convenient, and easy to navigate has been found to increase access to health foods and healthcare services.[1]
The promotion of safe active transport (such as walking, cycling, etc.) have been found to bring positive and sustainable health effects, including the reduction of traffic in communities as well as the exposure to pollutants. People in communities that promote walking and cycling often engage in additional physical activity, helping reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, and premature mortality. Members of these communities were also found to have lower BMI, drive less, and reduce air pollution, helping protect younger and older populations from the chance of acquiring respiratory diseases such as asthma and lung disease.[2] Lastly, transportation barriers are often cited as barriers to healthcare access. Transportation barriers lead to rescheduled or missed appointments, delayed care, and missed or delayed medication use. These consequences may lead to poorer management of chronic illness and thus poorer health outcomes.[3]
Unfortunately, governments’ lack of investment in transportation [4] infrastructure in low-income and communities of color leads to many people lacking space to be physically active and/or being exposed to pollutants due to living in close proximity to highways and traffic.
Transportation justice provides communities with access to safe, reliable, and affordable modes of transportation including public transit, walking, and biking. Community organizers are advocating for sustainable transit systems and infrastructures that center community needs and interests, connect members of a community and health promoting goods and services, and do not induce gentrification. They are also fighting to ensure transit systems are accessible and affordable, advocating for continued unionization of the transit system, promoting policies that support community walkability, and managing bicycling cooperatives.
DISPARITIES AND STATISTICS
Race and Ethnicity:
Public transit is vital to people of color who own fewer cars and tend to live further away from living-wage jobs than their white peers. For instance, Black people are six times more likely and Latinxs three times more likely than White people to rely on public transit. Further, in the last decade, the proximity of job centers to high-poverty communities has declined by 61%, which means that people of color are increasingly geographically disconnected from their jobs.[5]
Ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft were found by a recent George Washington University study to have social bias in their algorithms. Researchers found that factors, including race and ethnicity, influenced the dynamic fare pricing models of these services.[6]
Socioeconomic:
Low-income people have the highest rates of walking and bicycling to work–the very highest rates of walking and bicycling to work are among those who make under $10,000 per year, with high rates also seen for those making under $25,000 per year.[7]
People of color and individuals with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to live within 0.09 miles of major roads, thus experiencing a higher volume of traffic related air pollution.[8]
COMMUNITIES OF PRAXIS POLICIES
Community organizers across the nation are advocating for policy, system, environment, and practice changes that address the root causes of health inequities across the social determinants of health. Every year Praxis invites our Communities of Praxis members to share some of their top organizing or advocacy campaigns in their own communities through out annual survey.
