Indicator: Access to transportation

Why it matters

Unequal access to transportation contributes to racial and socioeconomic disparities in employment and earnings;1158 also, neighborhoods where residents have longer commute times have lower levels of upward economic mobility. Workers of color are more likely to lack a vehicle and commute by public transit, and they are overrepresented among workers with one-way commutes of 60 minutes or more. For example, White workers are twice as likely as Asian and Latino workers to have a car at home, and three times more likely than Black workers. Unequal access to transportation also affects students. Nationwide, Black students spend more time traveling to school, on average, compared to other racial and ethnic groups, and are more likely to use public transportation to get to school: 40 percent of Black students take public transportation to school, compared to 32 percent of White students and 23 percent of Latino students. At the postsecondary level, transportation costs represent about 17 percent of the costs of attending college and have been linked to disparities in college completion