The Road from Welfare to Work: Informal Transportation and the Urban Poor

NICOLE STELLE GARNETT Notre Dame Law School Harvard Journal on Legislation, Vol. 38, No. 73, 2001

Abstract:      Individuals struggling to move from welfare to work face numerous obstacles. This Article addresses one of those obstacles: lack of transportation. Without reliable transportation, many welfare recipients are unable to find and maintain jobs located out of the reach of traditional forms of public transportation. Professor Garnett argues that lawmakers should remove restrictions on informal van or jitney services, allowing entrepreneurs to provide low-cost transportation to their communities. This reform would not only help people get to work, but it could also provide jobs for low-income people.

Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 19, No. 2, 182-205 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0885412204269103
© 2004 SAGE Publications
Beyond the Spatial Mismatch: Welfare Recipients and Transportation Policy
Evelyn Blumenberg

School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles
Michael Manville

Beneath the broad umbrella of agreement about transportation's relationship to poverty is considerable discord about the specific nature of the problem and about where and how transportation solutions should be applied. Much of the existing scholarship on this topic focuses on the spatial mismatch hypothesis, the geographic separation between employment and housing. Although this concept has merit, to meet the transportation needs of welfare recipients, policy makers must move beyond conventional notions of the spatial mismatch hypothesis. This article draws from theoretical and empirical scholarship on travel behavior, transportation infrastructure, poverty, gender studies, and residential segregation and recommends transportation policies to better connect welfare recipients to employment.

Key Words: spatial mismatch • poverty • transportation • welfare reform