Transportation Inequity Affects Us All
We live in a car dependent culture, which means that the car is the only convenient, safe, and socially accepted means of transportation - despite 20-40% of people not being able to drive. Even those who have a driver’s license are disadvantaged by a lack of transportation options (i.e. walking, rolling and transit). The identities most impacted include racialized people, women, transgender and nonbinary people, the young, the old, the disabled, and the poor… not to mention people who just plain old don’t wanna drive! Chances are, you know a lot of people who fit into at least one of those groups.
Redesigning our streets to maximize safety and access for the most vulnerable will not solve all of our problems. But, it’s an essential part of creating a society that works for all of us.
Car dependency forces many of us to navigate a hostile and dangerous landscape in order to get our basic needs met. Let’s look at how people in our community are being impacted.
Race
“Black and Brown mobility has always been a source of white anxiety.” -Dr. Allison Hobbes
White people get anxious when Black and Brown people move about freely. (Yes, I rephrased that quote so you would ponder it longer. ;)
Rosa Parks after her arrest in 1956
From the Underground Railroad, to Rosa Parks’ famous bus sit-in, to detaining refugees and migrant workers, to the Trail of Tears, to Urban Renewal in Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood, white supremacy has always relied on controlling mobility and access to space for Black and Brown people, as a proxy for controlling their agency and power. To control mobility, is to control destiny.
Today, racialized segregation and inequity continue; they are enshrined in zoning codes and transportation plans. As a result, the built environment for communities of color tends to be more dangerous and less accessible.
“Communities of color are among the least likely to have access to safe cycling infrastructure in their neighborhoods… Meanwhile… these demographics are most likely to be the target of police stops for crimes like riding on sidewalks next to fast, dangerous roads without bike lanes. And when those stops happen, they are significantly more likely to turn violent.” -Streetsblog (I will commend Kingston on making significant strides with safety improvements on Broadway, which until recently had four lanes of traffic, despite running through residential and commercial areas in a largely Black and Brown neighborhood. However, much can still be done to make this area safer for residents.)
Black and Latino households are much less likely to own a vehicle than white households. How do families without a car access jobs, groceries, playgrounds, appointments, family and friends?
Street safety is a serious concern. Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic folks suffer very high rates of traffic deaths compared to white people, including pedestrian, bicycle and police pursuit deaths. Monica Goods was a Black child killed in a police chase in the town of Ulster in 2020; the officer involved has been charged with murder, manslaughter and reckless endangerment. He had a history of similar reckless chases.
Please watch this very thought-provoking discussion, featuring an all-Black panel of transportation experts in San Fransisco: Bike Lanes, Gentrification and Anti-Blackness
One takeaway: Communities of color are often treated as thoroughfares for whiter groups to drive and cycle through.
Age
What happens when you’re too young, or too old, to drive?
Halloween is the most deadly night of the year for children. Not because of poisoned candy… but because it is the one night of the year when children are given permission to walk through the streets - streets which were designed to prioritize high speeds over the lives of children on foot.
One would think that parents who want to give the world to their children, would especially want the streets to be safe. However, truly safe street design, which privileges child safety over driver convenience, appears to be a low priority in our county at the moment.
On the other end of the age spectrum, seniors enormously benefit from a range of transportation options. In addition to medical appointments and errands, seniors are at a higher risk of suffering from loneliness and isolation when they lose the ability to drive.
The e-bike revolution is coming for us all, and it has the potential to provide improved access and autonomy for seniors - but only if safe and well-connected infrastructure is in place.
Wealth
Wealth makes the difference between cycling because you want to, and cycling because you have to. “Elitist” bike commuting is a myth. The poor are twice as likely to commute by bike as the wealthy. -NACTO
In the US, the poorer you are, the more of your income you spend on transportation. One in four Americans experiences transportation insecurity, and the poorer amongst us suffer even more.
One way to distribute wealth more evenly is to ensure that the woman riding a $50 bicycle, the woman riding the free bus and the woman driving a $50,000 car have the same levels of investment, protection and consideration in the planning process.
Ulster County is highly car dependent, even in urban areas, which makes travel without a car very difficult. One in six Kingston households does not own a car. In the 2019 Ulster County Needs Assessment, Ulster County agencies and organizations named transportation as the most pressing need for the low-income population.
Disability
Elizabeth Cruz in Mexico City https://www.nod.org/job-horizons-widen-for-those-with-disabilities/
One of the most damaging myths about disabled mobility is the belief that car-centric design is the most accessible design. The reality is far from that.
First off, disabilities are incredibly diverse; they include vision, hearing, intellectual, attention, vestibular, pain, seizures, paralysis, amputations, and other impairments, and can range from mild to severe impairments. Therefore, providing a range of transportation options, including safe, well-connected networks for walking, rolling, transit, and cycling as well as parking, is fundamental to ensuring accessibility. Meanwhile, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) assumes that everyone has a car.
According to Government Explained, a legally blind vlogger, “The area I live in being accessible isn’t a ‘nice perk,’ it’s a make-or-break aspect of living a full life… If someone needs to drive to reach the ‘accessible’ amenity, it isn’t actually accessible.”
Anyone can become disabled. Stop thinking about disability as something that happens to “other people.” A full quarter of Americans have some type of disability, and 1/8 people have physical mobility difficulties. -CDC “One in four of today’s 20-year-olds can expect to be out of work for at least a year because of a disabling condition before they reach the normal retirement age.” -Council for Disability Awareness
For many, a bike is a mobile device.
We need disabled people’s needs to be baked into all of our transportation plans, from sidewalk designs to bike lanes to interstate travel.
Gender
Bikes were once seen as a tool of liberation for women. But today, men outnumber women in cycling by 3 to1. -Streetsblog This is thought to be primarily due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, in countries where biking is safe due to great infrastructure, women actually bike more than men, and very often with children in tow. -A View from the Cycle Path
Threats of violence and assault keep gender diverse people from accessing alternate modes. Transgender and gender non-conforming people experience frequent harassment and violence on public transit and in public spaces. -University of Minnesota
Fear of assault keeps women, femmes and nonbinary people from walking. Active street fronts, streetlights, wide sidewalks, and traffic safety measures can help. -Streetsblog
Final thoughts
I believe that we have a responsibility to create an equitable transportation system. We need to put pressure on our elected leaders and their employees who oppose or even worse, perform lip service and spend millions while failing to deliver truly safe and accessible streets that children, seniors and disabled folks can actually use.
As Enrique Peñalosa once said, “There is no traffic engineer that can tell you the right width for a sidewalk. This is something you feel in your heart and in your soul.”