Is Inadequate Transportation a Barrier to Community Involvement?

Abstract

Since the publication of Robert Putnam's influential Bowling Alone, the concept of social capital has captured the attention of researchers in many disciplines. Policy makers and community advocates have pressed to include social capital in discussions about public policy, including transportation policy and planning. Using data from a national survey conducted in 2000, the study described in this paper investigated whether inadequate transportation is a barrier to people's involvement in their communities. The analysis uses a binary logistical model and finds that respondents who were female, who were nonwhite, who had household incomes less than $30,000, and who had long commutes to work had increased odds of citing transportation as a barrier. However, only 17% of the sample analyzed reported that transportation was a barrier. Most respondents cited other barriers along with transportation, most commonly, inflexible work schedules or inadequate child care. Although some types of improvements to transportation systems and transit service could improve access to community activities, the overall results suggest that if transportation improvements seek to dismantle barriers to community involvement, they will need to be combined with policies and programs that address other types of barriers to achieve a measurable positive effect. Travel demand management programs and better-coordinated transit service programs are two approaches to dismantling transportation barriers to community involvement.