Beavercreek, Ohio, nabbed its own infamous place in civil rights history last year, when the Federal Highway Administration ruled that the suburb had violated anti-discrimination laws by blocking bus service from nearby Dayton. [...]
The Beavercreek case illustrates larger, more widespread problems with America’s transportation system [...]. The Kirwan Institute is producing a one-hour documentary exploring the Beavercreek case and how racism can influence transportation decision making.
— usa.streetsblog.org
5 Comments
"Transportation equity is a civil rights issue."
Damn straight.
I'm sad but unsurprised to see that their first shining example of a totally inaccessible and dangerous bus stop is right here in Indianapolis! Our transit system is awful, and even leaving aside safe routes to WALK to the transit stops, only 1% of our stops have a place to sit while you wait.
Things may be looking up, though: the glimmer of BRT is on the horizon, and my work with PUP is trying to get more benches at existing stops. We're on the way to doubling that 1% number.
"Transportation equity is a civil rights issue."
in the US, traffic laws are still largely set up to privilege motorists over other road users - there has been a lot of progress in cyclist rights over the past decade - but in most states pedestrians are only legally protected on sidewalks and marked crosswalks - not on residential streets - and especially not on suburban residential streets where there are no sidewalks. instead of waiting for state legislatures, there are a handful of cities changing their traffic code to designate special "shared street" and "neighborway" zones where drivers must yield to the right of way of walkers and bikers. Providing better transit access is one thing, but the laws themselves are discriminatory against vulnerable road users.
After years of legal activism, there are really only two viable neighborhood defense strategies left in the USA:
1) Make them too expensive for the people you don't want to afford, and,
2) Make them really difficult to find and get to.
Covenants used to be Strategy 3 on this list, but they have been undermined substantially in recent years. Looks like the Usual Suspects are ramping up to undermine Strategy 2 now as well.
The problem with all of these strategies is that they are roughly the equivalent of using a howitzer to kill a gnat. They work, but in the process create a LOT of collateral damage. But all the fly swatters have been outlawed, so this is what's left.
In practice, what you'll see with this sort of legal activism on transportation access as a "civil right" is that it will be used as a weapon against neighborhoods which are strongholds for the political and cultural opponents of those who are championing the activism. The same thing happens with affordable housing activism and anti-covenant activism: it's always targeted at the people who aren't part of the ruling coalition and its supporters.
For instance, Beavercreek, Ohio, which was targeted by the government in this case because the town didn't want bus service from nearby Dayton, is 88% white, has a cost of living below the national average, solid middle-class income profile, lots of families with children, relatively low crime rates, low unemployment, and 60% of its population voted for Romney in 2012 (when Ohio was a battleground state). That obviously can't be allowed to continue in modern America, so now they're getting sued for not having sufficient public transportation access to allow the "low-income" population of Dayton an easy commute in their neighborhood. Dayton, incidentally, has some issues with "vibrancy" and crime. You can find a heat map showing why Beavercreeek might not be so keen on having easy access from Downtown into their quiet neck of the woods here: http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/oh/dayton/crime/
And yet, we never seem to see the same kind of legal activism against towns and communities like ... oh, let's choose one entirely at random ... Nantucket, MA. I wonder why? That is an unsolvable mystery. Surely, we should be filing lawsuits against the community of Nantucket because they are not providing free ferry service to their town from Roxbury. It's a violation of the civil rights of those who might want to go from Roxbury to Nantucket for an afternoon stroll that Nantucket has placed so many barriers to access.
But the important thing is that "transportation equity is a civil right (to white, republican, middle-class, family neighborhoods)." Right?
Nantucket, MA
too easy - actually has activists working for affordable housing for year-round residents - transportation isn't much of an issue because it's a small, relatively walkable, island with bike trails that cover most of the island, low car usage and speeds, and public buses - and there's a ferry you can take from Boston - it's expensive ($77 round trip) - but once you're there it's not that hard to get around without a car.
btw - if you can afford to live in Roxbury, you can afford the ferry to nantucket. and nantucket isn't exactly a middle class area either...
gwahrton, until transportation routes using public land are all paid for exclusively by user fees, there is an unfair imbalance on roads being privileged for private cars.
I regularly drive in a wealthy neighborhood with no sidewalks and regularly see domestic workers - almost always black, sometimes Hispanic - walking on the very dangerous and barely-existant shoulder of the road next to a drainage ditch. It's incredibly dangerous, and unfair. Your concern over affluent residents not wanting safe transit into their neighborhoods for the workers who will clean their houses and care for their children implies that if one of those workers gets killed by a car well, too bad, there's always another one to take their place, right?
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