Should transport be free?

‘Transportation is the essential tissue which connects people to opportunity,’ says Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) Interim General Manager, Connie Llanos. ‘In LA, ten times more jobs are accessible to those with a vehicle. But in some neighborhoods, 40% of households have only one vehicle or none at all. Often, they’ve been effectively cordoned off by transportation planning choices.’

Reurbanization has filled walkable city neighborhoods with wealthy people,’ says Spin Senior Vice-President for Policy and Partnerships, Kyle Rowe. ‘Low-income folks in sprawled suburbs are forced into costly car ownership, while those without a car struggle to access resources. Giving those most in need free transportation solutions could break that cycle, allowing them to achieve better employment, health and social outcomes.’

This will involve residents from Pittsburgh’s Manchester and Chateau neighborhoods, where median income is 14% below the city average. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) will quantify the effects of free mobility on socioeconomic outcomes.

Our pilot is what social scientists call a randomized control trial,’ says CMU Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Dr Lee Branstetter. 

‘Rail-to-Rail will reimagine a former railway as a multimodal connector to downtown LA,’ Llanos explains. ‘Underutilized infrastructure becomes a blight and reminds the community it isn’t getting the same investments as elsewhere. We want South LA residents to see and feel that their choices have grown.’

LADOT is also building digital infrastructure to support universal mobility. It still sees gaps in smartphone adoption and will provide phones as part of the pilot. It is developing two parallel mobility wallet mechanisms to deliver $150 monthly subsidies, based on the METRO Tap system and Angeleno Card respectively. The goal is integrated and scalable payment and access via a single application.

Private mobility providers have also tended to neglect communities where lower median incomes equate to uncertain return-on-investment. Llanos is excited about the involvement of private partners in South LA and believes the pilot’s scale will demonstrate to private enterprise that UBM is a future investment priority. 

‘Research shows that those who use transportation most efficiently use a variety of options,’ says Rowe. ‘Obviously, free public transit is within the purview of city authorities. In Pittsburgh, the pairing of public services with those of private companies like Spin and Zipcar is pretty unique and may enable individuals to better access their community.’

The possibilities are not limited to employment. Allegheny DHS can describe individuals’ interactions with the US justice system. School records enable it to detect spillover effects on the academic progress of children with parents involved in the study. It can monitor reliance on publicly-funded health insurance, income support and nutritional assistance.

'We’d love to be able to tell government: If you provide lower-income citizens with additional transportation, their economic circumstances improve so much that it pays for itself in reduced outlays and increased tax revenues,’ says Branstetter.