One problem with the way many American cities are designed is that if someone doesn’t have a car, they have a hard time being able to do basic things like get to work.
A new report from the Brookings Institute (pdf) about unemployment and public transit hit the sad, sad nail on the head about how cities with poor public transportation cut a huge chunk of their population off from job opportunities. This is one part of car ownership we talk a lot about: As employment centers have moved to suburbs (looking at you, Columbia Sportswear), people without cars have had a harder time finding ways to get to work. If you’re broke in Chattanooga or you’re a Floridian whose car needs $200 worth of repairs, relying on the bus to get to work could mean an hours-long commute or losing your job.
When I was growing up, my parents both drove an hour each way to hated it—the gas cut deeply into our budget and the wasted time to-and-from work meant my brother and I spent most afternoons after school home alone, eating DiGiorno pizza straight from the box. Now, every day as I cross the river, I feel grateful to live in a place where it’s easy to bike to work in 15 minutes. It seems obvious, but you shouldn’t have to be able to afford a car to get a job in this country.
The study ranks American cities by how possible it is to get to work via public transit. The Portland-Beaverton-Vancouver area ranks in the top 20 cities, with a score that’s worse than some surprising places like Honolulu, Denver, and Las Vegas but slightly better than San Francisco and Seattle’s. There’s big regional differences is how possible it is to get to work without a car. Check it out:
You ate DiGorno’s frozen? That’s strange behavior.
Afew years ago, i scored an interview for a warehouse/shipping position at Columbia Sportwear. Their Portland warehouse is just off N. Marine Dr. Anyone who knows this area knows that it’s a long stretch of warehouses, ship yards, production plants, rails, and depots. The #16 is the only bus that goes out there – and it runs rush hours only and never on weekends.
Still, riding the MAX yellow out to Expo and a bike from there is doable. But by the time i got out to the Columbia sportswear location, i find out that the interview is actually at their office in VANCOUVER! So that was that, meh.
also of concern are employers who require a personal vehicle as qualification for employment — several job ads on craigslist show this. the employee, not the employer, should be allowed to determine the best method of transportation to and from work. i think i’m going to start a petition.
On a similar note, I’d love it if prospective employers were not allowed to ask whether or not you had a car. Bikes definitely count as reliable transportation.
Yeah and the jobs paying less than ten an hour that want you to have a car what a laugh! I can’t afford a car on that kind of pay…
Yeah, it’s… odd [to put it mildly] that employers generally consider “reliable transportation” to mean having your own personal vehicle. As fucking if a person with his/her own car NEVER breaks down, never gets flat tires, never gets stuck in traffic, etc.
@everyone: Just had an HR meeting at my workplace a week or two ago about hiring people, and it turns out that the legality of asking people what kind of transportation they use is really iffy. Instead, employers/interviewers should ask (and ONLY ask) “Do you have reliable transportation to work?”
If you are in an interview and the interviewer asks you what mode of transportation you use, you can reply “I have a reliable mode of transportation,” and they can’t legally ask for more detail than that or not hire you for suspecting that you do not have a car.
Now, if you are one of the kind of smelly belligerent assholes that frequent the mercury comments section, you might not get the job anyway. And I promise you it’s not about not having a car.
^ You know what, you were 100% spot on until your snide 3rd paragraph.
This is a problem even in Portland. I would not have had such a long stretch of unemployment between ’08-and ’10 if not for the fact that every easy to land job was out in some far flung location with scant bus service. And the salaries they offer make even a weekly bus ticket costly. I had left Boise, ID to come to a place with this great public transportation system that would make jobs accessible only to find the same basic situation here.
Oh, and Ms. Mirk, had your parents been home, they might have told you that frozen pizza tastes best when removed from the box and cooked in some sort of oven. I hope you at least removed the plastic first.
Thank you for posting this, Sarah.
Interesting to see my hometown rates better than a lot of places on this.
I actually worked across the the street from Columbia (at Iron Mountain) for part of last year. I do not have a car but managed fine as the hours were reasonable. I was offered a job at Columbia Sportswear recently but I do not have a bike now and it includes mandatory saturday overtime. So that was an issue, particularly since I live in SW. The companies moved out there because 1) leasing is cheaper as was building at the time. 2) They are warehouses and located close to a port. You can absolutely get to work on a bike, just tell them you have transportation and just show up.