Robert Lang, Thomas Sanchez and Alan Berube explore trends in metropolitan areas from recent national elections to gauge the outcome of the 2008 race. They employ a new suburban typology, identifying five distinct geographies, and show a shift toward Democratic majorities among voters as communities urbanize.

They find that during the previous races, densely populated areas in and around metropolitan cores tended to favor Democrats, while areas on the metropolitan fringe had huge returns for Republicans. However, the outlying areas most likely would not be able to hold off future Democratic gains as those communities become more urban.

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The civil rights movement and race riots of the 1960s and 1990s drew attention to low income communities, particularly urban communities of color, and sparked important federal policy responses to social exclusion. The movement also underscored an often overlooked aspect of social mobility and economic inequality—transportation.

Federal goals for social mobility then and now, however, were mixed. In the 1960s, efforts to increase mobility and job access in impoverished communities were designed largely to quell social unrest rather than explicitly address social exclusion in the interests of economic justice. Similarly, social policy changes in the 1990s emphasized paring back the federal welfare system and devolving power to states rather than poverty alleviation. Lessons from each of these time periods, however, illuminate the relationships between transportation mobility, employment, economic well-being, and the often whipsawed response of the federal government to these issues.

This paper considers a 40-year span of federal policy toward transportation mobility for low-income workers, including the most recent Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program, administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). At its inception, policymakers and advocates viewed JARC as a major policy victory for low-income and minority communities. Grassroots organizations were pivotal to its enactment, particularly community organizing groups in major metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Hartford, and Columbus.

The paper begins with a discussion of federal policy during the 1960s and 1970s. Then, as now, the social and economic circumstances—and the federal policy response—surrounding transportation mobility are strikingly similar. Employment accessibility studies from the 1960s through the early 2000s consistently characterize the situation facing low-income workers in simplistic terms that primarily stress the travel connection to jobs, largely ignoring nonwork travel and other household needs. This myopic view also informs federal policy, which stresses work-related travel. The final sections of the paper examine the types of projects that JARC funds and the relative size and distribution of project funds.

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Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are often the conduit through which billions of federal and state transportation dollars flow for regional transportation investments. Decisions by MPOs have important ramifications for metropolitan growth patterns and, by implication, social and economic opportunity. Yet, the decisions are made by boards whose members are generally not elected to serve on the MPO. Further, MPOs are not required by law to have representational voting. The potential exists, therefore, for MPO decisions to be biased toward certain constituencies or locales at the expense of others. This policy brief reviews MPOs generally and discusses the variation in MPO voting structures—with implications for potential bias—in 50 large metropolitan areas.

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