Access Now: A Guide to Help Your Community

Jobs out of reach, missed health appointments, students unable to get to night classes. These problems all have a common cause: transportation barriers. Often these are the result of decades of transportation and growth decisions that failed to adequately involve the people with the greatest needs. In study after study - whether trying to assess why low-income parents cannot reach childcare or get to job interviews - inadequate transportation is identifi ed as one of the top obstacles to self-sufficiency and a better life.

And for many, with recent state transit cuts, the situation is getting worse. When transit budgets get tight, the first services to go are often night and weekend services. Buses may not be full then, but they are a critical lifeline for everyone on them.

Transportation and city planning agencies have also done too little to make the streets safe. When they pay more attention to moving cars than to providing safe places to walk or bicycle, the cost is people's lives. Low-income residents, African-Americans, and Latinos walk more than whites and higher-income residents, so they are more likely to be hit by a car and killed or hospitalized.

Access Now!

How can we get many more communities actively involved? How can we win a better life for families and communities across the Bay Area? 

These are the questions that motivated TransForm (previously known as the Transportation and Land Use Coalition) to write this guide.  The Access Now! guide and tools are designed to help low-income communities of color get more involved in transportation decisions. and flex untapped political power.

You can also contact Carli Paine to see what initiatives at the regional level can help your cause.  TransForm also works closely with Urban Habitat's transportation justice program.