Getting to Work: Improving Public Transportation for America’s Workers, Employers and Economies

Note: This is a past event, additional resources may be available below.

Date

Wed Oct 1, 2014
12:00pm – 1:30pm

Location

DC, United States
Aspen Institute
One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 700, Smith Large Conference Room

Audio (MP3)

To download, click here.

About the Event

Lack of affordable, reliable, and efficient transportation options is one of the most common challenges for low-income workers and job seekers, and, by extension, their employers. Read more about this topic here.

Americans spend an average of 18 percent of household income on transportation and the poorest one-fifth of families spend more than twice as much; the vast majority of these transportation costs are for buying, operating, and maintaining an automobile.

Public transportation can be a much cheaper option, but millions of workers lack access to buses and trains, the routes often do not efficiently connect workers from their homes to their jobs (and stops in between such as child care), and budgets for public transportation are consistently under threat. However, improved and expanded public transportation remains an important part of the solution to helping low- and moderate-income workers get to work and helping employers get access to the workforces they need.

Panelists will discuss the specific transportation challenges workers face, creative and cost effective solutions being explored and implemented across the country, and examples of how communities, organizations, and employers have mobilized to address this critical workforce issue.

 

Featured speakers

Joan Byron
Director of policy, Pratt Center for Community Development

Anita Hairston
Associate director, PolicyLink

Yvonne Hunter
Chair, Friends of Transit, and Leader in the employer-driven campaign, Transit Means Business

Beverly A. Scott, Ph.D.
General manager, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and administrator, MassDOT Rail & Transit administrator

 

Moderater

Emily Badger
Reporter, The Washington Post

 

Related resources

Creating More Accessible Public Transportation By Alice Lee, Guest Blogger, in The Aspen Idea Blog

 

This event is part of the Working in America series, an ongoing discussion series hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program that highlights an array of critical issues affecting low- and moderate-income workers in the United States and ideas for improving and expanding economic opportunities for working people. For more information, visit as.pn/workinginamerica.

 

WiAMore

 

Join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #talkgoodjobs.

n/a

Feeling the Heat: Workplace Safety in a Warming World

For the benefit of workers, businesses, and our society, we need to build workplace heat safety into our culture, policies, and practices if we are to adapt to our warming planet. Join the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on Wednesday, July 30, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, on Zoom to learn about how the warming climate is affecting workers, and what policymakers, businesses, and labor are doing to keep workers safe. This event is part of EOP’s Opportunity in America conversation series.

The Future of Equal Opportunity

“The Future of Equal Opportunity,” will explore the current landscape, emerging challenges, and the strategies needed to protect and strengthen opportunity in the American workplace.

Fixing Work: Recent Lessons from the Field

The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program will soon release a report, Fixing Work: Lessons from Job Quality Practitioners, based on in-depth interviews with more than 20 leaders across the country about the work they are doing to create good jobs that provide economic security, the opportunity to advance and grow, and a safe, dignified, and equitable workplace. 

Advising Small Businesses on Job Quality: Lessons from CDFIs

Hear from CDFIs about their approaches to building job quality advising into their work, and share your questions and comments. We are eager to hear what you think!

Job Quality Fellowship Webinar – Transcript

In addition to providing an overview of the nomination and application process, we’re pleased to welcome two Job Quality Fellows to this conversation — Neidi Dominguez Zamorano, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, and Bo Delp, executive director of the Texas Climate Jobs Project — who will share their experience as members of the Fellowship.

Working and Homeless in America — A Book Talk with Brian Goldstone — Resources

“There Is No Place for Us” not only brings these unseen lives into focus but also forces us to confront a pressing question: If hard work is no longer enough to keep a roof over one’s head, what does that say about the promise of economic opportunity in the US?

Marketcrafters: The 100-Year Struggle To Shape the American Economy — A Book Talk with Chris Hughes

Markets and our economy don’t just happen — they’re crafted. While we often hear about the “free market” as a natural force governed by the invisible hand, the reality is far more intentional.