Equity Audit: Transit Connectivity And “Spatial Mismatch” In New Jersey: Are New Jersey’s Minority Populations Enabled To Use Transit In A Way That Promotes Access Outside Of Urban Areas?
Charis G. Orzechowski
11 October 2013
Connectivity is the measurement of how easily one can travel in and out of a place. Connectivity is what makes a commute to work, or a simple trip to the grocery store, possible. A state can have one thousand fancy trains. But, if you have no car, none of those trains stop in your town, and there are no bus stops either, you’re not going anywhere. Conversely, your hometown could be the most well-connected and transit- friendly town on the planet. But, if the job you want is in a town where there is no transit, you cannot get to work.
Do the four New Jersey counties of Essex, Middlesex, Somerset and Union, create sufficient transit connectivity, such that citizens who are transit dependent may move about almost as freely as those citizens with cars? This study began with the hypothesis that urban municipalities with high poverty rates and higher percentages of black and Hispanic residents will have achieved greater, more than adequate, connectivity, and that municipalities with lower rates of poverty, as well as smaller percentages of black and Hispanic residents, will overwhelmingly have less than adequate connectivity. The point of this study was to examine whether certain minority and poverty-stricken, transit dependent populations are being excluded from traveling about freely within suburban municipalities that have job opportunities available for people with fewer specialized skills.
What this study has found is that two counties have fostered connectivity as an essential service for their residents, and that two counties have not. Then, within those results, it appears that the two counties that are connectivity-sparse lack connectivity for reasons that differ between the two.
This study found that only Middlesex county has 14 municipalities withquestionable to poor connectivity (a score of “1” or “0,” meaning 5 or fewer bus stops per square mile) where 12 out of those 14 with poor connectivity also serve a population troubled by a poverty rate greater 3%, and up to 10%. This means that Middlesex contains 12 municipalities with transit conditions that simultaneously discourage commuters entering from high-poverty areas for work, as well as neglect the transit needs of their own poverty-stricken citizens. Union County contains 3 municipalities that exhibit similar characteristics and raise similar concerns.
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