Transportation to and from work is a primary obstacle for low-income workers. Two-thirds of new jobs are created in the suburbs, but three-fourths of welfare recipients live in either inner city or rural areas. Nationally, only six percent (6%) of welfare recipients own private automobiles. Therefore, public mass transit and other forms of specialized transportation services are needed to reach jobs and such other necessary support services as child care, schools, medical facilities, and the like.

Bridges to Work, a large-scale demonstration, supports organizations that are helping "ready to work" urban residents, including some TANF recipients, find and keep jobs in the suburbs. The program assists with transportation needs, as well as job placement and retention, in Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), the contractor, is conducting evaluations in four of the cities to test if improved access to suburban jobs can significantly improve outcomes for low-income workers and their urban neighborhoods.

The Federal Transit Administration is funding a "Joblinks" demonstration program to test new transportation strategies for linking unemployed persons with job sites. In Phase 1, ten demonstrations were funded in six states. These demonstrations are now complete and a final report has been prepared. In Phase 2, additional demonstrations addressing transportation needs in Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities were recently initiated in six states.

Job Access and Reverse Commute, or JARC, is a national grant program administered by the FTA that provides states and communities with funding to expand employment transportation programs and services. No formal evaluation findings are currently available.

Selected Summary Findings in Brief

Joblinks Demonstration (Community Transportation Association):

• Most of the projects aimed to help people obtain jobs or attend employment training, thus reducing the number of individuals receiving public assistance. Additional objectives included increasing awareness of available transit resources and providing employment training, among other goals.
• The most significant outcome of the demonstration projects was the heightened awareness of the importance of transportation as a major issue in the context of the welfare-to-work initiatives.
• For transportation services to be effective, it was found that the following four key factors must be present:
• The availability of jobs in the local market at shift times that could be served by available drivers and vehicles;
• Strong support from the community with the belief that public transportation can play a role in eliminating transportation as a barrier to employment;
• Coordination among transportation providers, human services agencies, and employers; and,
• Flexibility in designing and adjusting services in response to users' needs.

Bridges to Work Demonstration (Public/Private Ventures):

Process/Implementation Findings:

• The challenges and costs of providing transportation services were one of the biggest surprises for some of the directors. Among the many logistical issues to be resolved were the needs of employers and employees and the relative distribution of jobs and people in different metropolitan areas. Most of the sites also found they could not take quality service for granted. Given these complexities and the costs associated with them, many directors felt that reverse-commute programs may only be feasible if government or employer subsidies are available to supplement the costs to riders.
• As labor markets tightened and the number of job-ready workers dwindled, it grew increasingly hard to recruit qualified participants, place them in jobs and keep them employed.
• The project directors noted that many employers, out of concern for their bottom line, did not seem to care what race their workers were so long as they were industrious and reliable.
• All five sites struggled, in varying degrees, to develop meaningful relationships with other public and private organizations.
• Coping with resistance to random assignment when recruitment lagged was one of the toughest challenges the sites faced.

Impact Findings not yet available.