American cities have changed from older high-density urban neighborhoods to sprawling automobile-oriented suburbs. Many of the urban poor find themselves distant from jobs and services on this landscape. For poor single mothers, the problems are exacerbated by childrearing responsibilities. In addition, most of the jobs that are accessible to the working poor are low paying and have non-traditional hours, making the challenges of this new urban landscape even more formidable. Welfare reform initiatives have established time limits for assistance; the aim is to remove millions from welfare and make them self-sufficient. However, the immediate result was to push many into the ranks of the working poor. In cities, that means throwing them onto landscapes that are ill-suited to their needs. Consequently, a range of programs have been instituted to help them organize their lives, including many that improve access to public transportation. However, given the geography of the contemporary American city, it is not clear that such programs are effective in helping women make the transition to work. Thus, I examine whether public transportation in medium-sized American cities does, or can be made to, serve the needs of working poor women. Individual-level data, collected through ethnographies and travel diaries, is analyzed to create a picture of their movement paths, alternatives, and coping mechanisms. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to analyze concerns relating to changes in welfare programs. Data were acquired through travel diaries and were used to create routes to examine patterns of travel, and identify the constraints of using public transportation. I then used the data to recreate each woman's travel as if she did not have the use of a car to identify costs and inconveniences if she had to rely solely on public transportation. This research is intended to better the lives of those struggling to move from welfare to work, as well as improve policy makers' decisions in light of impending welfare reform renewal. Assuming that public transportation will not solve the problems of the working poor, a number of policy alternatives, including private automobile ownership, are discussed and evaluated.

Welfare recipients who plan to move into the workforce face significant barriers. Three-fourths of welfare recipients live in central cities or rural areas, while two-thirds of new jobs are in the suburbs. Public transportation offers little or no access to many of these jobs. The Job Access and Reverse Commute program authorizes the Department of Transportation (DOT) to provide grants to local agencies, nonprofit groups, transit authorities, and others to improve transportation to employment. This report examines DOT's implementation of the program in fiscal year 2000. GAO found that (1) DOT took steps to improve its process for selecting Job Access proposals for grant awards, (2) almost 90 percent of the fiscal year 1999 Job Access grantees that responded to GAO's survey were satisfied with the goals and intent of the program and, (3) DOT developed an evaluation plan that included specific performance criteria and requested specific information from the grantees for use in evaluating the program.

This report presents three case studies of innovative transportation planning efforts in metropolitan areas to improve access to jobs for current welfare recipients and other low income residents. These Access to Jobs case studies of the Hartford, St. Louis, and Detroit metropolitan areas focus on developing transportation solutions that meet locally defined goals and objectives and ensure that former welfare recipients have the needed mobility to reach employment opportunities. The experiences of each area offer a number of insights into how metropolitan transportation planning process might be applied in developing solutions to employment access problems. Topics discussed include local conditions, job access problem, types and characteristics of existing and planned services, impact of proposed solutions, organizational roles and responsibilities, context of planning effort, resource constraints, and planning methods.

This report provides information about the role of transportation in supporting welfare-to-work initiatives and identifies practical strategies to improve access to job opportunities for former welfare recipients making the transition to work. The Guidebook describes service approaches that include modifications to existing mass transit services, coordination between transportation services, ridesharing programs, automobile ownership programs, and collaborations between faith-based and community-based groups.