High-quality, affordable transportation is crucial to upward mobility from poverty. Limited transportation options restrict job access (PDF), increase unemployment (PDF), and widen income gaps. Transportation barriers also lead millions of people to miss medical appointments annually, exacerbating health disparities. For students, transit access reduces absenteeism and boosts academic achievement. Single parents, in particular, rely on transit to juggle work, child care, and daily necessities.
But transportation is expensive, and not everyone can access public transit. Across the country, households with low incomes typically spend about 24 percent of their income on transportation. And public transit ridership has stagnated or declined over the past decade, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend is concerning given that, when available, public transit tends to reduce transportation costs (PDF).
Recognizing its importance to long-term prosperity, the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Framework offers two indicators, called Mobility Metrics, for measuring transportation access in a community. The share of commuters who use public transit estimates the percentage of workers who commute to work via public transit. The share of income spent on transportation captures how much a household spends on transportation, regardless of mode. Both metrics focus on households with low incomes, defined as 80 percent of the area median income.
Here we explore the relationship between these metrics, the changes in the share of commuters who use public transit over time, and how one city—Alexandria, Virginia—increased public transit ridership. We hope to shed light on an evolving challenge for local leaders and offer one model for how cities can respond.
Households with low incomes spend less on transportation in counties with high public transit use
To understand the relationship between public transit use and how much people spend on transportation, we analyzed 2022 data from every county in the US.
As the figure shows, we found that very few commuters with low incomes use public transit. In counties where such commuters do use public transit often, households with low incomes typically have lower transportation costs as a share of their income. This is consistent with research concluding that access to public transportation tends to lower household transportation costs, even among households with cars (PDF).
Some commuters stopped using public transit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but city commuters with low incomes continued relying on it
Given that cities tend to provide more public transit options, we also analyzed city-level data. To do so, we calculated the population-weighted median share of commuters who use public transit among US cities with populations over 75,000.
Despite research documenting declines in public transit use during the 2010s, the population-weighted median share of commuters who use public transit remained steady between 2015 and 2019, growing from 23.3 percent to 23.5 percent. This discrepancy is likely due to our data focusing solely on transit riders with low incomes in large cities, rather than countrywide transit ridership.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many former transit commuters began commuting by car or working remotely. Still, the fact that the median share of commuters who use public transit dipped only slightly to 21.2 percent suggests many workers with low incomes in big cities—who frequently lacked access to private transportation and were required to work in person during the pandemic—continued using public transit.
How Alexandria, Virginia, is increasing access to public buses
Alexandria, Virginia—a city of about 160,000 residents just outside of Washington, DC—has significantly enhanced its bus network in recent years. With improvements focused on accessibility, affordability, and service expansion, the city has seen increases in the number of people who ride the bus.
Alexandria had a lower share of commuters who used public transit than the population-weighted median for large cities in 2015, but it effectively eliminated that gap by 2019. Several changes supported this increase: In 2015, Alexandria removed the ability to add value to transit cards on buses, speeding up service. In 2017, the city allowed all Alexandria public high school students to ride buses for free. In 2019, the city improved a major bus route’s frequency and hours of operation. In late 2021, Alexandria also stopped collecting bus fare and substantially expanded its bus network, aiming to increase the percentage of residents with low incomes who have access to frequent, all-day transit to 89 percent (up from 29 percent).
Alexandria funded these changes through a combination of interstate toll revenues, city funding, a state grant, and reduced costs for fare-collection activities (PDF). Eighty percent of low-income riders surveyed by the city in 2022 reported that they use the bus system more because it’s free (PDF). Increased bus ridership suggests these residents may be experiencing better access to jobs, child care, health care, and other supports necessary for long-term economic mobility.
Despite these efforts, Alexandria was not immune to the broader trends of decreased ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its share of commuters who used public transit declined to 19.9 percent in 2022, which is below the population-weighted median of 21.1 percent for large cities that year.
Even so, the city’s ridership rebounded quickly. By the end of 2024, the number of bus riders not only returned to prepandemic levels (PDF), but Alexandria also reached its highest ridership rates in system history.
How can communities expand transit access?
Not all communities will be able to replicate Alexandria’s ability to expand its bus system or make trips free or more subsidized. Still, the city’s work to improve service and prioritize high-use routes for residents with low incomes is a promising roadmap for supporting upward mobility and combating declining rates of transit use.
Local leaders can look to the Upward Mobility Framework for other policies that can help improve transportation access. They include expanding paratransit systems, improving walking and cycling infrastructure, and supporting dense housing development near public transportation.
To explore your community’s transportation metrics, visit the Upward Mobility Data Dashboard.
Let’s build a future where everyone, everywhere has the opportunity and power to thrive
Urban is more determined than ever to partner with changemakers to unlock opportunities that give people across the country a fair shot at reaching their fullest potential. Invest in Urban to power this type of work.
