Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

RUNNING ON EMPTY: TRAVEL PATTERNS OF EXTREMELY POOR PEOPLE IN LOS ANGELES

1993; SAGE Publishing; Issue: 1395 Linguagem: Inglês

2169-4052

Alex Meyerhoff, Martine Micozzi, Peter Rowen,

Transportation and Mobility Innovations

Although previous studies have focused on the travel needs and patterns of various social groups--including commuters, the elderly, the disabled, and women--few have specifically examined the travel patterns of public assistance recipients. The lack of information on such a large and growing segment of the population prompted a group of graduate students from the University of California at Los Angeles' Department of Urban Planning to initiate a study of the transportation needs of the very poor in Los Angeles county. Various subgroups of the population were examined, including the homeless, those living in shelters, and recipients of public assistance. Many of the latter depended on General Relief (GR), the form of public assistance obtained as a last resort, mandated by the state of California. For the very poor, accessibility to transportation is a major factor influencing the capacity to satisfy even the most rudimentary needs, such as food, shelter, employment, and medical care. The poor struggle daily to reach trip destinations that are necessary to sustain life or maintain eligibility for public assistance. This is particularly problematic in Los Angeles, where the geographic expanse of the region adds to the already formidable barriers that the poor must overcome. Moreover, the county, unlike other heavily populated counties in California, allocates few transportation subsidies to defray transportation costs to crucial destinations. Even the few transportation subsidies that are granted are allocated randomly by case workers. Dragged from one bureaucracy to another, with inadequate resources to defray the necessary transportation costs, many of the poor find themselves literally running on empty.