Transportation & Jobs

Although this blogs focuses mostly on housing issues, one cannot ignore the fact that transportation is very closely related to housing, to the extent that a Housing + Transportation Index has been created to calculate the total cost of living in a place.

Transportation is also very important to employment.  Not everyone can drive; maybe it's because of poor eyesight, poor night vision, age, possibility of seizures, or even as a personal choice.  This can have a big impact on the jobs available to people.  Lack of employment eventually leads to lack of housing.

A good article at Huffington Post about the transportation situation in Milwaukee County.

Peggy Schulz was fed up. In March, after being unemployed for nearly two years, she performed an experiment: She went to a job-search website, limited the search to the Milwaukee area and typed in a simple term: "bus line."

The results displayed what had long been plaguing her. Job posting after job posting featured similar caveats: "this is not on a bus line," "need reliable transportation not on bus line," "positions are NOT on a bus line," "our client that is not located on a bus line is interested in having you work ..."

Over time, many new employment centers have been created in the suburbs, but with a lack of public transportation to those employment centers.  This means that people who don't want to drive, or more likely, cannot drive, do not have access to an increasing number of jobs, especially as bus lines shrink, as rail is blocked.

It's not just the employees who suffer, but also the employers. 

Across Milwaukee County, workers want jobs, and businesses want workers. Eric Isbister is the chief executive of GenMet, a metal fabricator located one block north of Milwaukee county. He needs new employees -- the expansion of his business depends on it -- but he can't get them.

The nearest bus stop is more than two miles from his factory. He advertises in newspapers, and regularly interviews prospective employees, but he continually runs up against the same problem. Often, he said, he'll see an interviewee's friends or family waiting in a car outside, ready to give the person a ride home. When he sees that, he knows he won't be able to hire the worker.

Isbister said he'd hire a dozen new employees on the spot, if only he could.