Pratt Center
April 5, 2010
COMMUTE Featured in Applied Research Center Case Study
COMMUTE, a transportation equity campaign coordinated by the Pratt Center, is the subject of an in-depth case study from the Applied Research Center.
The study, by ARC's Seth Freed Wessler, reviews some of the coalition's most important accomplishments. Those include:
- Interconnecting grassroots groups throughout the city around an advocacy framework for transportation equity.
- Its research showing race and income disparities in current transit service, which leaves black New Yorkers with commutes 25 percent longer on average than white New Yorkers do. Nearly two-thirds of all New York City commuters with rides of more than 1 hour have a household income of less than $35,000 a year.
- COMMUTE's success in framing congestion pricing as an equity issue - a strategy that the case study argues might have changed both the debate and the outcome, if pricing advocates had embraced it from the inception of their campaign.
- The development of a community-led constituency supporting bus rapid transit as a means of bringing high speed transportation to underserved communities.
COMMUTE's advocacy for BRT has played a pivotal role in successfully pressing the New York City Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Transportation Authority to engage communities in planning for Select Bus Service routes that will lay a foundation for a citywide BRT network.