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Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Driving A-loan: Automobile debt, neighborhood race, and the COVID-19 pandemic
Transport Policy, Volume 155Evelyn Blumenberg, Fariba Siddiq, Samuel Speroni, Jacob L. Wasserman
COVID-19 altered travel patterns in the U.S. Studies have analyzed the effect of the pandemic on travel mode, including working from home, but few have focused on automobile ownership—a relationship with potentially long-term consequences for accessibility, household budgets and debt, and policy efforts to meet climate goals.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
License to Drive: The Effect of State Driver’s Licensing Laws on the Travel of Unauthorized Immigrants
Transportation Research Part A, Volume 187, September 2024Andrew Schouten, Evelyn Blumenberg
Since 1993, eighteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing unauthorized immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses. California is one of these states, passing the Safe and Responsible Drive Act (AB 60) in 2013. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the adoption of state driver’s licensing laws for unauthorized immigrants and commute mode—the likelihood of commuting by private vehicle, solo driving, and public transit. We focus on unauthorized Latin American immigrants in California, but also test the robustness of our models both by using additional samples from other states and by employing alternate modeling approaches. We find that AB 60 had a small positive effect on driving rates among unauthorized Latin American immigrants in California, but little or no effect in states outside of California. Results also show a decline in the rate of commuting by public transit after AB 60’s implementation. This drop, however, was modest, and only accounted for a small portion of the larger transit ridership declines in California prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Employment Concentration, Dispersion, and the Changing Commute in the San Fransico Bay Area
The Journal of Transportation and Land Use, Volume 17 No.1Evelyn Blumenberg, Samuel Speroni
In the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced rapid job growth (17% from 2002 to 2015). Employment growth greatly exceeded housing production, resulting in rising housing prices. The mismatch between jobs and housing potentially contributed to an increase in commute distance, as workers relocated to outlying neighborhoods in search of affordable housing. In this paper, the authors analyze changes in commute distance over time, with a focus on the spatial location of employment and, in particular, downtown job growth. They find that commute distance increased slightly between 2002 and 2015 throughout the Bay Area (from 17.2 to 17.8 mi.), with the greatest increase among workers in job centers located in outlying parts of the region (from 19.1 to 20.8 mi.). Increases in census tract jobs was by far the strongest predictor of commute distance increase, though this overall relationship in the region was likely moderated by the increase in employment in downtown San Francisco (44%) where, all else being equal, workers travel shorter distances (14.4 mi. in 2002 and 15.4 mi. in 2015) relative to other workers. This relationship may be due to the demographic composition of San Francisco residents: high-wage, young, single workers who are able to afford high-priced housing close to downtown. A better balance between jobs and housing would allow workers the option of self-selecting into neighborhoods closer to their jobs, underscoring the importance of policies to spur housing production in high-cost metropolitan areas.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Are immigrants migrating away from transit? Immigrant transit use trends in California
Travel Behavior and SocietyAndrew Schouten, Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian D. Taylor
While patronage on most public transit systems around the world remains modestly to significantly depressed post-pandemic, transit ridership had mostly been declining across the US since 2014. Advocates, practitioners, and scholars have offered a range of explanations for pre-pandemic patronage decline. This analysis examines the demand-side of this phenomenon by focusing on high-propensity transit riders, and, in particular, immigrants in the most populous US state: California. Drawing on the California add-on to the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys, we evaluate changes in transit use among Hispanic and Asian immigrants. We find that during the study period, transit trip frequency of Hispanic immigrants declined, converging toward the ridership patterns of US-born Hispanics. While this trend was largely the result of rising incomes, increased vehicle ownership, and lower residential densities among non-US-born Hispanics, all else equal, Hispanic immigrants continued to use transit more than their US-born counterparts. By contrast, transit trip making by Asian immigrants diverged from that of US-born Asians. Notably, this divergence was not the result of declining per-person trip making by Asian immigrants, which was relatively stable during the study period. Instead, the growing gap was due to increases in transit trip frequency by US-born Asians.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Sex Differences in Child Care Travel
FindingsEvelyn Blumenberg, Zhiyuan Yao, Madeline Wander
Child care travel is differentiated by sex: who makes such trips shapes the mode and distance to child care in relation to home and, for working parents, to jobs. To better understand the relationship between sex and child care travel, we analyze child care trips in California by sex while controlling for a variety of demographic and socio-economic factors. We find women are responsible for over 70% of all child care trips. Though most child care trips are taken by automobile, women are more likely to walk kids to child care centers than men. We also find that households choose child care centers that are closer to home than workplaces.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Young workers, jobs-housing balance, and commute distance: Findings from two high-housing-cost U.S. regions
CitiesEvelyn Blumenberg, Hannah King
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the affordable housing crisis is forcing households in large, primarily coastal U.S. metropolitan areas to seek lower cost housing in peripheral neighborhoods distant from downtown, helping to explain recent increases in commute distance. In this study we examine whether the relative availability of housing in close proximity to jobs (jobs-housing balance) is associated with the commute distance of young workers (workers under 30), many of whom are relatively new to the labor market. We draw on data from two high-cost metropolitan areas in California, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
We find that commute distances are longer for both younger and older adults in neighborhoods where there are more jobs relative to housing. Despite the growing affordable housing crisis in the state, the strength of this relationship did not change over time in either region. However, as we might expect, jobs-housing balance is more strongly associated with commute distance in the San Francisco Bay Area—where housing is more constrained and expensive—than in Los Angeles. The findings suggest the importance of policies to greatly enhance housing availability in high-cost metropolitan areas. They also underscore the need to go beyond housing policy in efforts to significantly increase access to employment and reduce travel.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Decisions & distance: The relationship between child care access and child care travel
Journal of Transport GeographyEvelyn Blumenberg, Madeline Wander, Zhiyuan Yao
Child care is essential infrastructure. Without child care—or without adequate access to child care—parents and household caregivers are unable to work or conduct other critical activities, which can adversely affect their outcomes. In the U.S., child care supply has long fallen short of demand, with variations across neighborhoods that differ by income, race, and ethnicity. Yet there is relatively little research on child care access, use, and travel. In this study, we test the relationship between formal child care supply and households' use of formal care and home-to-child-care travel distances in California. Using a two-step floating catchment area method, we develop a time-weighted spatial measure of child care access and apply this measure in statistical models to predict two outcome measures: the likelihood of making a home-to-child-care trip and travel distance to the child care center, controlling for other factors. We find that child care access is associated with an increased likelihood of using formal child care—and among households that use such care, access is associated with shorter travel distances. Our analysis underscores the importance of policies to address spatial barriers to child care, particularly in neighborhoods—low-income, Latinx, non-urban—where child care supply is limited.
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Putting Automobile Debt on the Map: Race and the Geography of Automobile Debt in California,” Tr
Transportation Research Part AEvelyn Blumenberg, Fariba Siddiq, Samuel Speroni, Jacob L. Wasserman
Most U.S. metropolitan areas developed alongside the automobile, producing neighborhoods of relatively low density. Consequently, access to opportunities in these neighborhoods is predicated on having an automobile, yet many households do not have the resources to purchase one outright, relying on automobile loans to spread out the purchase price. While automobile loans can enable automobile ownership, they also significantly increase the vehicle purchase price, particularly for non-white consumers subject to discriminatory lending practices.
In this study, we rely on data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel from Experian to examine the determinants and geography of automobile debt and its consequences in California, testing whether various automobile debt measures disproportionately affect non-white neighborhoods.
We find that, controlling for other factors associated with automobile lending including income, Black and Latino/a neighborhoods have higher total automobile debt, debt burdens (debt relative to income), and automobile loan delinquency rates. In particular, Latino/a neighborhoods shoulder significant automobile debt, while borrowers in Black neighborhoods have the highest delinquency rates. Factors associated with lower total automobile debt and automobile debt burden include better credit ratings, higher residential densities, urban locations, and proximity to rail stations.
The findings underscore the importance of policies to offset the costs of automobile ownership and access. As part of this, policymakers should adopt and enforce fair lending rules to combat discriminatory and predatory practices and facilitate access to high-quality financial institutions and products in communities of color.
Refereed Journal Articles
2023
Can Subsidized Carshare Programs Enhance Access for Low-Income Travelers?
Journal of the American Planning AssociationEvelyn Blumenberg, Julene Paul, Miriam Pinski, Madeline Brozen
Problem, research strategy, and findings
Carsharing programs—subscription-based car rentals—allow users to purchase only the automobility that they need. These programs may benefit low-income travelers by increasing access at lower prices than private auto ownership. Most carshare programs, however, disproportionately serve higher-income drivers. To assess carsharing’s potential to address the accessibility needs of disadvantaged households, we interviewed members of BlueLA, an electric carsharing program in central Los Angeles (CA) that offers both subsidized and regular memberships. We found few differences in how travelers with different membership types used BlueLA. They both used the service to complement travel by other modes like public transit and ridehail. In addition, members cited the benefits of gaining car access without the financial burden of car ownership or the unpredictability of ridehail fares. Neighborhood context, including residential density and the availability of non-automobile transportation options, also increased BlueLA’s appeal. However, due to limited and unreliable vehicle availability, most users did not rely on BlueLA for time-sensitive trips. BlueLA both eased and increased access to destinations outside of the commute and complemented public transit for subsidized and regular members.
Takeaway for practice
Services like BlueLA cannot meet all transportation needs. However, subsidized electric carsharing—particularly targeted to central-city neighborhoods—may address some accessibility needs of low-income households without imposing the burdens of automobile ownership.
Refereed Journal Articles
2023
Variation in Child Care Access Across Neighborhood Types: A Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) Approach
Applied GeographyEvelyn Blumenberg, Zhiyuan Yao, Madeline Wander
Finding safe and high-quality child care is critical to working parents. However, research suggests that formal child care—both family child care and center-based child care—is in short supply in the U.S. We hypothesize that compared to urban neighborhoods, child care access will be lower in outlying suburban neighborhoods with newer and less developed social infrastructure. Applying the 2SFCA method, we predict variation in the supply of child care relative to demand—a measure of child care access—across California neighborhoods that vary by geography as well as sociodemographic and employment characteristics. Similar to prior research, we find that percent Latinx of a neighborhood is associated with lower child care access. In terms of neighborhood type, as we predict, we find that child care access is lower in newly developed suburban areas compared to most other neighborhood types. This finding suggests the importance of incentives to create formal child care facilities in new suburbs, neighborhoods that house a quarter of all young children in the state.
Refereed Journal Articles
2023
Vehicle Ownership Rates: The Role of Lifecycle, Period, and Cohort Effects
Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 21Julene Paul, Evelyn Blumenberg
Researchers and policymakers often attempt to forecast trends in automobile ownership. But to understand recent changes in demand for cars, researchers must account for behaviors specific to different generations, while simultaneously controlling for the influence of lifecycle and historical effects. To overcome the analytical challenges of cross-sectional data in Age-Period-Cohort (APC) analysis, we apply three different approaches largely used by biostatisticians to isolate how cohort effects influence the likelihood that a U.S. adult lives in a zero-vehicle household.
Our analyses draw on data from the U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) from 1970 to 2019. To test for cohort effects, we use constraint-based binary logistic regression, a nonlinear parametric approach to log-linear models, and median polish analysis. We find that people born from 1935 to 1944 experienced the strongest negative cohort effect of all groups, and thus were least likely to live in zero-vehicle households (after accounting for age and period effects). Compared to this cohort, persons born before 1924 and after 1955 saw higher likelihoods of living in zero-vehicle households, all else equal.
The peak cohort effect of people born in the 1930s to 1940s may please those interested in reducing automobile use. But because automobiles offer access benefits, more recent cohorts may experience transportation challenges. Negative effects may be especially salient for Millennials, a group faring worse economically than previous generations. Further, recent changes in the transportation landscape – including the growth of services like carshare and ride-hail and behavioral changes emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic – complicate efforts to forecast demand for automobiles.
Refereed Journal Articles
2023
Planning for and Against Vehicular Homelessness: Spatial Trends and Determinants of Vehicular Dwelling in Los Angeles
Journal of the American Planning AssociationChristopher Giamarino, Madeline Brozen, Evelyn Blumenberg
Problem, research strategy, and findings
Shelter is a necessity, yet approximately 17 out of every 10,000 people in the United States are unhoused. Public attention to homelessness has centered on individuals sitting and sleeping in public spaces. However, as many as 50% of the unsheltered live in vehicles. For people sleeping in vehicles, finding a safe place to park is an ongoing challenge, further complicated by the growing number of ordinances restricting vehicular dwelling. We drew on point-in-time count data from the Los Angeles (CA) Homeless Services Authority to examine spatial patterns of vehicular homelessness in Los Angeles from 2016 to 2020. We tested the relationship between the presence of vehicle regulations and the number of people sleeping in vehicles. Although the data likely underestimated vehicular homelessness, we found that ordinances directly reduced the number of people living in vehicles in particular census tracts. On average, cities with citywide and overnight bans had greater impacts on people sleeping in vehicles than cities with less restrictive ordinances. However, the indirect effects in neighboring tracts were stronger and demonstrate the role of these ordinances in simply shifting the vehicular homeless between areas.
Takeaway for practice
Given the slow pace of delivering permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness, cities should reduce the harm and precariousness of living in vehicles. Strategies to do this include the reform of punitive vehicle towing and vehicle dwelling regulations. Safe parking programs can provide individuals with a safe place to park their vehicles at night, offer ancillary services, and deter harassment from neighborhood residents and the police. Longer term, transformative change will require additional policies and programs to place people into permanently affordable housing.
Refereed Journal Articles
2023
Vehicle Access and Falling Transit Ridership: Evidence from Southern California
TransportationMichael Manville, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, Andrew Schouten
We examine pre-COVID declines in transit ridership, using Southern California as a case study. We first illustrate Southern California’s unique position in the transit landscape: it is a large transit market that demographically resembles a small one. We then draw on administrative data, travel diaries, rider surveys, accessibility indices, and Census microdata for Southern California, and demonstrate a strong association between rising private vehicle access, particularly among the populations most likely to ride transit, and falling transit use. Because we cannot control quantitatively for the endogeneity between vehicle acquisition and transit use, our results are not causal. Nevertheless, the results strongly suggest that increasing private vehicle access helped depress transit ridership. Given Southern California’s similarity to most US transit markets, we conclude that vehicle access may have played a role in transit losses across the US since 2000.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Who Lives in Vehicles and Why? Understanding Vehicular Homelessness in Los Angeles
Housing Policy DebateChristopher Giamarino, Evelyn Blumenberg, Madeline Brozen
Homelessness continues to grow and to affect the lives of an increasingly diverse group of individuals. Many scholars have studied people living in homeless shelters and outdoors in tents. An overlooked population is the growing number of the unhoused living in vehicles. We draw on data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Homeless Demographic Survey to understand the characteristics of people living in vehicles and the extent to which they differ from the nonvehicular unhoused population. Compared to those living in tents, in makeshift shelters, and in public spaces, people living in vehicles are more likely to be women and to live in larger households with children, and are less likely to be chronically unhoused. These findings will help effectively target policies and services. Safe parking programs can provide temporary relief to those living in vehicles and, if done well, the interventions necessary to transition into permanent housing.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Driving, Residential Location, and Employment Outcomes Among Older Adults
Journal Applied GerontologyAndrew Schouten, Evelyn Blumenberg, Martin Wachs
The ability to drive is positively associated with workforce participation among older adults. However, residence in neighborhoods where destinations are easy to reach by public transit could potentially narrow the employment gap between older drivers and non-drivers. This study examines the relationship between driving, residential location characteristics, and employment outcomes among older adults. Findings show that both drivers and non-drivers are more likely to be employed if they live in neighborhoods with high levels of access to jobs via public transit. However, the positive relationship between transit access to jobs and employment outcomes is particularly strong among non-drivers. These findings indicate that although older adult drivers are more likely to work than their non-driving counterparts, the gap in employment outcomes is mitigated by living in dense, transit-rich neighborhoods. Results suggest that policies supporting both automobile access and transit-rich residential environments can facilitate labor force participation among older adults.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Who’s in the Driver Seat? Gender and the Division of Car Use in Auto-deficit Households
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and PracticeEvelyn Blumenberg, Andrew Schouten, Anne Brown
We examine the role of gender in access to household resources, in particular the household automobile. Drawing on data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey, we isolate the determinants of vehicle use within dual-earner, dual-driver, heterosexual households in which drivers share a single vehicle. We test four gender-related hypotheses: the role of disparities in economic power, practical necessity related to the household division of labor, gender norms, and gender preferences.
We find that practical necessity—the amount of time that spouses spend on household-serving or work-related activities—is the primary determinant of automobile use for both men and women. In contrast to previous research, we find that women have substantially more exclusive access to the household vehicle than their male partners. Rather than a measure of equality, this finding reflects the persistence of the gender division of household labor and the role of the car in its maintenance. The study underscores the broader need for policies to equalize gender roles both within and between the home and the workplace, as well as a role for transportation policies that serve the needs of household members who do not have primary use of the household car.
Refereed Book Chapters
2022
Can I Borrow [for] your Car? Income, Race, and Automobile Debt in California in California
Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and RecoveryEvelyn Blumenberg, Fariba Siddiq, Samuel Speroni, Jacob L. Wasserman
The COVID-19 crisis elevated the importance of private vehicles. The pandemic drove riders off public transit and spawned additional car-based activities such as drive-through testing and vaccinations and curbside pick-ups. Yet millions of low-income and non-white households do not own vehicles. This chapter draws on a unique credit panel dataset to examine automobile debt and delinquency in California. In particular, we examine whether automobile debt patterns during the pandemic differed from those during and coming out of the Great Recession (December 2007–June 2009). We also analyze the response to the COVID-19 recession across neighborhoods by income and race. Similar to the situation during the Great Recession, we find that the number of automobile loans per borrower declined. While the automobile debt burden (the ratio between total automobile debt and aggregate income) also declined, it fell far less during the pandemic than during the Great Recession. Moreover, automobile loan delinquencies spiked during the Great Recession but instead continued to drop during the pandemic. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis affected consumers differently by both race and income. Automobile debt burden rose in low-income, Latino/a, and Black neighborhoods, a pattern that preceded but continued unabated during the pandemic. The findings suggest that COVID-19 relief may have helped some families manage their automobile-related expenditures. However, other factors, such as increasing automobile prices, likely contributed to growing debt burdens, a potential source of financial distress.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Housing Affordability and Commute Distance
Urban GeographyEvelyn Blumenberg, Madeline Wander
The growing affordable housing crisis in high-cost metropolitan areas may force households to seek lower cost housing in the outer reaches of metropolitan areas contributing to the recent increase in commute distance. To explore this assertion, we test the relationship between the availability of affordable housing relative to jobs and commute distance in two diverse metropolitan statistical areas in Southern California: Los Angeles-Orange (higher cost, coastal, older, more urban) and Riverside-San Bernardino (lower cost, inland, newer, more suburban). A worse “fit” between the number of low-wage jobs and affordable housing rentals is associated with longer commute distances in LA-Orange, but is not statistically significant in Riverside-San Bernardino. This study’s findings highlight the differences in housing dynamics and commute distances between higher cost coastal regions and lower cost inland regions—and underscore the importance of protecting and expanding the supply of affordable housing in job-rich neighborhoods located in more expensive, coastal cities.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Commute Distance and Jobs-Housing Fit
TransportationEvelyn Blumenberg, Fariba Siddiq
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the affordable housing crisis is forcing households to seek lower cost housing in the outer reaches of major metropolitan areas, helping to explain recent increases in commute distance. To test this relationship, we use spatial regression to examine the relationship between the availability of affordable housing in close proximity to jobs (jobs-housing fit) and commute distance in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The analysis draws on 2015 Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin–Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) by workplace supplemented with data from the 2013–2017 5-Year American Community Survey on affordable housing units. We find substantial variation in jobs-housing fit across Los Angeles neighborhoods. The imbalance is greatest in higher-income neighborhoods located along the coast and in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. Controlling for other determinants of commute distance, a higher ratio of jobs to affordable housing is associated with longer distance commutes. To address growing commute distances, policymakers must greatly expand and protect the supply of long-term rental housing particularly in job-rich neighborhoods.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Keys to the Car Driving Cessation and Residential Location Among Older Adults
Journal of the American Planning AssociationAndrew Schouten, Evelyn Blumenberg, Martin Wachs, Hannah King
Problem, research strategy, and findings
Most Americans live in communities in which automobiles are central to participation in economic, social, and cultural activities. Outside of dense central cities, the ability to continue driving as one ages is fundamental to the quality of life among older adults. Driving rates decline significantly with age. Researchers have studied the myriad reasons former drivers stop driving, but few have examined associations between these transitions and characteristics of the neighborhoods in which older adults live or to which they move. We used longitudinal data from a national sample of 20,000 observations from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine relationships between residential location, driving reduction, and driving cessation. Longitudinal data allow analysis of changes in behavior, a major advantage over cross-sectional data; however, the timing and sequencing of behavioral changes remain difficult to isolate. Cities provide opportunities for older adults to travel by automobile and other modes that are less available outside cities. Older adults are more likely to reduce or give up driving if they reside in dense, urban, transit-oriented neighborhoods than other neighborhood types. Very few older adults move from suburban to urban neighborhoods; when they do, they are rarely more likely to reduce or stop driving.
Takeaway for practice
The findings underscore the importance of planning to accommodate aging in place. To do this in urban neighborhoods, policies must foster high-quality urban neighborhoods that not only attract younger adults (as is currently the trend) but also retain them as they age through the life cycle.