Source: Transportation America

Excerpt:

Public transit becomes a viable option only when people are able to rely on it for quick, convenient travel to their essential destinations. While about 80 percent of people in the US live within areas classified as “urban” (which includes the suburbs of urban centers), less than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of reliable, high quality transit that comes every 15 minutes. And 45 percent of Americans have no access to transit at all.

To get a better understanding of transit access in each state, Transportation America, the National Campaign for Transit Justice and the Labor Network for Sustainability took a look at data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Location Database to get a sense of how well transit was connecting people to their essential destinations. The EPA collects the number of jobs within a 45-minute drive and the number of jobs within a 45-minute transit ride. From that information, the study was able to compare the number of jobs accessible by driving and the number of jobs accessible by transit.

Read more: Is your state missing the bus? Evaluating state transit access and ridership