Transit Deserts in Cook County

Image courtesy of transitfuture.org

About 1 out of every 10 people in Cook County, roughly 438,500 residents, live in “transit deserts” that are cut off from fast, frequent train and bus service, according to a new analysis that for the first time identifies dozens of Chicago-area mass transit dead zones and maps them in relation to major job clusters.

The study, conducted by the Chicago-based urban research group the Center for Neighborhood Technology using census and other data, found that four of the Chicago region’s five big employment areas are in suburbs that are not well-connected to high-quality transit, making them difficult to reach without a vehicle. Those four job centers make up the northwest corridor past O’Hare International Airport, Lombard, Naperville and Oak Brook.

As a result, many low-income individuals are spending hundreds of dollars each month on car ownership in order to travel to entry-level jobs, the study’s authors said…Please click here to read John Hilkevitch’s story in the Tribune, or here for a transit desert fact sheet.