The Transit Trade-Off: Can mobility hubs expand equitable access to transit without driving displacement?

By Nellie Graham

For the past 100 years, mainstream transportation planning has focused on moving cars, not people. Investments in highways have drastically outpaced transit investments, with roughly 80% of federal transportation money going to highways since the 1980s, while only 20% has gone to public transportation.¹ These investments have contributed to urban landscapes dominated by highways, parking lots, and great distances between jobs, services, and resources. For people who don’t own cars, a lack of high quality, reliable, and safe transportation to reach destinations has resulted in longer and more expensive commutes.² In addition, connections between different modes such as buses, trains, rideshare, walking, or biking have been largely uncoordinated in infrastructure, location, timing, or fares.

Mobility hubs are a tool to address gaps in connectivity by creating central transfer points that connect buses, trains, rideshares, and e-scooter or e-bike services in one location.³ These hubs are typically built along existing transit route systems, and make it easy to switch between modes of transportation without the hassle of navigating between services spread out across a city. In addition, with nearly half of all car trips in the U.S. being under three miles, mobility hubs are a promising solution for first and last mile trips.⁴

Mobility hubs also have great potential for increasing transit access and service in underserved neighborhoods. Youth, seniors, people with disabilities, communities of color, low-income people, and immigrants all rely more heavily on public transit than people who are white, US born, and high-income. For example, among urban residents, 34% of Black residents and 27% of Hispanic residents report taking public transit daily or weekly, compared to just 14% of white residents.⁵ According to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more reliable, connected, and coordinated transit leads to better outcomes in education, housing, childcare, income, and healthcare.⁶ Frequent, reliable public transportation can also lead to fewer traffic vehicle crashes, reduced air pollution and associated respiratory illnesses, all of which are more common in disadvantaged communities.⁷ Even people who don’t use public transportation benefit from reduced traffic congestion, safer local streets, and stronger economic outcomes—including more job opportunities, higher property values, and increased business activity in their neighborhoods.⁸

Nevertheless, disadvantaged communities face significant challenges that threaten their access to the benefits of mobility hubs, even as they stand to gain the most. Mobility hubs rely on existing transit infrastructure, and capitalize on a geographic concentration of transportation and community assets. However, urban neighborhoods that are historically low income and predominantly made up of people of color and immigrants tend to have fewer, lower quality, and more dangerous critical infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes.⁹ For mobility hubs to serve their purpose in disadvantaged urban communities they would have to not only connect different modes of transportation, but also repair and create new networks of active transportation and public transit.

Despite high usage of public transit among youth, seniors, people with disabilities, people of color, low-income people, and immigrants, the presence of these residents in transit-friendly neighborhoods has steadily declined since 2000.^{10, 11} There are multiple factors that have contributed to this population decline, such as gentrification of formerly dense urban neighborhoods leading to a lack of affordable housing in city centers, and corresponding suburbanization of poverty and decentralization of jobs.¹² To ensure that populations most dependent on public transit can benefit from the new transit landscape of mobility hubs, strategies focused on anti-displacement, affordability, and accessibility should be embedded to meet the needs of historically underserved communities.

Without addressing these challenges, mobility hubs risk further entrenching transit inequities.

Anti Displacement Strategies

New transportation infrastructure can have unintended consequences, like driving up housing prices and accelerating gentrification. Mobility hubs, in particular, may increase demand in areas well served by public and active transportation options. This preference for living in central locations pushes up property values and rents, which could price out lower-income residents —a pattern well documented in research on transit-oriented development.¹³

The Green Line Extension in Somerville, Massachusetts, is one example of what can happen when transit-oriented development is implemented without anti-displacement measures in place. In 2022 new transit services and stations came to the area, as did rapid real estate and commercial development, causing rents and eviction rates to skyrocket. With no rent control or tenant protections in place, residents were left vulnerable. In some cases, property developers took advantage by renovating buildings into luxury apartments and then tripling the rent.¹⁴

To prevent this, cities can adopt strategies to combat displacement. Many cities are currently experimenting with policies to preserve affordable housing, which include:

• Updating zoning laws to allow a diverse mix of housing near mobility hubs
• Requiring or incentivizing developers to offer below-market-rate units
• Repurposing public land for affordable housing
• Passing ordinances that prevent retaliatory or discriminatory evictions
• Implementing demolition surcharges

These measures can help slow gentrification, ensuring that long time residents benefit from reinvestment and growth.

Housing and Transportation Justice organizers protest the grand opening ceremony of the Green Line Extension. Photo courtesy of Liberation News.

Affordability Strategies

To ensure that mobility hubs serve the populations most dependent on public transit—particularly low-income individuals—affordability of transit service must be a central design and policy consideration. Without deliberate planning, these hubs risk creating new financial barriers rather than removing them.

Publicly operated transit systems have a range of tools to reduce costs for low-income users. These include:

• Subsidized fare programs for low-income families, which can also be paired with existing benefits like SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, and unemployment assistance.
• Free transit pilots, which have already been adopted in over 50 cities and towns across Europe, driven by climate and social equity goals.¹⁵

However, mobility hubs also rely on private companies for services such as car and e-bike share. These companies are often empowered to set their own prices, presenting additional affordability and price reliability concerns during peak commuting hours. Last year alone, CitiBike in New York raised e-bike fares by 20%,¹⁶ and in Chicago, ebike share members pay 45% more than they did five years ago.¹⁷ However, cities have the power and responsibility to regulate and incentivize private mobility companies to keep prices affordable and ensure services are fairly distributed, including at mobility hubs. Without strong public oversight, private providers can determine routes, service options, and pricing– prioritizing profit over equitable access.

Photo via Cities Today.

One example of a program addressing affordability concerns is Move PGH, a public-private partnership that connected Pittsburghers with flexible, low-cost transportation options. Move PGH conducted a pilot program in 2023 that provided 50 low-income residents with subscriptions to the service for six months.¹⁸ The pilot focused on the Manchester and Chateau neighborhoods which were areas with median incomes 14% below that of the city as a whole. To qualify, participants needed to be receiving some form of government-funded social assistance, lack regular access to a personal car, and be seeking a job—or interested in finding a different job or working more hours. While new mobility hubs might incorporate these benefits in pilot phases for a limited number of qualifying people, uncertain financial sustainability limits the potential for these pilots to grow and serve more low-income, disadvantaged communities. To sustain affordability and equitable outcomes, long term strategies are needed to maintain these services after initial grants expire.

With these challenges in mind, affordability strategies for cities can include:

• Integrating fare subsidies with social service programs for automatic eligibility and streamlined access.
• Establish fare caps or price floors for private mobility services at public mobility hubs to ensure price stability.
• Require affordability plans from private providers as part of permitting or funding agreements.
• Create long-term funding mechanisms (e.g., local taxes, congestion pricing revenue) to sustain low-income subsidies beyond pilot phases.
• Incorporate community voices in hub governance to align pricing and service decisions with public interest.
• Partner with mobility focused local governments and community based organizations to provide free or reduced price gift cards or passes at community engagement events.

Accessibility Strategies

Mobility hubs should also consider physical accessibility, especially in low-income communities. Access to these hubs often depends on surrounding infrastructure like sidewalks, lighting, and crosswalks—features that are frequently missing or not maintained in underserved areas.19 This creates major challenges for people with disabilities, the elderly, and parents with young children who rely on this infrastructure to reach public transit. Compounding this issue are transit schedules designed around the needs of professional workers, offering limited services early in the morning or late at night when manual and service workers commute.

Additionally, services must be fairly distributed across cities to meet the needs of all communities. While professional workers typically commute to centralized locations well-served by transit, lower-paid workers often have to travel to job sites spread across the city and region, leading to much longer commutes and fewer job opportunities. Moreover, private mobility providers looking to make a profit may be reluctant to serve residents in lower-density, lower-income areas.

One promising solution has been placing mobility hubs directly in affordable housing communities, like those in Oakland, Richmond, and San Jose, CA, through the EV Car Sharing and Mobility Hubs in Affordable Housing Pilot.²⁰ These hubs include carshare, bikeshare, electric vehicle charging, bike parking, discounted transit passes, and travel information screens. The pilot ran from March 2018- March 2025, and found that more transportation options for these communities resulted in better connections to medical facilities, schools, grocery stores, and other daily needs, all while reducing overall household expenditures on transportation. The project estimated up to $1,440,956 in travel cost savings over the course of the pilot.²¹

Another solution is for the city to require a certain portion of mobility services to occur in lower-density, lower-income priority areas. Chicago has attempted this with Divvy bike share service, while offering low-cost memberships to low-income riders through their Divvy for Everyone (D4E) program.²² To improve service for riders in low density and low income neighborhoods Divvy installed 100 new bike racks and decaled 233 existing city bike racks to designate them as free Divvy ebike parking, with plans to install up to 250 more stations over the next two years to expand and densify the network. This, paired with D4E, led to quadruple the membership of low income riders, with Chicagoans of color now making up the majority of ridership.

Additional accessibility strategies should focus on:

• Require mobility providers to serve lower-density, lower-income areas through incentives or service mandates.
• Install more stations, racks, and charging infrastructure in underserved neighborhoods to increase convenience and visibility of mobility services.
• Complete Streets Design to ensure all streets leading to mobility hubs include continuous, ADA-compliant sidewalks, curb ramps, pedestrian-scale lighting, shade trees, and clearly marked crosswalks.
• Traffic calming measures such as speed bumps, curb extensions, and pedestrian refuge islands near hubs to make walking and rolling safer for seniors, children, and people with disabilities.

Photo via Shared Use Mobility Center.

Conclusion

For mobility hubs to effectively meet the needs of underserved populations, who already rely more heavily on public transportation over private vehicles, equity should be embedded in planning and implementation from the beginning. Considerations for anti-displacement strategies, affordability, and accessibility are key to ensuring these populations are not left behind. It’s also important to recognize that federal equity data may not be sufficient for capturing the nuances of local demographics and the unequal distribution of benefits and burdens. Working with local organizations and engaging directly with community members is crucial to understanding these complexities. Incorporating residents’ lived experiences can also help mobility hubs address real-world usage of services. By prioritizing local input and acknowledging disparities in spatial, social, and economic access, mobility hubs can avoid recreating systems of inequity in public transit.

Further considerations for mobility hub equity should explore how to channel federal infrastructure investments towards low-income areas, in addition to creating transit connections from suburb to suburb, rather than suburb to city center.

Stay tuned as we explore mobility hub equity strategies further with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, focusing on where and what types of sustainable, equitable transit and mobility infrastructure can be installed on the eastside and urban core of the Las Vegas Valley to improve access in disadvantaged communities. The findings will help identify priority locations for future mobility hubs in the region.

References

1. Transportation for America. (2022). IIJA implementation hub: Understanding the 2021 infrastructure law.
2. The Urban Institute. (2020). The Unequal Commute.
3. Chicago Regional Transportation Authority. What are mobility hubs? Toolkits and Education.
4. Metropolitan Transportation Commission. (2025). Mobility Hubs.
5. Pew Research Center. (2016). Who relies on public transit in the U.S.? By Monica Anderson. Climate, Energy, Environment.
6. CDC Foundation. Public Health Action Guide: Public Transportation.
7. American Public Transportation Association. Public Transportation Facts.
8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, February 7). CDC Transportation Recommendations – Brief.
9. Huang, Chye-Ching and Roderick Taylor. (2019). Any Federal Infrastructure Package Should Boost Investment in Low-Income Communities. Center on Budget and Policy Priority Areas.
10. Paul, Julene, and Brian D. Taylor. (2021). Who Lives in Transit-Friendly Neighborhoods? An Analysis of California Neighborhoods over Time. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 10: 100341.
11. Coogan, Mathew, Greg Spitz, Tom Adler, Nancy McGuckin, Richard Kuzmyak, Karla Karash. (2018). Understanding Changes in Demographics, Preferences, and Markets for Public Transportation. Transit Cooperative Research Program. ISBN 978-0-309-47990-5
12. Kneebone, Elizabeth. (2017). The changing geography of US poverty. Brookings Institution.
13. Metro Transit. (2021). Transit Oriented Development, Gentrification and Displacement: Key Questions Anti-Displacement Policies, and Case Studies. Kathryn Hansen.
14. Wilson, Madeline. (2022). Green Line Extension contributes to increased displacement risk of Somerville tenants. The Tufts Daily.
15. Garay, Elissa. (2022). These European Countries Are Offering Free Public Transport to Help Combat Air Pollution. Conde Nast Traveler.
16. Fitzgerald, Thomas. (2024). Bikeshare Ridership Numbers and Costs Are Soaring. Government Technology.
17. Heinzel, Curtis. (2024). Bikeshare Is More Popular Than Ever. But It’ll Cost You. CityLab.
18. Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. (2021). Urban Mobility in Pittsburgh.
19. Bridging the Gap. (2012). Income Disparities in Street Features that Encourage Walking. Research Brief. Safe Routes Partnership.
20. Shared Use Mobility Center. (2022). ​​Mobility Hubs in Affordable Housing.
21. California Air Resources Board. LCTI: Car Sharing and Mobility Hubs in Affordable Housing Sites Pilot Project.
22. City of Chicago. (2023). Divvy for the Entire City: Divvy Service Hits All 50 Wards. Department of Transportation.