One in 10 adults in the Bay Area struggle to consistently find three meals a day. More than half of all adults are overweight or obese. And residents in many of the region’s communities live in neighborhoods where fast food restaurants and convenience stores abound, while grocery stores are scarce or don’t exist at all. 

Federal highway funding offers states a stable resource that can support activities that improve women’s entry into and success in the construction trades. This briefing highlights examples of how two states, Maryland and Oregon, are using this funding to improve diversity in the highway construction workforce. The briefing paper is based on a review of literature, pre-apprenticeship state-level evaluations and progress reports, and interviews with key stakeholders from Oregon, the tradeswomen community, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

EConsult Solutions, Inc. (ESI) has teamed up with the Detroit Food and Fitness Collaborative (DFFC) and Urbane Development, LLC, to release an economic analysis of the city of Detriot’s food system. The study sought to assess the current state of Detroit’s food economy, highlight the opportunities and challenges shareholders face with the city’s food sector and develop a strategic approach to cultivating a food system for all residents.

Shared-mobility programs like bike-share and car-share have significant potential to benefit low-income users, yet often do not reach that population. This report examines the specific opportunities and challenges facing shared mobility programs in expanding services to low-income communities.

The Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) tested a way of making fruits and vegetables more affordable for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assis­tance Program (SNAP). Under HIP, SNAP partici­pants received a financial incentive for purchasing fruits and vegetables. The HIP evaluation used a random assignment research design.

Specifically, 7,500 Hampden County SNAP households were randomly selected to partic­ipate in HIP, while the remaining 47,595 households continued to receive SNAP benefits as usual. The final evaluation report presents findings on the impacts of HIP on fruit and vegetable consumption and spending, the processes involved in implementation and operating HIP, impacts on stakeholders, and the costs associated with the pilot.

Ride New Orleans’ analysis in this report highlights several critical findings.

1. By the end of 2012, just 36% of the pre-Katrina transit service offered by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) in 2005 had been restored – although 86% of New Orleans’ population had returned to the city.
2. Service reductions have been worst in areas where transit service is needed most: low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and areas where people have less access to personal vehicles
3. The RTA’s  is operating at a significant deficit every year and will soon run out of cash reserve funds. Some of the basic causes of the deficit are clear: our transit system costs more to operate than comparable systems and it charges lower fares. Yet, to date, the conversation about correcting the deficit has centered only on a potential fare increase. The findings in this report indicate that any sustainable solution to the deficit will need to involve lowering the costs of service as well as increasing revenues of all types.