Before this Washington Post article on Langley Park, an immigrant community in inner-ring suburban Maryland, disappears into the pandemic blur, I want to add transportation to its many challenges. THREAD 1/
washingtonpost.com/local/an-immig…
washingtonpost.com/local/an-immig…
I've been working on "A Tale of Two Transit Centers" that compares Langley Park to downtown Silver Spring, the iconic suburban transit-oriented and walkable community on the Metro's Red Line. 2/
Langley Park has a transit center with buses, and no one would mistake Langley Park for walkable except that there are always people walking. It is suburban arterials and strip malls, surrounded by low-slung apartments. 
My work uses ACS vehicle availability data as a short-cut to a deeper understanding of how communities connect to the world and get things done. Here, I'm using the somewhat unwieldy Census Transportation Planning Product available at this website: ctpp.transportation.org/2012-2016-5-ye… /4
At first glance, Langley Park looks a lot like nearby areas, whereas downtown Silver Spring shows its strength in car-free living. The initial screen for transportation lifestyles looks for critical masses, dividing census tracts into low, medium and high. /5
Parts of Langley Park do approach the high category for car-free living, however. (A reminder that setting analysis boundaries is always a bit arbitrary.) 6/
For workers, moreover, the two communities are likely home to roughly the same number of car-free workers. Langley Park has more workers per household. /7
The pattern repeats for households with one car and more than one worker. Langley Park has more workers per car. /8
What about children living in car-free households? Downtown Silver Spring has very few. Langley Park has many more. /9
The pattern is even more pronounced for children in one-car households. /10
Because of the pandemic, Langley Park, like the rest of suburban Maryland, has experienced drastic cuts in bus service. How do we restore safe bus service as we try to come out of sheltering in place? /11
But we also need to care about the cars in Langley Park. They are just as important to the well-being of this community, and it is not much of a leap to guess their use is not limited to people within a household. /12
Places like Langley Park survive on the gift economy in automobile transport: the generous giving and sharing of rides across households within a community. Supporting this ride-giving culture will be important too. /13 END
