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When Ryan Bell took over as pastor of Hollywood Adventist Church in California, it was a withering congregation with only about 50 active members. And, he says, “We had a homeless ministry we couldn’t afford and a debt that was about to kill the church.” Bell reluctantly closed the feeding program for the homeless but resolved to find a more practical way to address the issue.

“New York is a great city to live in if you can afford to get out of it,” wrote American author William Rossa Cole. The same thing works the other way around too. The wealthier you are, access to the city becomes easier. Manhattan (the cityʼs richest and whitest borough) is abundantly better connected to trains and buses than any of the other boroughs. In fact, when the Metropolitan Transit Association cut its buses and train lines, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens felt it the hardest.

With almost one in ten Americans currently unemployed, local governments have a special obligation to create jobs. To that end, they also have an obligation to squeeze the most possible new jobs from every expenditure. Rarely are we able to put a value on how many more jobs could be created with better local decisions, but a new report More Transit = More Jobs, produced by the Transportation Equity Network, answers that question when it comes to transportation spending.