Exercise 3: Transportation
After making arrangements at work and for childcare, court users must travel to their appearance. The commute adds to the time spent away from regular commitments and increases the burden on the court user.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 33.8% of people worked at home in 2022 compared to 24.8% in 2017 - 2018. While the pandemic caused some of this growth, it has likely resulted in a greater number of people working at home permanently than ever before.
Given the growth in working from home, and the fact that many litigants are required to arrive at court first thing in the morning, a significant proportion of court users are likely traveling from home to appear in court.
Below are examples of potential court users with real addresses in real jurisdictions. Complete the below exercises about traveling to court for each court user.
Question 1.
Map the trip in your you preferred GPS application (Google Maps, Waze, or Apple Maps).
Question 2.
Not all court users have access to a personal vehicle and are reliant on public transit. Map the route via public transit.
As you can see, public transit is not always reliable, or time-efficient, especially during rush hours, if it is even available at all. For court users with disabilities, accessible options can mean calling for a specific bus, car, or stop and waiting adds time to the trip. When a personal vehicle or public transit is not an option court users often turn to ride-shares, which can be expensive. For Person A, a ride-share service would cost about $40 to arrive before 9:00 am, and about $43 for Person B. If the court users were paid the state minimum wage workers, Person A would have to work 3 hours and 20 minutes to make enough to pay for the rideshare, and Person B would have to work almost 6 hours to afford their ride
Add the cost of transportation from the above, the cost of potential lost wages in Exercise 1, and the cost of securing safe childcare in Exercise 2. What is the total cost of showing up to court? How many hours would a person who is paid the state minimum wage in your state have to work before they could afford to come to court?
The last remaining option is to walk, which is often not a reality due to distance, time, lack of safe sidewalks and walking paths, and physical abilities.
In the Municipal Court of Providence in Rhode Island, a court user walked five miles, for about an hour and a half, to get to court to resolve his citations after his car was booted. The court user revealed he was forced to walk, rather than call a rideshare or take public transport because he had less than a dollar in his bank account.
It is not a far-off reality that a bus fare or rideshare charge is out of reach for those without personal vehicles. In our examples above, it only takes 10 minutes to drive the 4.5 miles through Harrisonburg, Virginia, but could take up to 1 hour and 52 minutes to walk the same distance. In Boise, Idaho while you may be able to drive the 16 miles in 28 minutes on a clear day, it would never be a safe trip on foot due to time, distance, and roads without sidewalks or pedestrian crossings.
While the Rhode Island court user was determined, the same time commitment and physical exertion should not be expected of all court users.