Community & Technical Colleges Transit Map

Do you need a car to attend community college?

We found that only 57% of community college primary campuses have transit stops within walking distance.

In 2021, CMI found that only 57% of community college primary campuses have transit stops within walking distance. Critically, we found that an additional 25% could be made accessible through very low-cost investments in extending existing bus lines.

Our research brief provided the foundation for the bipartisan PATH to College Act, and was credited in the related Congressional announcements and an endorsement letter that attracted sign-ons from the leading organizations in higher education.

We also have state maps for California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and a regional map of New England.

Learn more about our work:

Why is transit accessibility critical
for community college students?

Working students,
parenting students, and
students from low-income households are
overrepresented at community and technical colleges.

These students must manage “time poverty,” as they juggle family, work, and school commitments.

The 2021 CMI Public Transit Map displays the primary campuses of 1,373 community and technical colleges.

The CMI Public Transit Map XL includes all non-profit Title-IV eligible institutions and displays data from the College Scorecard.

How did we calculate transit accessibility?

Obtained GPS coordinates

CMI obtained GPS coordinates for each of the 1,373 schools (map points). Done with publicly available methods and data sources, this reduces a whole campus to a single point estimate.

Identified nearest public transit stops

Using the Google Places API, CMI identified the nearest public transit stop to each set of GPS coordinates. We used custom functions implemented in Google Sheets.

Calculated straight-line distances

CMI calculated the straight-line distance between each school and its nearest transit stop. This introduces a known downward bias on walking distance, but it is less noisy than generating walking directions between GPS points.