By Joseph Morales

*To fill out Westchester County’s Transportation and Food Access Survey click here: https://planning.westchestergov.com/2022-04-04-15-25/transportation-and-food-access-study

*The survey is open until November 17th and is for county residents only.

Westchester County is a county with very diverse landscapes as well as substantial socioeconomic diversity amongst its residents. Parts of Westchester range from having an urban character comparable to adjacent parts of The Bronx to having a more rural feel, like the communities generally associated with those in Upstate New York far from New York City. 

                   As a result, people get around using various modes. While 85% of county residents own cars, the percentage of residents who take public transit is substantially higher in the more urban small cities in the southern portion of the county, such as Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and New Rochelle. Other small cities that have higher transit ridership than other areas in Westchester include White Plains, Ossining, and Peekskill. 

                 Unfortunately, many Westchester County residents across all landscapes of the county lack convenient access to affordable and high-quality food. In Westchester County, according to a study published in February 2020 by Northwell Health, about 7.7% of people or 74,630 people in Westchester County were food insecure. This is also an issue that extends far beyond Westchester County and is of broad discussion across the country. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 53.6 million Americans or 17.4% of the nation’s population live in low-income census tracts in which they are at least ½ mile in an urban area or 10 miles in a rural area away from a supermarket. An additional 1.9 million households in urban areas live in communities that are ½ mile from a supermarket and do not have a vehicle according to the agency. The agency considers these types of areas that many would define as a food desert as “low-access census tracts”. While income may be the first thing people think of when they think of access to food, many transportation issues, such as access to private vehicles, quality public transportation and safe conditions for pedestrians play a substantial role into the equation of food access.

                  As a result, the Westchester County Department of Planning is conducting a unique Transportation and Food Access Study with the purpose of exploring how the County can make it easier for residents to travel to obtain affordable and nutritious food. The department will conduct a county-wide analysis along with studies of smaller geographic areas. The study is and will entail both a digital survey along with direct engagement with community members.  The digital survey includes basic demographic questions along with questions on how one accesses food and where they are able to obtain their food. The digital survey is already available on the county’s website and can be found here: https://planning.westchestergov.com/2022-04-04-15-25/transportation-and-food-access-study. The county is accepting responses until November 17th and the survey is open to county residents only.  Some solutions the county is already considering is improving transit, cycling and pedestrian access to supermarkets, improving options for food distribution and delivery and changing other policies to improve food access. 

                 While these solutions may be helpful, how can the county go about implementing them? This is a difficult but rather interesting question to answer, as cities and counties throughout the country have attempted to address the issue of food deserts in a variety of innovative ways. As most counties are not as geographically diverse as Westchester is, Westchester County may need to implement a variety of different solutions based on the needs of different parts of the county.

                   For urban areas and even some suburban downtowns, the county may want to consider ways they can bring healthy food options to high traffic, walkable locations. While most urban areas of Westchester are not defined as low access census tracts, that does not mean that healthy food options are easily accessible or the most convenient for residents to obtain. This is often because healthier food options tend to be more expensive and/or require longer outings to grocery stores to obtain, which is something that many people, particularly lower-income hourly workers or those with long commutes, may not have time for.

              One way to do this is bus stop farmers markets. As much of the population in Wetschester’s urban areas utilize the county’s public bus system, the Bee-Line, the county can explore opening bus stop farmers markets in or around major transit hubs such as Getty Square in Yonkers, the TransCenter in White Plains or the New Rochelle Transit Center. These types of markets have been successful in other areas of similar population density such as Dayton, Ohio, and Tampa, Florida. In Tampa, the program was successful to the point where the transit agency, HART, opened a second location. In Atlanta, GA, transit operator MARTA has farmers markets at seven of its 37 subway stations despite only 2% of Atlanta’s using public transit to get to work, compared to 15% of Westchester residents who don’t even own vehicles. 

                 Green carts offering produce like those found in NYC can also help. Green carts in New York City are run by vendors with permits from the NYC Department of Health that allow them to sell fruits and vegetables along with plain nuts and water in select areas that lack access to fresh produce throughout the five boroughs. Different boroughs have different limits for the number of permits that could be issued, with 350 being issued in the Bronx and Brooklyn, 150 in Manhattan, 100 in Queens, and 50 in Staten Island. Given these numbers, it appears that limits are set based on population density in addition to need in specific boroughs, a system Westchester County might be able to replicate. 

                 In addition, to encourage the development of supermarkets in communities of need, the County could not only provide incentives to poen but also provide incentives to open in areas with convenient access to Bee-Line bus routes and/or in plazas that are accessible via sidewalk from the street along with bus stops. States, regions and municipalities around the country have successfully incentivized many types of development around transit for all sorts of reasons, such as for residential and commercial development near transit to promote sustainability and economic growth.

                This can also help to reduce disparities when it comes to supermarket access in the county. According to the Food Research Atlas from the USDA, there are actually only two low-access census tracts in the county, both of which are primarily composed of Montrose VA Medical Center and the Grassland Campus, respectively, with the Grasslands Campus being home to both the Westchester County Medical Center and the Westchester County Jail. However, this does not mean that some areas have disproportionately fewer supermarkets than others or that every neighborhood that has a supermarket has access to a quality or affordable one. For instance, Mount Vernon and Ossining both have three supermarkets as of January 2018 despite Mount Vernon having almost triple the population. The similarly populated and nearby and New Rochelle also six supermarkets.

                    As for improving pedestrian and transit connections to existing supermarkets, the county can consider working with supermarkets and shopping plazas to ensure that their entrances are accessible to pedestrians. Oftentimes, supermarkets across Westchester County are located deep inside of shopping plazas, with pedestrians forced to navigate massive parking lots, or streets narrow sidewalks or none at all in order to get to the supermarket. This can be especially challenging for senior citizens, parents with younger children, and anyone who has to navigate the parking lot with a shopping cart. This issue is not limited to supermarkets and some places with this type of design include the Cortlandt Town Center in Mohegan Lake, the Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, and the Executive Plaza Office Park in Yonkers. Bee-Line bus routes travel directly into certain locations like these to help transit riders safely access these facilities.

Perhaps if the County cannot have sidewalks built into shopping plazas, it could have a bus route stop within them, depending on feasibility. An example of a bus route that might be able to do this is the Bee-Line 6 bus at the Stop & Shop in North White Plains if a sidewalk cannot be built to the grocery store. The county can also review bus routes and ensure that for all shopping plazas and facilities with parking lots, bus routes stop at the locations nearest to sidewalks. The county could attempt to make some or all of these bus route-related improvements as part of the ongoing bus network redesign taking place as part of the Westchester County Mobility and Transit Plan. As it stands, proposed on-demand micro-transit zones in much of the county will operate very similar to Uber and Lyft in their respective zones and should be able to help people access supermarkets in shopping plazas.

                   Another solution Westchester County may want to consider is to develop grocery-specific transit options similar to how the Mass Transportation Authority(MTA) in Genesee County, Michigan(which includes Flint) did. The agency offers fixed bus routes to grocery stores throughout Flint, known as Shopper routes, and even has some routes dedicated to serving senior apartment complexes, known as Senior Shopper routes. The county’s Your Ride system, offers buses specially equipped with grocery racks in order to take people to the grocery store. The Your Ride system runs very similarly to the Bee-Line’s paratransit system, with the only difference being that Your Ride also serves those across Genesee County without access to traditional fixed-route service. While Westchester may not have much need for fixed-route Shopper buses due to the prevalence of supermarkets and car ownership in the county, they may want to consider specially equipped paratransit vehicles, as those with disabilities may not be able to walk or drive to supermarkets regardless of the available fixed-route/automobile transportation options available.

                     As there are many ways Westchester County can leverage and improve transportation to make it easier for residents to travel to access food, it may be rather interesting to see what solutions the county implements to address the issue. As the county is embarking on a unique and one-of-a-kind study to understand the issue better, hopefully, the county can find initiatives that can truly make a major impact in bettering access to healthy and affordable food in Westchester County.

Works Cited

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