Transit ridership is declining almost everywhere in the United States, partly because there are increasing alternatives to transit that are more convenient, including increased auto ownership and ride sharing. The Journal of Public Transportation has devoted a whole issue to the future of transit, as if to reassure the industry that it has one (most of the writers were optimistic, but at least one was more skeptical).
So naturally, transit advocates have come up with a new reason to spend more taxpayer dollars on a dying industry: transit deserts. According to someone’s painstaking but questionable analysis, the “demand for transportation exceeds supply” in large portions of major cities, including San Francisco (13.5% of which is supposed to be a transit desert), Philadelphia (8.5%), New York City (7.0%), and Chicago (6.8%).
Supposedly, they used the American Community Survey to count the number of “transit-dependent people” (people over the age of 12 who can’t drive) in each neighborhood and compared it with the transit services to that neighborhood. But the American Community Survey doesn’t ask about transit-dependency, so they had to use proxies that probably miss a lot of things. For example, people who can’t drive may have other people in their households who drive for them, or they may have ready access to taxis or ride-hailing services. Even if transit served their neighborhood, they might not use it. Continue reading
