The pro-transit TransitCenter has discovered something that the Antiplanner has been saying for years: transit policies are effectively racist. Many urban areas have “two-tiered transit systems,” says the TransitCenter’s Mary Buchanan, where an expensive form of transit, such as light or heavy rail, whisks high-income people, who are often white, to work while a cheaper, slower form of transit, such as local buses, trundles low-income people, who are often minorities, to their jobs.
Black households have significantly lower auto ownership rates than whites. Source: American Community Survey table B25044. When broken down by race, the Census Bureau only has five-year data for 2011-2015; some auto ownership rates have probably improved since then. Census Bureau data also don’t breakdown Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic ownership rates; most Hispanics are included with whites.
Buchanan and her colleagues evaluated transit in major urban areas such as New York and Chicago and found that low-income people would be much better off owning a car than relying on transit to get to work, which is another thing the Antiplanner has been saying for years. Of course, the TransitCenter sees this as one more reason to increase transit subsidies, while I see it as a reason to encourage more car ownership.
Streetsblog points to something called the National Equity Atlas, which notes that 94 percent of white households own at least one car while only 86 percent of households of color own a car. The atlas doesn’t say so, but among black households auto ownership rates are slightly above 80 percent.
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The atlas also shows that these numbers aren’t static. In 1990, 92 percent of white households had a car while only 76 households of color had a car, so where white households have gained 2 percentage points, households of color have gained 10. The TransitCenter seems to only see the static number, however, and so it doesn’t promote increased auto ownership as a remedy to low-income mobility problems.
Another thing the transit center overlooks is that the main reason many transit agencies have two-tiered transit systems is to better serve downtowns, which in most urban areas have the greatest concentrations of jobs. Downtown jobs tend to have higher average incomes, so most transit riders to downtown have higher incomes than to other parts of urban areas. This means that minorities, who generally aren’t as well educated as whites, are less likely to work downtown which means that transit doesn’t work as well for them no matter how many tiers the transit system has.
In other words, the real racism is not on the part of the transit agencies but in our education systems. But race has become a convenient hook to hang every appeal for budget increases anyone wants to make. I have to wonder whether encouraging minorities to remain dependent on transportation systems that are clearly inferior to automobiles is itself a racist act.
One solution is to make transit systems that are less oriented around downtowns, which only have about 8 percent of urban jobs. The Antiplanner has applauded efforts to do that, but the reality is that transit can never hope to compete with the automobile. The real solution is to increase auto ownership so that low-income people of all races can have access to better jobs, better education, better housing, low-cost consumer goods, and all the other social and economic opportunities available to the 92 percent of American households that have cars.
“The real solution is to increase auto ownership so that low-income people of all races can have access to better jobs, better education, better housing, low-cost consumer goods, and all the other social and economic opportunities available to the 92 percent of American households that have cars.”
But … but … but ……. Global Warming!
“The real solution is to increase auto ownership….”
As the Antiplanner has also pointed out (repeatedly), in many cases, it would be cheaper to give each passenger a brand new Prius.
Why do low income people “of all races” need access to the neighborhoods the rest of us live in? So they can fuck it up like their ghettos?
he chief demographic transit was originally meant for, the Poor, the Handicapped, the elderly and children. Paratransit services have largely outmoded collectivist transit approaches of taking care of the elderly and handicapped by offering essentially door to door service. Vans can carry children to their afterschool destinations and back. And programs aimed at helping poor people buy a car are statistically shown to better alleviate poverty, because once you have an automobile you’re no longer locally geographically bound to a career and are free to pursue work or even a new residence elsewhere….which is what cities fear most; people fleeing. The automotive revolution and the building of the interstate allowed people to leave the geographic constraints of cities for better places. Transit is merely the methodology of urban planners to re-acclamate people back to urban appreciation. They failed. So their next option is to hire more planners and this time around, use the power of the law to craft the next “Liveability” standards.
Attracting high income earners is meaningless, for one even if they rode transit there aren’t enough of them to patron the system in a financially sound manner and they cant discriminate the fares be higher just because that person just so happens to be a wealthier person. Second, Attracting high income people means building transit in high income areas….which again overlooks the individuals mentioned above. Which only alienates the people further, makes the transit agency look more incompetent, devises political regimes to formulate even greater ways to milk the taxpayer for expanding the program.
So they attached racial equity for brownie points.
It’s racism by poor expectation, assuming blacks Have NO other way but transit. Keeping blacks dependent on transit, is keeping blacks dependent on Geography.
metrosucks, they need access so they can market all their wonderful products (domestic violence, drive-by-shootings, meth, vandalism) to us non-woke white folk.
No shit. The antiplanner needs to abandon the boomer mentality of “not being racist”. I’m racist, and so is everyone else. I’m not apologizing for not wanting a bunch of diversity screwing up my town.
Agree that that mentality needs to be jettisoned, metrosucks.
But I would challenge that everyone is racist.
“Racist” has become a meaningless word, a thought-terminating cliche. The word racism dates to the 1920s, and it originally meant two things: the belief that another “race” is inferior AND that other race should be ruled/dominated by the superior race.
Now it just means whatever people want it to mean, mainly a synonym for unfair or bias.
I don’t think I’m genetically superior to anyone else, nor do I want to dominate or rule anyone. Just want to be free to choose the people I associate with, and everyone should have freedom of voluntary association. Don’t want to live next to gang-bangin’ blacks, goat-slaughtering Mexicans, flamboyant gays, or even Subaru driving liberal whites.
Am I biased? You bet.
Does all this make me racist? To “woke” white liberals, yes, but I maintain it just makes me human as I want to associate only with the people I choose to (which right now is almost no one).
Well that’s what I mean by racist. I prefer people of my own kind. White people. And I’m not apologizing for it.
That doesn’t make you racist. That makes you honest. People prefer to live around other people with similar values, culture, and language. “Woke” white folk pay lip service to “diversity” while isolating themselves from it and choosing to live in upscale white neighborhoods. I prefer honesty over hypocrisy. And good on you for not apologizing for your living your preference.
Thanks, and true. I am keenly aware of this, having spent time working in those neighborhoods, in the greater Seattle area. Thankfully, I’ve noticed the local governments, which just can’t help themselves, are loading these trendy areas with Somalian diversity. Good! I hope Rasheed and Mohamed Jr rape all their daughters and use the ‘I had a sexual emergency” defense. There should be consequences for mentally ill progressive ideology.