The Atlantic wonders if transit is failing white people

[marmar]

from the Human Transit blog:



the atlantic wonders if transit is failing white people


How do you react when you read the following sentence?

In Los Angeles, 92 percent of bus riders are people of color.

This supposedly shocking fact is the starting point for Amanda Hess's confused and aggravating piece in the Atlantic today, which argues that somehow transit is failing because it's not attracting enough white people. "As minority ridership rises, the racial stigma against (buses) compounds," Hess writes. Sounds alarming! But who exactly is feeling this "stigma," apart from Ms. Hess, and how many of those people are there?

Read it again:

In Los Angeles, 92 percent of bus riders are people of color.

Now, how does your reaction change when I point out that in the 2010 census, just under 28% of the population of Los Angeles County is "non-Hispanic white," so over 70% can be called "people of color." Now what if I tell you that as always, transit is most concentrated in the denser parts of the county, where the demand and ridership are higher, and these areas happen to be even less "non-Hispanic white" than the county at large? (Exact figures can't be cited as this area corresponds to no government boundary.) So the bus system, weighted by where the service is concentrated, serves a population of whom much, much more than 70% could be described as "people of color".

Please don't treat these figures as too precise. The claim that "92% of Los Angeles bus riders are people of color" is impossible to fact-check because two of its key terms are ambiguous.

* Does "Los Angeles" mean the City of Los Angeles or Los Angeles County? They're both big but very different, but both are over 70% "people of color."
* Likewise there are many definitions of "Los Angeles bus rider" depending on which transit agencies you include. I suspect Hess got her figure by looking just at LA Metro, rather than the many suburban operators who are also part of the total Los Angeles bus network, but it's hard to know.
* And by the way, I'm assuming that "people of color" include what the Census calls "Hispanic whites," as it has every time I've heard the term. (To the Census, anyone of European ancestry, including from Spain centuries ago, is "white.&quot

So to the extent we can track Hess's statistics here's what they say: Los Angeles bus ridership is mostly people of color because Los Angeles is mostly people of color. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.humantransit.org/2012/07/the-atlantic-wonders-if-transit-is-failing-white-people.html

[kestrel91316]

1. They just need to bring in a bunch of special whites-only buses.

Ridership would skyrocket. Seriously. Lots of people I know WON'T ride transit for the sole reason that Hispanics and blacks and POOR whites make up a significant portion of ridership.

Tough shit, people.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. You've got it!

The last time I was in Los Angeles (other than the airport on the way to Asia), I met up with a transit advocate who took me on a walking tour and then put me on the bus back to my hotel, where I was attending a convention.

I was the only white person on the bus, but I did not sense any danger from the other passengers.

Still, the next day, a local attendee at the convention was horrified that I had ridden the bus, especially at night. It was "dangerous."

In the Minneapolis paper's online comment columns, whenever the question of transit comes up, someone always comes up with a statement about not wanting to ride the bus with "the diversity" or "the gang bangers and illegals." Sad to say, such comments often get a lot of "thumbs up."

The racism is the problem.

[kestrel91316]

3. I ride the bus at least 5 times a week and have NEVER seen anybody who looked like a

"gangbanger", and I never feel threatened at all.

The batshit crazy homeless crowd makes for an interesting experience sometimes, but I can deal with that.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Well, you know how it is.

If you're a racist, all young black men are "gangbangers," even if they're carrying a lunchbox to work.

I know what you mean about the homeless. In 10 years of riding public transit and not having a car in Portland, I was sometimes amused, sometimes saddened by the homeless people, but never, ever scared, not even riding the bus or MAX at night.

[nxylas]

6. Exactly!

Not even just young men. When I lived in Columbia, SC, most of the people who rode the bus with me were African-American, but many were middle-aged and I'd say about two-thirds of them were female. It didn't stop someone in a car pulling up as I got off the bus once and yelling at me that "you're gonna get mugged riding those buses".

[Vogon_Glory]

5. I Rode Buses And Subways Back in The 1970's When It Was SCARY!

I rode buses and subways back in the 1970's when it was SCARY. Not in Dallas, Texas or Providence, Rhode Island, but when I visited my older sister who was living in New York City then. I remember the old rules--try not to show you're that prosperous, try to ride seated behind the driver, ride the first subway car if you could. It's a D__N sight safer now, not just in NYC, but in cities across the country. But the members of the fourth estate are still stoking the old, no-longer-accurate paranoia.

Personally, I suspect that a lot of the right-wing "fibber-tarians" trying to do away with government-owned mass transit are as willing to use fear and sub-textual racism to destroy transit systems as the "block-buster" realtors of the 1950's and 1960's. And of course members of the Fourth Estate are too--whatever--to take notice that they're being played--yet again.