Ridership is Natural Equity

The latest buzzword on the left is “equity”: restructuring things to ensure fair outcomes for poor and marginalized people. In public transit, unlike many industries, equity is a natural outcome of structuring transit systems on a businesslike basis; that is, to maximize ridership.

This is because poor and marginalized people use transit more per capita than any other demographic in most cities. One transit writer I admire is Jarrett Walker, who runs the blog Human Transit. His transit consulting firm is working on a project for Tri-Met in Portland to increase both ridership and equity, goals which overlap way more than they differ.

Even though I lived in Portland (homeless) in January 1996, the summer of 1998, and again during the Christmas season of 2001, I am not familiar enough with the city to have an opinion on the proposed route changes, I assume Jarrett knows what he’s talking about. Anyway, please go to the links and check this out!