From TransitCenter, June 17, 2021
“[P]ervasive racism and discrimination in land use, transportation, and transit planning have created wide gaps in transit access across race, income, and other characteristics, worsening social inequity.
“The San Francisco-Oakland region is no exception:
- Transit provides less access to opportunities for BIPOC residents than white residents.
- Expensive fares put opportunity out of reach for some riders.
- Transportation and development patterns create longer transit trips to healthcare and food.
“Leaders in the Bay Area can address these disparities through more equitable transit, land use, and planning.
“[TransitCenter] evaluated the extent to which residents of the San Francisco-Oakland region have equitable transit access to jobs, stores, hospitals, and other important destinations. [The analysis seeks to answer this question:] Do people with the greatest need for transit have the best access to fast, frequent, reliable, affordable service close to home?
“Evaluations are based on the combined services provided by all transit agencies in the San Francisco-Oakland region.
“Agency decision makers should:
- Adopt and publicly publish measures of equitable access on transit.
- Adjust investments, service, and policy in order to reduce measured gaps in access.”
Read TransitCenter’s full transit equity analysis and policy recommendations here. (~14 min.)
- You can access TransitCenter’s interactive transit equity dashboard for their designated San Francisco-Oakland region, including demographic data from Santa Clara county, here.
- TransitCenter provides their methodology for calculating the information presented in the dashboard here.
- Downloadable population and transit reliability data for users to construct their own visualizations are available here.