"So, Mr. Walker. If we adopt this plan of yours, does that mean I’m going to leave my BMW in the driveway?"
Years later, on my book tour, I was at dinner with some architects when the conversation slipped into one of those abstract rail versus bus debates. One woman, a leading architecture scholar, said: "But I simply wouldn’t ride a bus," as though that settled the matter.
Transit, even the indispensable bus, will continue on that path to greater relevance so long as citizens care about it and demand that it be funded.
Both of these people are prosperous, successful, and (if it matters) white. So both are likely to be counted as data points when people argue that there is an American "stigma" about buses, felt mostly by white and successful people, and that transit agencies need to "break through" that stigma to achieve relevance.
There is a simpler explanation. These two people are relatively elite, as are most of our decision-makers. Elected officials and leading professionals are nothing like a representative slice of the population. Many have the best of intentions and a strong commitment to sustainable urbanism, but some still make the mistake of assuming that a transit service that they personally wouldn’t ride must not be accomplishing anything important.
Elites are by definition a small minority, so it makes no sense to define a vast transit network around their personal tastes. Even when we’ve achieved all our sustainability goals, that particular city councilman can still drive his BMW everywhere, and that leading architecture scholar need never set foot on a bus. It doesn’t matter much what they do, because there just aren’t very many of them.
This, after all, is how Germany works. Germany is a world-leader in the design of expensive luxury cars, and has a network of freeways with no speed limits where you can push these cars to their ecstatic edge. But most urban travel in Germany happens on bikes, feet, or civilized and useful public transit systems in pleasant and sustainable cities. Transit’s purpose is to appeal to massive numbers of diverse riders, not chase the choosy few who would rather be on the Autobahn.
All of this came to mind in reading Amanda Hess’s recent Atlantic Cities article, "Race, Class and the Stigma of Riding the Bus in America." Hess argues that the predominance of minority and low-income people on the bus is evidence of an American bus "stigma." "In Los Angeles," she writes, "92 percent of bus riders are people of color. Their annual median household income is $12,000."
The reference to race is a distraction. The service area of the Los Angeles MTA is well over 70 percent people of color. What’s more, whites are more likely to live in low-density areas with obstructed street patterns where effective bus service is impossible. So people of color in L.A. may be over 80 percent of the residents for whom the MTA can be useful, which means that the number of white bus riders is not far off what we should expect.
When it comes to income – or "class," as she calls it – Hess has a point. Median income among Los Angeles MTA bus riders is well below the average for its service area, as is true of most urban transit agencies.
Notice what happens, though, when you say "class" instead of "income." Income is obviously a spectrum, with families and people scattered at every point along it. But "class" sounds like a set of boxes. American discourse is full of words that describe class as a box that you’re either in or out of: poverty, the middle class, the working class, the wealthy, the top one percent. We tend to use the word "class" when we want to imply a permanent condition. You can move gradually along the spectrum of income, but you must break through fortress walls to advance in "class."
by Jarrett Walker, Atlantic Cities | Read more:
Photo credit: Dave Newman/Shutterstock.com
