Light Rail Myth #2

Light rail and lower-income people

Now that a commercial developer-led light rail advocate community organization is dawning on the horizon, a series of public relations myths will befall the unsuspecting public. In a weekly series, I will attempt to anticipate these fantasies and dispel them with a reality statement and supporting data.

The Myth: Light rail transit benefits low-income people.

Follow up:

The Reality: The switch to light rail transit imposes heavy costs on low-income people.

Low-income transit users are captives. They have no alternatives to public transit, no matter how low the quality or how high the cost of service. Alternately, middle- and upper-income travelers are optional riders. “Choice” riders have alternatives, especially the automobile. “Choice” riders will not tolerate the conditions that often confront low- income riders.

The transit patterns of choice riders are different from low-income rider patterns. The low-income riders make many short trips on public transit. They go to the grocery store, the doctor, social calls, and so on. Choice riders tend to use their cars for these other errands.

Light rail systems cater to the commutes of the wealthier segments of the communities. In doing so, they create route patterns that are poorly adapted to the needs of the low- income users. Light rail transit forces everyone to make a long sideways trip to reach a trunk line designed for commuting. This pattern that can make what was once a short bus ride to a nearby doctor into an hour-and-a-half ordeal.

Transit systems also strip resources from the bus systems that serve the needs of the low-income riders, because available funds must be funneled into fulfilling the extravagant promises made to satisfy the middle- and upper-class constituency that advocates rail systems.

As a result, the buses grow older and shabbier, headways become less frequent, and mechanical breakdowns increase. So, in addition to its effect of distorting bus route patterns in ways that increase the burdens on the less-affluent segment of the populace—the segment that has no option except to use public transit—rail construction results in a degradation of the bus service that remains. This sacrifice of the vital interests of lower-income people to subsidize the urban upper classes is morally unjustifiable.

A court of law in Los Angeles also thinks that draining money from buses to subsidize rail transit is legally unjustifiable. In 1996, a federal judge ruled that the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s program of steering subsidies into rail rather than bus transportation discriminated against the low-income and largely minority population that depends on the buses. The MTA is now operating under a consent decree designed to ensure fair treatment for the bus riders.