Class Warfare and the Bus

On the issue of “do only poor people ride the bus” I’m basically in agreement with Atrios.

The key point to start with, though, as with everything else regarding transit and class is the simple reality that buying a car is expensive. And in most crowded urban areas, parking a car downtown at work is also expensive. This leads immediately to the conclusion that a cheaper alternative, like riding the bus, will be disproportionately appealing to people of lesser means.

But beyond that, you’re left with a big question of where’s the intersection point. What happens in most cities is that most bus lines are really bad. They arrive infrequently, and they move slowly. Consequently, even though taking the bus might be cheaper than driving, it’s a much lower-quality experience. Well, what kind of people are interested in sacrificing a huge amount of quality and time in order to save money? That’d be poor people, primarily. But it’s not a law of nature that bus service needs to be really terrible. The 42 line that I used to take to work pretty regularly came frequently, as did the S1/S2/S4 line that I sometimes used. And you had a pretty diverse class mix on the lines. Not coincidentally, however, these were lines that served some relatively prosperous parts of town. Wealthier people have more political clout and get better public services; meanwhile, better public services are more appealing to wealthier people. I imagine that with the inauguration of the new S-9 express bus service on the same basic 16th Street route used by the other Ses, that a more and more bourgeois crowd will be drawn to the line.

If the city were to go further and carve out more space for dedicated bus lanes (or properly enforce the existing lanes on 7th Street and 9th Street downtown) then bus travel could be more rapid and more frequent and more people would want to do it.