Transportation, class & ethnicity

The Review has been a lonely voice pointing out the deep class bias involved in emphasizing high speed rail over other forms of rail transportation. We learned about class and transit in our years covering mass transit in Washington. We just stumbled upon a breakdown of ridership on the Metro subway vs. DC bus ridership in 2006. These figures illustrate why we called one new subway line The Great White Way.

- Percent of Metrobus riders earning less than $50,000: 44%
- Percent of Metrorail riders earning less than $50,000: 16%

- Percent of Metrobus riders earning $100,000 or more: 12%
- Percent of Metrorail riders earning $100,000 or more: 35%

- Percent of Metrobus riders who are black: 48%
- Percent of Metrobus riders who are white: 34%

- Percent of Metrorail riders who are black: 18%
- Percent of Metrorail riders who are white: 67%

[Washington Post]

Over the past decade the far more expensive sbuway system has only increased ridership by 14% while the bus system has gone down by 12% , a portion of it having shifted to the subway as bus service was cut or redirected to increase subway ridership.