The Wheels on the Bus Go Round & Round in Cycles of Systematic Racism, Inequality
Public transportation in the United States is broken. Across the country, mass transit programs suffer from high operating costs, low ridership, and an overall lack of infrastructure. Compared to Russia, a country with 50,000 miles of rail that supports a yearly ridership of over a billion people, the United States seems to fall flat.
The United States has over twice as many more miles of rail than Russia, but much of that is used for freight transport. And, with only a handful of cities with major subway systems public transportation it is no surprise that only 5% of Americans use public transportation to get to work. Again, for comparison’s sake, over 50% of residents in Moscow reported using public transportation every day. With the obvious exception of New York, few major cities in the United States boast a public transportation system that is both well developed and widely used.
Nowhere are the problems with public transportation in the United States felt more strongly than in the South. The region is home to seven of the top 20 largest metropolitan areas, but only three of the top 20 best used mass transit systems. Of these three, only one is actually located in a major city — Washington, DC. This is for a number of reasons: the lack of infrastructural support (including funding), a tricky geographical landscape, and, most interestingly, racial issues.
After the tensions of the Reconstruction Era, Southern states have harbored resentment towards the federal government. This attitude is perhaps why, in some cases, less federal money has been allocated for transportation infrastructure in the South (though it is a much more complicated relationship than that). For example, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) approved only thirteen intercity passenger rail projects in the South, far less than any other region, and allocating $730 million compared to $940 million in the Northeast. Instead, the Southern landscape has been developed into roadways for the Interstate Highway System. Six of the top fifteen states served by the Interstate Highway System are southern states. As a result, Southerners have grown more dependent on cars versus buses or trains.
The South as a region geographically has long posed a problem for the development of transportation systems. Southern states are typically larger than their northern counterparts, and the physical landscape of the region varies dramatically. Since the antebellum era, this has been true. In an economic analysis of early Southern transportation, Ulrich B. Philips explained this impact:
These several provinces in some cases shaded into one another; but, as a rule, they were separated by pronounced obstacles, among which the most important were the belt of pine barrens, and the Blue Ridge and the Cumberland. …The transportation problem was not that of putting the region itself into communication with the rest of the world, but that of crossing the barrier and connecting the coast with the inland cotton area.”
Philips argument highlights the challenges earlier developers faced while attempting to connect the region through transportation. The coastline and southern port cities are so different topographically from the inland region, and railroad connections had to be made along the path of least resistance. This was no easy task, and it remains an issue for today’s transportation engineers.
Geography in the region not only causes problems with the design of public transportation systems, it also contributes to Southerners’ heavy reliance on their cars because of the distance between major cities. In combination, these issues contributed to the lack of efficient public transportation systems in the southern United States.
However, another major factor (and perhaps the most important factor) is the racial history of the South. Transportation, in addition to housing and education, has continually contributed to racial separation in the United States. Unlike housing and education, transportation has received little attention from social activists. The United States, and especially the southern United States, has a long history of controlling or prohibiting access to public transportation for black Americans. The best-known example of the racial politics of transportation was the discriminatory seating policy in buses throughout the South, which led to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycotts of the 1950s and the Freedom Riders movement of the 1960s.
But, there are many more nuanced examples of prejudicial incidents relating to public transportation. For instance, African American car ownership is the lowest of any racial demographic, which makes them more reliant on public transportation services. However, in many southern cities, public transportation is inefficiently designed and inaccessible due to cost. Additionally, many of the city’s jobs are located on the peripheries, suburban areas, or near the airport, but black residents in Southern urban spaces tend to live mostly in the inner city. These spatial differences contribute to longer, more expensive commutes.
An article by Gillian B. White in The Atlantic reported that public transportation systems have consistently let down low-income riders. White pointed to a Harvard study which concluded that geographic mobility is directly linked to economic mobility, as well as a study from NYU which concluded that poor public transportation is related to unemployment.
In general, black and Hispanic workers, both men and women, make between 54 and 75 percent of what white men make in the same profession, which means that their paychecks do not go as far. The cost associated with public transportation is therefore felt more strongly by minority populations. Additionally, eight of the top ten states with the highest black populations are in the South, so the transportation issues in the region impact people of color to an even greater degree.
Charlotte, North Carolina is the 17th largest city in the United States and scored 64th out of 290 public transportation systems for number of yearly unlinked rides. The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) operates 324 buses on 74 routes, a 9.6-mile light rail service (known as LYNX), an airport sprinter service, a free streetcar, and a vanpool service with 77 active vans. CATS serves 24.3 million customers, making it the largest transit system between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) allows for fare increases every two years, and CATS has increased its fare twice in the past three years (FY2014 and FY2017).
In accordance with Title VI policy, CATS publishes a fare equity analysis for each fare increase. The most recent fare equity analysis for the FY2017 fare increase reported that 75% of riders are minority and 31% are low income (these numbers don’t equal 100 percent because in many cases these demographics overlap). What’s more, the analysis reports that for all proposed fair increases — including a .05-cent increase, a .10-cent increase, and a decrease in pass discount rate — represent a disproportionate burden for low income riders. Despite this analysis, the city of Charlotte increased the fare.
In addition to tightening budgets among low-income and minority populations, public transportation has also indirectly contributed to gentrification in Charlotte. Proximity to transit, among other things, typically attracts developers to an area. In Charlotte’s historically black Cherry neighborhood, for instance, development along public transportation has led to a 29% decrease in black residents in the last 25 years from 66% to 37%. While gentrification can improve a neighborhood economically, increases in median home prices and chain businesses deeply affect and ultimately displace low-income, often-black homeowners and businesses. As black residents have been forced out of Cherry, they have also been moved further away from the area’s accessible public transportation.
As national concerns about climate change increase, public transportation will hopefully grow in popularity. However, as this happens southern cities, such as Charlotte, must commit to making transit options more accessible and equitable for low income and minority customers. Vital to this process would be inviting members of black neighborhood associations to participate in planning. Currently, few African Americans are involved in the planning process despite a large number reporting daily usage of public transit. Involving minority constituents in the process of planning could make public transportation more accessible in these Southern spaces.
