What is Transit Redlining?
Just found a post talking about the concept of Universal Basic Mobility. I am down with this concept, it basically means that everyone should be able to get where they want to go for a reasonable cost.
But I want to talk about one of the obstacles in the way: Transit redlining.
Redlining is keeping Black people (and other undesirables) out of white neighborhoods.
Transit (or transportation) redlining is providing excellent public transportation options in those white neighborhoods…and not so much in the Black and Hispanic ones.
In my own county, only a few years ago, they talked about implementing streetcars in two neighborhoods. One was white and affluent. The other was Hispanic and badly underserved by transit. After negotiations about cost, it was dropped to bus rapid transit.
Guess which neighborhood actually got the bus rapid transit before they mysteriously “ran out of money.”
This was a few years ago. This is not a historical phenomenon.
It is a current one. (Note, I have also seen this term applied to encouraging sprawl, no doubt by a white person. Guys, no…)
What Contributes?
In order to address transit redlining, we have to understand how it happens in the first place. It’s…