San Francisco named "second best" transit city in the USA (Los Angeles: 2013, lawyers)

[ExeterMedia]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

Ok, but only poor people use transit in LA. When middle class professionals (like in NYC, SF, DC, Chicago, Boston) willingly CHOOSE transit over sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, then let's talk. Until then, riding transit is social suicide in LA.

Do you have any reliable stats or sources for the claim that "only poor people" use transit in LA, or more so than the apparent middle-class ridership of DC, NYC, Chicago, etc?

Also do you have any sources that track the use of transit by poor, middle class, and wealthy in each of the cities you mentioned and can you rank them by those statistics?

This is an interesting claim, and I'd love to see the data you used to come to this conclusion about all of those cities you mentioned.

[04kL4nD]

How many cars are registered in LACO again? Is it still more than in all of Russia? What's the daily ridership again of transit? You're the statistician, so tell me what percentage of LACO uses transit daily compared to NYC, SF, DC, etc.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by ExeterMedia

Do you have any reliable stats or sources for the claim that "only poor people" use transit in LA, or more so than the apparent middle-class ridership of DC, NYC, Chicago, etc?

Also do you have any sources that track the use of transit by poor, middle class, and wealthy in each of the cities you mentioned and can you rank them by those statistics?

This is an interesting claim, and I'd love to see the data you used to come to this conclusion about all of those cities you mentioned.

A friend of mine wpused to ride the bus to work in LA. She told me most of the time she was the only white collar worker on the bus. And the only person not speaking Spanish.

LA is making strides in transit use, but it still isn't considered an option for most people.

[MichiVegas]

Originally Posted by ExeterMedia

Do you have any reliable stats or sources for the claim that "only poor people" use transit in LA, or more so than the apparent middle-class ridership of DC, NYC, Chicago, etc?

I would say this is quite obvious to anyone who has ridden transit in LA. Generally speaking, transit tends to be best in the poorest parts, and ridership tends to skew poor.

To be fair, this is true in most U.S. cities. Really only NYC is the one city where a huge proportion of higher income folks are using transit primarily.

[04kL4nD]

I beg to differ. You see tons of professionals in the Bay Area on BART and Muni. Same with DC. Also saw the same thing in Boston and Chicago (hello the Loop?).

[bay2bay]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

I beg to differ. You see tons of professionals in the Bay Area on BART and Muni. Same with DC. Also saw the same thing in Boston and Chicago (hello the Loop?).

And on Caltrain, Samtrans, Golden Gate transit, ACtransit as well.

[kmzizzle]

Originally Posted by ExeterMedia

Do you have any reliable stats or sources for the claim that "only poor people" use transit in LA, or more so than the apparent middle-class ridership of DC, NYC, Chicago, etc?

Also do you have any sources that track the use of transit by poor, middle class, and wealthy in each of the cities you mentioned and can you rank them by those statistics?

This is an interesting claim, and I'd love to see the data you used to come to this conclusion about all of those cities you mentioned.

Coming from someone living in Dana point, you seem quite uninformed of the ways of your peers (aka they don't use transit). I've also ridden the pub trans and I will never do it again. Full of homeless / low income people

[ExeterMedia]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

How many cars are registered in LACO again? Is it still more than in all of Russia? What's the daily ridership again of transit? You're the statistician, so tell me what percentage of LACO uses transit daily compared to NYC, SF, DC, etc.

You made the claim "only poor people" ride transit in LA.

I thought you made that claim based off a fact based source that you may have found, and I was interested in seeing it. If you didn't make that claim based off any facts or statistics, then it's okay to admit it. I'm just interested in facts myself, not anecdotes.

[ExeterMedia]

Originally Posted by jade408

A friend of mine wpused to ride the bus to work in LA

Anecdotal. Your friend, cousin, mother-in-law, brother's half sister's cousin twice removed is an exceedingly small sample size and in the realm of statistics is not considered statistically reliable or trustworthy when making claims like the above.

Do you have any reliable statistically based facts or sources to cite?

Originally Posted by MichiVegas

I would say this is quite obvious to anyone who has ridden transit in LA. Generally speaking, transit tends to be best in the poorest parts, and ridership tends to skew poor.

To be fair, this is true in most U.S. cities. Really only NYC is the one city where a huge proportion of higher income folks are using transit primarily.

I agree that just by the very nature of what public transit is, it's definitely going to skew "poor" demographically across all cities. But he made a specific claim that "only poor people" use transit in L.A, more so than NYC, Chicago, SF, etc.

So far there have been half a dozen post, and no cited sources comparing the cities transit ridership by demographics which could possibly back up that claim.

I find this is normal behavior for this sub-forum.

a) Make a blanket claim
b) Never provide a source of statistics to back it up
c) Argue about how anecdotal (my friend, cousin, inlaws) situations prove it to be so.

I think people should just admit that they don't really know something to be a fact, and instead are just making an unsupported claim based on perception, opinion or bias.

[ExeterMedia]

Originally Posted by kmzizzle

Coming from someone living in Dana point, you seem quite uninformed of the ways of your peers (aka they don't use transit). I've also ridden the pub trans and I will never do it again. Full of homeless / low income people

Of course people in Dana Point don't use public transit, this is a coastal community where a large percentage of the people living here are retired, independently wealthy, and don't need to commute. According to City-Data the mean travel time to work is only 25 minutes, that alone should tell you that Dana Point is not a bedroom community for commuting to job centers. It never was, and never will be, so your point doesn't really make much sense. In fact I myself haven't used public transit in 4 years.

But if you're going to make a claim that the 1,474,255 weekly riders through all the public transit systems in LA County are all poor people, and more so than Chicago, NYC, SF, you should back up that claim with a verifiable statistic or source that says that is the case.

If not, just say you don't know for a fact, which seems to be the case here.