The Latest Sign of Bike-Share’s Social Equity Problem
21st April 2015
Bike-share has a promising role to play in city transit networks, but its inability to reach low-income users has become an unsettling problem—and it’s a problem that appears to be growing. Take the latest member survey from Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C. (spotted by Mobility Lab). Half of the roughly 3,500 survey respondents reported having six-figure incomes:
CityLab is pretty much a Voice of the Crust devoted to SWPL problems, but my first thought is that if they put the bikes where ‘low-income users’ could get them, said low-income users would just steal the damned bikes and sell them to somebody for cash toward buying a car. Bikes tend to be a SWPL affectation in which people on limited incomes can’t afford to indulge.