Transportation
The Latest Sign of Bike-Share's Social Equity Problem
The share of Capital Bikeshare members making more than $100,000 is growing.
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:
That 50-percent share of members making $100,000 or more is up from 45 percent in the 2012 survey, which itself was up from 39 percent from the 2011 survey. And $100,000 isn't exactly the best dividing line between rich and poor. Only 16 percent of CaBi members are reporting incomes below $50,000 a year in the latest survey.