5 Cities Where Mass Transit Riders Are Richer Than Drivers

People who ride public transportation in American cities tend to have lower incomes than those who commute by car. But the general rule of commuter wealth disparity does have exceptions. Cap'n Transit performed a very smart analysis of 2010 American Community Survey data, freshly released by the U.S. Census, and found five metro areas where transit riders actually make more than auto commuters. A lot more. Like, in one case, nuclear physicist more. The data shake down like this:

When commute times are added to the picture, things get even more strange. The average commute for drivers in Idaho Falls is about 20 minutes, while transit commutes take about 70. In Torrington, drivers take about a half hour to reach work and transit riders take an hour, and that's just about the case in Bremerton-Silverdale too, at 26 minutes by car and 67 by transit. The difference is even greater in Poughkeepsie — half hour by car and 80 minutes by mass transit — and things are similar in Kingston, which is farther north along the Hudson.