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Public Transit Desired Universally

(There are a few constant truths in the world: bones break, the sun provides energy and everyone likes public transit no matter what nationality or ethnicity.)

Public transit is obviously an important entity to many social structures as it provides the essential services of allowing lower income individuals the ability to commute throughout the city. But it is not just for the lower income. People who want to pass on increasing gas prices as well as many others who like to skip the gridlock traffic for a cup of coffee and a newspaper desire public transportation.

Then, naturally, mass transit has no ethnical boundaries.

The Realty Times article, “Build It Near Transit, Diversity Will Come” published November 16, 2006 and written by Broderick Perkins provides reasons as to why transit areas are divers and will continue to be so.

“If you build it near transit, they will come bringing more ethnic and socio-economic diversity than that of most other neighborhoods.”

The Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is gaining support, with little evidence of a slowdown, from diverse demographics who are choosing to opt for the walking oriented housing opposed to the automobile-necessary suburbs.

“Funded by the Ford Foundation and researched by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), the TOD report says, spurred by high gas prices, gridlock frustrations, and new development, public transit use has grown by 25 percent nationwide since 1995.”

While the premium desire of living used to be in the far outskirt suburbs of town, more people are interested in the city living for the culture and transportation benefits. This is working out perfectly as real estate developers are running out of room to build the wide open space suburban homes, leaving more opportunities to build close to transit centers, which was once avoided.

“The convergence has prompted planners, community visionaries and neighborhood engineers to develop not just homes, but mixed-use developments that include retail, recreation (parks and walking areas) and other services that further enhance a public transit oriented lifestyle.”

The TOD report was implemented to seek out trends of the diversity in and around transit areas now and in 25 years from now.

“Neighborhoods near transit provide housing to a greater share of the region’s lower-income households than regions overall. That's because the transit infrastructure helps these households get where they need to go, while keeping their transportation costs down.”

However, the report concluded that as transit zones continue to expand in the future, they will look more like non-transit zones of today. More “whites” will become part of the transit statistic (currently 59 percent are non-whites) as well as some higher income housing.

Just as urban lofts and condominiums have created a new wave of the “in crowd” in recent years, more and more people are going to establish the “hip” mentality of public transit, especially as environmental issues are exploited.

Public transit is the universal carpool.

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