Metro Transport Thread

[Boobs]

Eastie in Boston is a generally working-class area, but importantly has a lot of recent immigrants. Both of these contribute to a lack of car ownership. Eastie is close enough to downtown, where most lines intersect, that it provides enough convenience for using transit broadly.

It appears the transit neighborhoods in DC in Anacostia also follow rail stops.

New York is unique because metro service is in a class of its own in America. In other cities, affluent transit-minded residents tend to be able to afford to live close enough to their workplaces that many of their trips can be done by walking; it is still the working poor that use transit as their primary means of transportation. In fact, studies have found that permanent transit stops (such as suburban rail) tend to create neighborhoods with poorer residents on average, because they often have no other option but to live near such stops in order to access employment.

Also important to remember is that buses, although less geographically noticeable than the effects of a rail station, still make up a significant portion of transit trips.

[Boobs]

Honestly my bigger confusion are the fairly large swaths of NYC well served by the subway that still have more people using a car - most notably the area around Midwood in Brooklyn and Gun Hill in the Bronx area.

Midwood, I would wager, is just a quirk of choropleth mapping, as I think there is probably a significant walking contingent like nearby Borough Park composed of many Chassidic Jews, enough so that the transit percentage drops below that of auto users.

The area you call “Gun Hill” - Pelham Gardens, Williamsbridge, the like - is actually kind of interesting. There’s a little profile of the area in the Times that encapsulates the “vibe” of the neighborhood better than I’d be able to describe, but it really is more of a “suburban enclave” (emphasis on enclave) than you’d expect of an area in that part of the Bronx.