Spatial Analysis

This map uses choropleth to display the incomes of Bay Area census tracts as well as the location of BART stations, AC Transit bus stops, and MUNI bus stops in the San Francisco – Oakland Metropolitan area. From this map, it is evident that lower-income areas such as West Oakland, south of Alameda, and Daly City have almost no accessible transit service. While location of transit stops is important for identifying transit deserts, a more important metric is areas with access to high-quality transit groups. Many subsets of the population, such as low-income workers, or the elderly, rely on high-frequency transit routes to take them to jobs or medical centers promptly. This next maps identifies high-quality transit corridors in the bay area.

This map shows the location of high quality transit routes in the San Francisco – Oakland Metropolitan area. High quality transit routes are defined as routes that have peak period headways of less than 15 minutes. Each route on the map includes a ¼ mile buffer to show the accessible origins and destinations from each route. In the East Bay Alameda, West Oakland, Piedmont, and most areas in Berkeley/Albany are outside of these high-quality routes. In San Francisco, plenty of areas south of the dense downtown area, such as the Sunset, Noe Valley, Bernal Heights, and Forest Hill exist in transit deserts.

Another implication of transit deserts is the resulting dependence on private vehicles for transportation. America’s love affair with private automobiles has resulted in extremely negative impacts, including sprawl, increased congestion, safety issues, and healthy concerns. However, for residents that don’t own a personal vehicle, living in a transit desert severely limits their mobility and impedes their ability to travel to necessary destinations.

This map tells a number of stories about residents who do not own vehicles in the bay area. First, map 1 with owner-occupied housing units show very low percentages of census tracts with no vehicle ownership; residents who can afford to buy homes in the San Francisco – Oakland Metropolitan area are very likely to have at least one private vehicle, as they have the means to afford a car. In San Francisco, the owner-occupied housing units in census tracts with a higher percentage of no vehicle ownership tend to live in denser areas along the high-quality transit corridors; these residents don’t have to own a car for mobility as they can access a good transit supply. Next, map 2 of renter-owned housing units tells a different story. While in San Francisco, the highest proportion of census tracts with no vehicles available are in transit-dense areas, this is not true for the East Bay. North Alameda, West Oakland, and parts of Berkeley have high percentages of no vehicle ownership, as well as exist within transit deserts. The residents in these areas therefore live in mobility deserts, as they have almost no transportation options available to them.