On the CCCTA and the CCCC

The Contra Costa County Connection is the multi-syllabic bus service for Contra Costa County and its accompanying transit authority (CCCTA). It has 11 jurisdictions: the cities of Clayton, Concord, Lafayette, Martinez, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, San Ramon, Walnut Creek; the towns of Danville and Moraga; and the unincorporated areas of central Contra Costa County

Here's some more quantitative info from their website:

CCCTA DEMOGRAPHIC SNAPSHOT

• 77% OF CCCTA RIDERS ARE TRANSIT DEPENDENT
• 60% OF CCCTA RIDERS ARE MINORITIES
• 48% OF CCCTA RIDERSHIP IS OF LOW INCOME EARNING $25,000 OR LESS
• SERVICE AREA: 200 SQUARE MILES
• SERVICE AREA POPULATION: 482,400
• PROPOSED OPERATING BUDGET FY2010: FIXED ROUTE - $25,575,341 PARATRANSIT - $5,150,751
• ANNUAL RIDERSHIP: 5 MILLION (FIXED-ROUTE AND PARATRANSIT)
• FLEET SIZE: 131 FULLY ACCESSIBLE BUSES 63 PASSENGER VANS (PARATRANSIT) 

The CCCTA likes it some emphatic capslock.

The above CCCTA figures are interesting, but don't really communicate the entire context in which the Authority operates. To demonstrate this in a quick and dirty way, I averaged the median household income and per capita income data from the 2000 Census for Clayton, Concord, Lafayette, Martinez, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Danville and Moraga (San Ramon didn't have any data on wikipedia, shame). I also tossed in some similarly quickndirty ridership tallies:

48 percent of CCCTA riders earn less this amount: $25,000
Average per capita income for cities in service area: $44,000
Average median household income for cities in service area: $101,943
Percent of CCCTA riders that are minorities: 60
Average percent of total population for cities in service area that are minorities: 18.2*
Annual CCCTA ridership: 5 million
Averaged daily ridership: 13,698 (commuters probably spike this tally higher on weekdays and lower on weekends)
Annual Average Daily Traffic on I-680 @ CA 24: 219,000 vehicles
Averaged daily CCCTA ridership as a percent of service area total population: 2.83%

*includes San Ramon

I'm no statistician, so maybe averaging averages and averaging medians is a big no-no, but you get the gist. A wealthy area, where the wealthy never see the poor because the mode share self-sorts by income. A wealthy area, where small numbers of low-income people of color are served in high numbers by bus service. CCCTA isn't the only agency in this position, nor is Contra Costa the only county or region with such disparities.

One of the bottom lines here is that providing quality transit is a social justice issue. More on this anon.