# Bay Area Transit Equity

*Group 13: Sonya Kiskachi, Destiny Ogu, Donjhai Holland | CP 255 | Spring 2026*

---

**Does where you live near transit determine what you can access?**

Bay Area transit expansion has extended BART and Caltrain service into communities like Antioch
and Berryessa over the past decade. However, building a station does not guarantee that the surrounding
neighborhood offers basic amenities that residents may need within walking distance.

A station that draws hundreds to thousands of daily riders but sits in a neighborhood with few nearby
amenities (such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and clinics) creates compounded mobility burdens,
with direct implications for transit-oriented development and equitable service planning. The riders
most affected are transit-dependent Bay Area residents, particularly low-income households, elderly
riders, and people with disabilities, who rely on transit not just for commuting but for reaching daily necessities.

This project examines walkable amenity access across 79 BART and Caltrain stations in the
Bay Area. We ask a simple question: **Do riders at peripheral stations have systematically worse access to essential services like grocery
stores, clinics, and pharmacies compared to riders at central core stations?**

## Why this matters now

BART's Antioch extension opened in 2023, adding two new stations to the East Bay. 
Caltrain electrification finished in 2024, expanding capacity along the Peninsula. 
Both are presented as equity wins: more transit access for underserved communities. 
But a [2024 MTC report on transit-oriented communities](https://mtc.ca.gov) found 
that station-area development is concentrated in already-wealthy corridors, leaving 
newly served communities with the infrastructure but not the services. Our analysis 
puts numbers to that gap for the first time across both systems.

## Key Findings

Our analysis finds statistically significant disparities between core and peripheral stations:

```{raw} html
<div class="finding-card f1">
  <div class="finding-num">Finding 01</div>
  Peripheral stations average 9.8 amenities within walking distance versus 21.9 
  for core stations. That gap showed up in 6 of 10 amenity categories we tested, 
  and the effect size (Glass Delta = 2.17) is large enough that it is hard to 
  explain away.
</div>
<div class="finding-card f2">
  <div class="finding-num">Finding 02</div>
  The stations with the highest unmet need, where car-free household rates are 
  high and walkable amenities are scarce, are concentrated in East Oakland and 
  the outer East Bay, with Coliseum station ranking worst (index = 0.801).
</div>
<div class="finding-card f3">
  <div class="finding-num">Finding 03</div>
  Stations in majority non-white neighborhoods have significantly fewer walkable 
  amenities (Spearman rho = −0.243, p = 0.047). Income was not a significant 
  predictor, meaning the gap follows racial geography more than income alone.
</div>
```

## Data Sources

We built this analysis primarily using FY2025 BART and Caltrain ridership records, OpenStreetMap amenity extracts, and 2024 ACS 5-year Census estimates.

```{raw} html
<div class="table-wrap">
  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr><th>Dataset</th><th>Source</th><th>Description</th></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td>Census tract boundaries</td>
        <td>TIGER/Line 2024, U.S. Census Bureau</td>
        <td>California tract shapefiles for spatial joining</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>ACS 2024 (5-Year)</td>
        <td>Census API</td>
        <td>Tract-level demographics: income, vehicle access, race, poverty</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>BART ridership (FY2025)</td>
        <td>BART monthly XLS, Jul 2024–Jun 2025</td>
        <td>Average weekday exits by station</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Caltrain ridership (FY2025)</td>
        <td>FY2025 Annual Ridership Report, Table 3</td>
        <td>Average mid-week ridership (AMWR) by station</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Amenities</td>
        <td>OpenStreetMap / compiled</td>
        <td>Grocery, park, clinic, pharmacy, hospital, childcare locations</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Station locations</td>
        <td>Compiled</td>
        <td>Lat/lon for all BART and Caltrain stations</td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>
```

All spatial analysis was done in Python using `GeoPandas`, with interactive visualizations built in `Plotly` and `Folium`.

## Scope and Limitations

This analysis measures amenity presence, not affordability, quality, or hours. 
We cover only BART and Caltrain. Bay Area bus networks are out of scope. For a full discussion of missing data and methodological limitations, see Station Access Explorer.

## Conclusion

Building a station is not enough. What gets built around it matters too.

Core stations average more than twice as many nearby amenities as peripheral 
stations (21.9 vs. 9.8), a difference that is statistically significant across 
6 of 10 amenity categories after FDR correction. The biggest gaps are in clinics 
and convenience stores. These are everyday essentials that transit-dependent riders cannot 
easily substitute with a car trip.

The unmet need index reveals that some nominally core stations such as Coliseum, Bay 
Fair, MacArthur, serve some of the most transit-dependent populations in the 
network while having among the fewest walkable services. The gap follows racial 
geography (rho = −0.243) more than income (rho = −0.064, not significant), which 
means policies targeting low-income neighborhoods by income threshold alone would 
miss many of the communities most affected.

---

**Where to go next**

```{raw} html
<div style="margin-top:1.5rem; display:flex; flex-direction:column; gap:12px;">
  <a href="transit_equity_visualization.html" style="display:flex; align-items:baseline; gap:10px; text-decoration:none; color:inherit;">
    <span style="font-weight:600; color:#378ADD; min-width:200px;">Station Access Explorer</span>
    <span style="color:#666; font-size:14px;">Interactive maps to explore amenity access at any station directly</span>
  </a>
  <a href="findings.html" style="display:flex; align-items:baseline; gap:10px; text-decoration:none; color:inherit;">
    <span style="font-weight:600; color:#378ADD; min-width:200px;">Findings</span>
    <span style="color:#666; font-size:14px;">Charts and analysis showing the core-peripheral gap and who is most affected</span>
  </a>
  <a href="statistical_results.html" style="display:flex; align-items:baseline; gap:10px; text-decoration:none; color:inherit;">
    <span style="font-weight:600; color:#378ADD; min-width:200px;">Methods & Results</span>
    <span style="color:#666; font-size:14px;">Permutation tests, correlations, and effect sizes behind the findings</span>
  </a>
  <a href="references.html" style="display:flex; align-items:baseline; gap:10px; text-decoration:none; color:inherit;">
    <span style="font-weight:600; color:#378ADD; min-width:200px;">References</span>
    <span style="color:#666; font-size:14px;">Data sources, methods citations, and system maps</span>
  </a>
</div>
```