I've had some disagreements with Sonja, but her approach here (in her letter to FTA) is hella' smart:

"For instance, if you earn $10/ hour, then a dollar is equivalent to 6 minutes. If you earn $30/ hour, than a dollar is 2 minutes. That means if fares increase by, say, $10/ month, (5% of a monthly BART bill of $200) and you earn $10/ hour, then your fare increase is equivalent to an hour of your time. If you earn $30/ hour, the fare increase is 20 minutes. Measured in dollars, the increases appear to be the same for the two riders, but measured in man-hours, the poorer rider is facing an increase that is 300% bigger than the fare increase for the less poor rider. That is a disparate impact, so the policy should reflect that."

(Monthly BART bill of $200?!  Compare to telecommuting, with a monthly cost of about $50 for decent broadband service.  And no pressure on housing when there's no "need" to live close to the office.)

This part is also interesting:

"The FTA notes that low-income people are not a protected class for the federal civil rights laws, but, (progressively) it encourages Transit Agencies to include low-income populations as a protected class [category] in their guidelines because minorities are generally over represented in the lower incomes."

A wider debate on the issue of low-income becoming a protected category (equivalent to race, gender, religion, etc.) under federal civil rights law, could open up the "class" issue (economic class) generally.  The original Occupy movement almost got us there.  What's the next step?

-G


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On 13-06-08-Sat 5:46 PM, Sonja Trauss wrote:
Whatever you like - the disparate impact IS very unclear!!! The federal document has examples that help make it clearer, but the BART document doesn't. 

The federal standard is probably well defined by decades of litigation. But the whole point of making a local policy is that BART can specify its own definitions of disparate impact (within limits I guess). That means we can write in like, "disparate impact should mean ..." 

On Saturday, June 8, 2013, Anthony Di Franco wrote:

I don't fully appreciate the calculus of what is or isn't a disparate impact that these agencies use, but your idea seems like a good one to have in front of them.
Are you asking us in the subject line to also send letters on your suggestion, or on different suggestions we may have, or both, neither, something else?

On Jun 8, 2013 5:07 PM, "Sonja Trauss" <sonja.trauss@gmail.com> wrote:
http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2013/news20130605.aspx

The federal transportation administration released new, slightly different guidelines for public transportation providers. Basically what they say is that the civil rights office of each Public Transit Agency has to make up some criteria to test whether proposed route changes or fare increases disproportionally affect minority riders. For instance, if a transit agency were to cancel a bus line (and replace it with nothing) where 35% of the riders were black, but the overall ridership of the transit system was 12% black, then that service change would be have a disproportionate impact on black riders by 35-12=23% NOW, if the public wanted to sue the agency to stop the discontinuation of the bus line, but the agency's guidelines said the disproportionate impact had to be greater than, say, 25%, then the lawsuit would fail. The FTA mandates the creation of some guidelines, but doesn't say what should be in them.

Another example would be fare increases. If a transit agency increases regular fare by 10%, but senior fares by 50%, and 21% of seniors are some certain race, as opposed to 6% of the general population being that race, that would be a disproportionate impact of 15%.

The FTA notes that low-income people are not a protected class for the federal civil rights laws, but, (progressively) it encourages Transit Agencies to include low-income populations as a protected class in their guidelines because minorities are generally over represented in the lower incomes.

In the fare raising example above therefore, if seniors are not disproportionately some particular race, but if they are disproportionally poor, a transit agency could create guidelines that would recognize that.

So if 13% of the general transit population earns 200% or less of the national poverty level, but 20% of the senior population earns that or less, than that would be a disproportionate impact of 7%.

If the transit agency prohibited disparate impacts of more than 5% (for instance) that change would be a no go.

So, maybe stupidly, I submitted the following comment to officeofcivilrights@bart.gov and copied boardofdirectors@bart.gov:

First of all, the policy needs more examples of how to find disparate impacts, like the example on pg 45 of FTA C 4702.1B, or the examples in appendix K. Second of all, the BART DIDB Policy should explicitly take into account the relative nature of the price of a fare (relative, that is, to the rider's overall income) and therefore the relative nature of a fare increase. 

For instance, if you earn $10/ hour, then a dollar is equivalent to 6 minutes. If you earn $30/ hour, than a dollar is 2 minutes. That means if fares increase by, say, $10/ month, (5% of a monthly BART bill of $200) and you earn $10/ hour, then your fare increase is equivalent to an hour of your time. If you earn $30/ hour, the fare increase is 20 minutes. Measured in dollars, the increases appear to be the same for the two riders, but measured in man-hours, the poorer rider is facing an increase that is 300% bigger than the fare increase for the less poor rider. That is a disparate impact, so the policy should reflect that.

Thanks for your attn in this matter.

The number of people submitting comments on this policy will be very small. Like under 30, maybe 10 people. There will be a couple of legal services attys, some law students, some BART staff members ... basically no one. So every letter will be read. If there is anyone in the organization that has the opinion you have, they will cite your letter many times in trying to get their (and your) opinion heard. That is why I write letters like this, just in case there is some staff member who has my same thought. :/

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