Neighborhood change and transit ridership: Evidence from Los Angeles and Orange Counties

Using data from Southern California, we examine the idea that rising housing prices in transit-rich neighborhoods contributed to pre-COVID declines in transit use. We merge ridership data from the Los Angeles region’s two largest transit providers with tract-level Census data on housing costs and other socioeconomic attributes. We show descriptively that a small share of Census tracts account for a disproportionate share of both total transit ridership and total ridership losses, and that along multiple dimensions these neighborhoods changed in ways consistent with gentrification. We then estimate regressions showing a statistically and economically significant association between rising rent and less tract-level ridership between two periods, 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2017. Specifically, a one-standard deviation increase in median rent is associated with 22 percent fewer neighborhood transit boardings.