It's cute that someone made this in response to the New Yorker piece. San Francisco always wants to feel like it's one of the big guys like NYC.
If anything, this transit/income data shows how little of a correlation there is between the two. This doesn't suprise me: most people in SF have cars, and muni/BART are embarrassingly awful compared to the big the cities in the US.
The only big city in the USA with decent transit is NYC. San Francisco is comparable to Boston, DC, and Chicago and far ahead of LA, Dallas, and Miami.
By world standards, NYC is barely average and the rest of the country has no transit system at all to speak of.
London, Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo all shut down most of their mass transit system overnight. NYC runs it all night long (albeit with fewer trains and some diversions). By the important metric of availability that puts it among the top.
Indeed, 24-hour rail service, even though it runs at infrequent and irregular intervals, is a big point bringing NYC up to barely average in its peer group. Other measures like coverage (suburbs count), travel times, intermodal operations (awful airport connections), connectivity (think Jersey), and jitney service and taxi availability drag NYC's score down.
I can count NYC as barely average only because the peer group includes not only London, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, and Osaka but also Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. If I'd just used your list, NYC would be dead last in almost every category.
Chicago ought not to be lumped in with Boston and DC. DC and Boston are both quite nice (comparatively).
The CTA is not. It's barely tolerable (and by tolerable, I mean that people are even capable of using it to get around and/or commute at all. So, the system might technically be a functioning transit apparatus, but barely.) I've used it daily for a sizable portion of my life, and it fails with remarkable consistency.
I keep hearing that Muni and BART are awful, but how so? I've been on public transit in NYC, Boston, Berlin, and other major cities and I don't notice any significant disparities.
If anything, this transit/income data shows how little of a correlation there is between the two. This doesn't suprise me: most people in SF have cars, and muni/BART are embarrassingly awful compared to the big the cities in the US.