Words to Abolish: “Choice Rider,” “Captive Rider”

You can’t go far in transit conversations without hearing the terms “choice rider” and “captive rider.” The first refers to someone who has a car available and chooses transit instead, while the second refers to someone who has no choice but to use transit. Anytime you hear someone using these terms, please point them to this post. For more detail, please see the full argument in my book Human Transit (revised edition of 2024). It’s at the end of Chapter 4. But briefly: These terms are legacies of 1970s modeling, which required many simplifying assumptions to fit the limited computing power of the time. They reflect the class prejudices of the time, but they have never had any scientific basis. The underlying idea is that “captive” riders will use the service no matter how bad it gets, and that the path to growth is to attract the “choice rider.” This has been disproven over and over. Transit succeeds or fails by recognizing that most people are in the middle, with some choices and…