Driver’s Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants and Bus Ridership in Orange County, California

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2025

Subject Area

place - north america, mode - bus, ridership - modelling

Keywords

bus ridership, AB 60, driver's license, undocumented immigrants, fixed effects panel regression

Abstract

We investigate the impact of California Assembly Bill 60 (AB 60) that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain a California driver’s license on the ridership of buses operated by the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). OCTA bus ridership has fallen every year since 2012. Between 2012 and 2016, it dropped by 19% despite the launch of OCTA Bravo! in 2013 and OC Bus 360 in 2015. Changing socioeconomic conditions, poor connectivity, poor service quality, and increased competition from transport network companies are possible reasons behind this negative trend. Another potential cause is the implementation in 2015 of AB 60. In this context, this article examines the association between changes in OCTA bus ridership and the inception of AB 60 while controlling for differences in transit supply, socioeconomic variables, gas prices, multi-family rent, and single-family home value. To explain changes in monthly average weekday ridership, we estimated four route-level fixed-effect panel regression models. We analyzed ridership data for 2014 (just before the implementation of AB 60) and 2015–2016 (the first two years after the enactment of AB 60) for local, community, express, and station link routes. For local and community routes, we find decreases in the monthly OCTA bus ridership coefficients. For local routes, they range from a low of 1.7% in the winter to a high of 7.7% in the fall of 2015–2016 compared to 2014.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by SAGE, copyright remains with them.

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