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The fare hikes set to go into effect this Saturday, May 1, on NJ Transit’s trains, buses and light rail systems were originally proposed to be 25 percent across the board. But after the public comment period, the agency announced that it would reduce the fare hikes on local bus routes and light rail lines to 10 percent, while keeping rail and interstate/long-distance bus lines.

NJ Transit’s internal Environmental Justice Analysis, a federally mandated report on how the hikes and service cuts would impact low-income and minority populations, includes striking demographic data on NJ Transit riders. The report was released earlier this month after an Open Public Records Act request by the advocacy group the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Take a look at these two charts, which we created using data in the report:

The key on this one is a little hard to read; the orange line is the average number of weekday riders, and the blue line is mean household income.

Meanwhile, this chart plots the percent of riders of each mode that are racial minorities:

While this demographic data isn’t exactly earth-shattering news, since its widely known that bus riders are poorer and less white than commuter rail riders, the wide gaps in the numbers are still interesting, and make quite a case for NJ Transit’s ultimate decision to ease up on the 25 percent fare hikes for bus and light rail riders.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has commended NJ Transit for changing the fare hike formula, but says the agency should not have eliminated the off-peak round trip discount for rail riders, which the group says will have a disproportionate impact on low-income riders. It cites the example of an off-peak round trip from Newark to New Brunswick, which will jump from $12.25 to $18.

For its part, NJ Transit agrees that the off-peak round trip change will hurt some low-income riders, since “riders with incomes of less than $25,000 are more likely to use the rail off-peak round trip ticket than other rail riders.” But the agency says the move, which is expected to generate $8.4 million in revenue, was a choice that had to be made. It says that keeping the discount would have forced “draconian” service reductions on bus lines, or across-the-board fare hikes of more than 25 percent.