TRANSIT STORIES

Lexiington, KY I have lived all over this country and have enjoyed two careers, first serving for 24 years with the US Coast Guard, and then teaching high school in Prince William County, Virginia.  I am happy to say that I was able to rely on public transportation, primarily rail, for most of my adult life.   Early in life, the Coast Guard sent me to NYU for a masters. At the same time my wife was attending Hunter College and we could count on the NY subway.  When my job moved us the Philadelphia region, it took one experience with the Schuylkill expressway to determine I would be taking the train.  With transit you become comfortable with people from various walks of life.  The commuter train from Norristown to Philly was filled with businessmen in suits and ties and changing to the subway, I sat with passengers in t-shirts and baseball caps.   Later living in the DC area, I would often drive to a convenient parking location, and then use mass transit for as much of my trip as possible.  Sometimes I would cut through Ft. McNair and walk along the Potomac! Those short walks between transit stops gave me

Boise, Idaho – LINC I was born in Las Vegas. In 2011, I moved to Meridian and now I live in Boise with my wife, Robin. I was born with cerebral palsy, and I don’t have the ability to walk, so I use a wheelchair. I was a little bit of an advocate for myself in Las Vegas, but I feel like I didn’t really find my voice to fight for people with disabilities until 2019 when I got involved with the Living Well Project that was run by the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities. Public transit, especially paratransit in Boise, is extremely limited. My wife is also disabled, and because of liability insurance rates, there are no vehicles that can transport us at the same time. Without good public transit, it’s like you are living on a lonely, desert island. I would really like to see Boise’s transit system improved. I’ve been doing disability rights advocacy for 5 years and have been working with LINC, the Living Independent Network Corporation, as their transportation specialist. LINC’s mission is to empower Idahoans with Disabilities across the lifespan to achieve our desired level of independence. I believe having a good transit system

Decatur, GA I’ve lived in Decatur, GA now for about a year and a half.  Like many of our area’s senior citizens I moved here to be close to younger family members. I’ve learned that the city is designated as a Lifelong Community.  But what does that mean to someone, like myself, who arrives here at the age of seventy-two? Before coming here, I spent over two decades developing and running non-credit courses and programs for adults and children at a state University. I decided that I should apply that same spirit of lifelong learning to community issues in my new hometown. Decatur prides itself on being a city that plans and is aspirational. One goal is for Decatur to be “10 minute city.”  I assumed this meant anyone should be able to get from point A to point B within Decatur in 10 minutes. I discovered it actually refers to a resident being a 10 minute walk from a greenspace. But why shouldn’t “10 minute city” measure ease of mobility? I think that in a 10 minute city you would not be stuck in traffic. City walking and biking would have to be safer – right now many of

Nashua, New Hampshire I was born in NYC and lived in the New York metro until I was 10 years old. My family moved up to New Hampshire, and I ended up graduating from high school in Durham. I then went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston and was able to earn my degree in music education. I loved living in and working in the Boston area. Although improvements are needed for the MBTA, it was nice to live in a city with a robust transit system. However, the issue with living in Boston is the high cost of housing. Housing was so expensive, it made it impossible for me to stay there. We eventually moved up to Nashua, New Hampshire because the cost of housing was within our budget. Being only 43 miles from Boston, I figured it would be easy to take public transportation from Nashua to my job in music education in Boston. Boy was I wrong! I was shocked to learn that the MBTA commuter rail doesn’t extend to Nashua. If I wanted to take the train in Boston, I had to drive 12 miles south to Lowell, MA (which ends up being about a 45-minute drive) and hop on the commuter train. There is a commuter bus

Las Vegas, NV I am 24 years old and was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV. My two sisters, two brothers, and I are first generation Ethiopian Americans. Right now, I am finishing up school at Penn State and studying International Politics.  I’m looking forward to graduating this December.  I really like to be tied into social justice causes within the community. I’m a Christian, and it’s my faith that really drives me to be involved in community issues. I am incredibly passionate about different social, economic, and racial injustices and am working to pursue fighting these issues within my professional career.   For the past two years, I’ve had a car. But before then, I’ve had bouts of time of not having a car, and relied on taking the bus to get around. Even though I do have a car now, I try to take the bus as often as I can.  I would describe the public transit system here as a system that has a lack of logistics and safety. Unfortunately, the city focuses so much of its attention on development of the Strip and tourism, that it often leaves out the community’s necessities within the transit system.

Portland, ME – Maine People’s Alliance I live in Portland, and I’m one of seven kids. I’m currently getting my master’s degree in social work at the University of Southern Maine. One of the great things about the program that I’m in is that I was able to intern with Maine People’s Alliance last year, which I loved. I really like to be involved in research and policy, and I hope to use my degree to work in the field of intimate partner violence. In my free time, which I have very little of while going to school, I like to write. Growing up, I never had much experience with public transit given our system isn’t very well developed in Maine. Life in Maine is really built around having access to a car. I don’t drive. At first, that was because I couldn’t afford driver’s education, but then I started to encounter vision issues that made it impossible for me to be behind the wheel of a car. It wasn’t until I left to get my undergrad degree at Boston College that I started to use public transit. It was nice to have more of the world opened to me