TRANSIT STORIES

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

Madison, WI I was born in Cambridge, England in 1971, but moved to the United States with my parents when I was a baby. I’ve lived in Louisiana and Texas and then finally settled down in Madison. I’m a peer support specialist for people dealing with mental health issues. During the school year, I’m a crossing guard for the school system here in Madison. I’m very active in the community. I volunteer a lot with the Sierra Club and serve as the co-treasurer. I also spend a lot of time with the Chrysalis Club House which helps community members that have mental health issues.  Up until 3 to 4 years ago, I didn’t own a car. Even though I now have my own vehicle, I try to take the bus as often as possible. I do get a free bus pass with my job as a crossing guard. The thing I like about the bus system is that I always get to meet people on the bus. It’s a great community to travel around with. People that don’t take the bus are missing out. The bus system in Madison is upgrading to a bus rapid transit system. This is going

San Antonio, Texas I was born and raised in San Antonio, and love living here. I graduated from the University of the Incarnate Word last year, and I’m currently getting my teaching certificate in high school history. I’m looking forward to finishing my degree and hopefully landing a teaching job in 2025. I like to say that I lead a “grandma-core” lifestyle, so I do a lot of knitting and baking.  Living in San Antonio, though, the one thing that irks me is how bad our public transit system is. Compared to all the other major cities in Texas, San Antonio pays the least when it comes to public transit. The way transportation works in San Antonio is that you must own a car. If you don’t, then you’re out of luck. Times where I haven’t had access to a car or haven’t been able to get a hold of friends that have cars, I’m basically stuck in place.  Also, the biking and walking infrastructure in our city is abysmal. I don’t ride a bike because the roads are designed for cars only. Many times, bike lanes just end abruptly. It’s similar to walking. If you need to walk, the

Russellville, Arkansas I was born in North Carolina and was the oldest of five kids, but I ended up growing up in New Jersey. That’s where I first encountered public transit. I constantly took New Jersey Transit everywhere, and I loved how convenient it was. I raised four children, two boys and two girls, and taught them early on about the value of using public transit. This was important for my family especially since I don’t like to drive. It’s expensive and dangerous. About seven years ago, I moved to Arkansas to continue to develop my practice as a behavioral analyst and a faith-based counselor. I now own a private practice, Let’s Talk Consulting. We are a one stop shop counseling service, and we focus on a holistic approach to healing. I’m also very active on policy issues in the state of Arkansas in my role as District delegate, which allows me to keep in touch with state Senate offices around key policy issues. One of the big policy issues that I’ve been focused on involves the lack of public transportation, especially in small communities, like Russellville. My experience with public transit overall in Arkansas couldn’t be as different from

Tallahassee, FL – MHAction I moved to Tallahassee in 2008 from Dayton, Ohio. I worked in health care for a number of years, and was 50 credits away from being a nurse, but I started having my own health issues. Being a nurse was no longer a career option for me, so I signed up for a temporary job, labor pool. That gave me the chance to begin my career as a bus driver. I was given an opportunity to take coach operator classes. It was really interesting to learn about how a bus works, because I didn’t ever really ride the bus. I passed my license test, and became a coach operator, which is the term we prefer to call ourselves as bus drivers in Tallahassee.  I really like my job, but from where I sit I really see first hand how much more we need to invest in our public transportation system.  In a lot of the outlying areas surrounding Tallahassee, there is really limited public transportation available for families. In places outside of downtown, buses only run for a limited time, and there aren’t enough routes available to make it convenient for people. This situation has only

Atlanta, GA – Natural Resources Defense Council My brother Jared and I were born and raised in Baton Rouge, LA. My mom was an accountant for Bank One, and my father was a delivery driver for UPS. Growing up, I attended Southern Lab, located on the campus of Southern University, a historically Black University, from Pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade. For college, I went Southern for my freshman year, but ended up transferring over to LSU where I earned my degree in Communications Studies. My first experience with public transit was when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. Our daycare toured the main bus terminal in Baton Rouge. I have a clear memory of how excited I was to sit in the driver’s seat at the station and wear the bus driver’s hat. Taking the bus downtown that day was an eye opening experience for me, because we lived in the outskirts of Baton Rouge where there was no bus service. Having no access to public transit growing up, we weren’t able to easily see our friends and family unless you owned a personal vehicle. Our area also didn’t have sidewalks, so even hopping on a bike to go