TRANSIT STORIES

New York City, NY My name is Kim Yancey, I’m 45, and I’m a licensed social worker living in East Harlem near the 125th St 4/5/6 subway station. I have a disability and access the subway system using a power wheelchair. Having lost my job shortly before the pandemic, my efforts to reenter the workforce were complicated by the pandemic and the unreliability of elevators at subway stations.  Here’s an example – my old commute to work at Park Avenue and 20th Street would take 36 minutes if all station elevators were operational; if not, the length of my trip could stretch to 1.5 hours or more because of the diversions I need to make, and it can cost me three times more in transit fares to get home. Even if the elevators are working, passenger overcrowding – even during COVID-19 – can mean that reaching the street level from the train platform could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour because it takes two elevators to exit Given that I have worked in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, I’ve encountered broken elevators across the city. It was constant. Multiple times a week, multiple times a day. Sometimes it’s

(He/Him) | Glandale, CA My name is Kenny Uong. I’m an Urban Studies and Planning student attending Cal State Northridge in Los Angeles. I grew up in a household that relied on public transit to get around. We would take transit to go get groceries in Chinatown, to go to the shopping centers, and mostly around the cities of Glendale, Burbank and Los Angeles. When I was around five, I started collecting maps and timetables on board the buses. By the age of ten, I’ve memorized the entire system by heart. Transit was a huge part of my life growing up and I still continue to use transit to this day.  My decision to continue using transit is primarily because of family influence. We are able to access our necessities and get around the area with public transportation, so why get a car? We really enjoy taking transit because we don’t have to worry about driving. We don’t have to worry about gas prices, insurance, and all the other costs associated with owning a car. Once you know which route goes where as well as the schedules, it’s simple to navigate the transit system. LA Metro’s usual fare is one-dollar-seventy-five

(She/Her) | Cleveland, OH I moved to Cleveland 16 years ago, from a small town in Ohio where there is no public transit. As a person living with a mobility disability, Cleveland’s public transit system gave me a newfound freedom. I am able to commute to my full-time job at Downtown Cleveland Alliance in downtown Cleveland from where I live in Shaker Heights. It takes 20 minutes on the Green or Blue light rail lines, plus a ten-minute journey in my motorized wheelchair. Transit is also my primary way to access entertainment at the nearby art museum and botanical garden, using the #48 bus to get there. I also rely on it for life’s necessities, such as making it to my doctor’s appointments or going grocery shopping. Without better transit service, I might be forced to move back to my family home and end up relying on governmental assistance. Without transit, I wouldn’t be able to go essentially anywhere independently and my life would be completely different. I don’t qualify for certain independent accessible transportation options. Ride-sharing services do not have accessible vehicles, and their services are too expensive. I might be forced to learn to drive an accessible vehicle,

(She/Her) | Los Angeles, CA I am a first-generation college student and attending Los Angeles Pierce College for the past three years, soon to be attending Cal State University Northridge, both being heavily commuter schools. Before that, my whole life I’ve been taking public transit. It has been a very integral part of my life.  Recently, through LA’s California Promise program, I’ve had the fee for my U-Pass waived for the past two years and that’s been a huge help to me economically and financially. The U-Pass allowed me to take the subway, METRO bus, and local bus unlimitedly and it’s taken the weight off in terms of cost. As I said then, public transit has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and I will continue using it for the foreseeable future. If I’m moving tomorrow and I’m not sure if I will stay there long, then I think that public transportation is the best way to get around in a city. I feel like anywhere that I visit I always make use of public transportation. In the summer of 2019, I received a scholarship through Los Angeles Pierce College to visit Paris

My name is Jackie. I’m in my 60s, and I use transit everyday to get to work, attend meetings, do my grocery shopping, and to visit friends and family. I wasn’t always dependent on transit, but once I made that switch, I noticed all the barriers that exist for where I can go. I live in West Philadelphia, where there’s plenty of transit, but once I go outside of this bubble, it takes me a long time to get to most places. If I have to go to Northeast Philly, or South Philly, it can be a very long journey. I soon realized that I had really limited myself to where it was easy to get on and off public transportation. So there are a lot of places that I don’t go to simply because it would take too long to get there. These areas have a transit line, but not enough service, so you probably won’t get there in time, if at all. I work with a small non-profit as their Director of Operations. If there was a community meeting I wanted to go to, I would do my best to go. But for many meetings, when I know transit

Brooklyn, NY I’m Grace, I work at Home Depot and I use public transit to travel to Hempstead Bay in Long Island from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Before the pandemic, the trip to get to work took me roughly three hours, two trains and a bus. By sticking to the bus and subway, I would get transfers and keep my fare affordable.  Although the Long Island Rail Road is a much faster and affordable option, the cost would be too expensive for me since the fare is nearly three times the regular bus and subway fare.  For years I’ve had the opening shift at Home Depot, and leave my house at 3:00 am to get to work by 5:30 am. It’s a long and arduous trip that became even more cumbersome at the beginning of the pandemic when Governor Cuomo decided to end overnight service from 1:00 am to 5:00 am.  This decision has cost me extra hours and money to get to work. Since the overnight closures, I’ve had to take a $25 cab to get me from Sheepshead Bay to Atlantic Terminal to then pay for the Long Island Railroad to then pay for a bus in Long