Bring confidence to riders
Today, people need to feel a sense of security when taking public transit. I think a clear demonstration that transportation workers, who are often people of color, have access to PPE and are being protected from harmful situations will go a long way toward making riders feel confident that they can ride and not be exposed to the coronavirus. That could also help generate jobs for “attendants,” who could distribute masks and hand sanitizer and keep buses from getting too crowded.Make the local connection
Then there’s the “first-mile, last-mile” issue, where public transit doesn’t get you exactly where you need to go. Pre-COVID, micro-mobility — such as scooter shares or bike shares — was really starting to play a role in the way that we connect people to mass transit. But there are some really big equity considerations around those technologies. For example, many require a credit card and smartphone to use them. California is experimenting with both ride- and car-share programs. BlueLA uses electric vehicles and subsidizes its membership fees for low-income individuals. And EV ride-share service Green Raiteros connects mostly Latino and agricultural families in rural parts of the Central Valley to Fresno. Those programs have actually been very successful at replacing the need for those families to buy a car.Help one, help all
A useful framework here is the idea of “targeted universalism,” something designed to help a subset of people that actually helps everybody. You could think of it as the curb-cut effect. Designing our sidewalks with curb cuts — the small ramps from a sidewalk to the street found at most intersections — allow people with decreased mobility to use streets safely. But it also helps people with strollers or shopping carts. It helps people on skateboards. It helps many people, even though the primary beneficiaries were people using wheelchairs. These are the types of things to consider when I think what it would look like to develop a transportation system that all members of the black community felt they could use, without being exposed to police violence or discrimination. I would imagine that everybody else is going to feel really safe in that same transportation system. We need this in order to avoid a dystopian future where everybody’s going to just jump in their cars to get where they need to go.This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This urban planner has the keys to a safe commute after COVID on Jun 12, 2020.