Getting Where We Need to Go: Public Transit and Opportunity
Within its 189 Calls to Action, the Ferguson Commission’s report identified public transit improvement as a critical component to making St. Louis an equitable, thriving region for all — and particularly for young people ages 25 and under.
The Commission released its report in Fall 2015, and one of the promising responses to that call came from the St. Louis Regional Youth Employment Coalition (RYEC). Launched in October 2018 under the United Way of Greater St. Louis, RYEC has continued leading cross-sector work, in collaboration with local entities, to help literally move teens and young adults through the Gateway Go Card initiative.
Nataly Garzon is the Systems Change Strategies Specialist with Ready by 21, the organization that founded RYEC. Among the coalition’s now-25 partners, Garzon says that Bi-State Development (BSD), whose responsibilities include overseeing Metro Transit, has been especially vital to bringing half-fare, unlimited bus and train passes to youth with summer jobs or internships in the St. Louis area.
“Access to reliable transportation has been a barrier to actually completing employment experiences in years past,” Garzon explains. “Bi-State has been committed to leaning into that Ferguson Commission call-to-action around creating a discounted youth transit pass to get to services and jobs whether a youth is in school or employed.”
“Having half-fare from Bi-State, and then collectively being able to further subsidize the cards, allowed programs — such as STL Youth Jobs, St. Louis Internship Program, SLATE, Missouri Botanical Garden, LifeWise STL, Forest Park Forever, and STL Artworks — to buy public transportation cards at an affordable price,” says Garzon. “Those programs could then provide those cards to young people for free, [which] gave young people access to transportation immediately.”
“Because of that support, young people employed over the summer who got a Gateway Go card have been able to advance their professional career,” she adds. “And because they were unlimited passes, young people were also able to access other spheres of their lives.”
This “other-spheres” notion speaks to Aliah Holman’s sensibilities as a Bi-State Commissioner, a nearly nine-year resident of New York City, and a frequent attendee of 2015’s Ferguson Commission public meetings. It also informs her understanding of BSD’s work around “moving people around spaces and cities” — not limited to travel between home and the job site — as a means and outcome of contributing to an equitably thriving region. (Put into equation form, this would look something like “Ensuring Access + Opportunity = Mobility.”)
“When you talk about public transit and the people who use it on a regular basis to get where they need to go,” Holman says, “inequity comes up in a lot of ways.” She cites well-documented disparities in infant mortality as an example. “The fact that people have a hard time getting to their doctor’s appointments has been a huge conversation lately. There’s an initiative called FLOURISH St. Louis that has a dedicated transportation task force, and people from Bi-State were absolutely engaged in that. But there’s so much more work to do. And the work is not easy.”
Bi-State Development has also actively participated in several initiatives addressing issues deeply entwined with transit. And it’s no accident that much of that engagement and responsiveness has begun with ideas put forth by community members and organizations advocating for themselves and their neighbors.
“The last five years has definitely seen an increase in creativity and maybe even given people some points of optimism for ways we can do more to serve our community as a whole,” Holman adds. “Somebody had a fantastic idea to address a food desert and came up with a proposal that Bi-State’s former research institute helped develop into pilot program that proved viable and worthy of ongoing support from other community partners.”
Projects like that one, as well as another starring a repurposed Metro bus, point to how integral everyday citizens are to the process of making public transit better. That’s certainly not to say progress’s path doesn’t come with bumps (including potential derailments). But Holman wishes more people understood their unique power, because she’s seen it work.
Whether in St. Louis or New York City, Holman’s sense is that people haven’t necessarily felt empowered to come up with creative solutions around public transit. “They think it’s fully baked, that there’s nothing they can do and it’s just going to run over them. But I’ve watched people take agency with their own hands and influence change in ways that are meaningful to others that they’ll never even know.”
To illustrate that point, Holman shares the example of a transit user who’s come to the last several Bi-State board and committee meetings. “She’s a citizen with no formal training who has taken it upon herself to study routes and alternatives and ask questions. She’s had t-shirts made and even performed a little skit during public comments.”
“She hasn’t gotten everything she wanted,” Holman says, “but she’s absolutely influencing the direction these things go. It’s an example of some really cool, individual action… of problem-solving. If we remember there are people behind you to [do things], we can probably accomplish a lot more to improve our region’s public transportation and have greater impact.”
As another example, Kayla, a 21-year-old South City resident who goes to school and holds a second job across town at STLCC-Florissant Valley, recently shared one change she’d love to see with MetroBus. Despite the almost four hours it takes for her to get to and from class, her wish had nothing directly to do with education or employment and everything with another aspect of her day-to-day life: “Make it easier for parents, or single moms or dads, or anybody with kids to get on the bus with a stroller… and make it so that different drivers don’t make you do different things with babies’ seats.”
Hearing this, Holman nods audibly over the phone. “Yes, yes — that’s the kind of thing people need to hear for policy to change, because most of the time, the tables where decisions like that are being made don’t have people like Kayla there.”
Bringing about the public transit improvements named in the Ferguson Commission’s report will, of course, require more individual action and a great deal more systems-level change. And as we consider ways to increase access for young people like Kayla, we can and must include their voices by applying their insights — not merely as “Student” or “Intern” or “Employee,” but as all those things, plus other spheres of their lives — to making public transportation better for everyone.
