Advocacy & Education

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members,

My name is Gino, and I run Better Together Transportation. I transport people who cannot drive, who cannot walk long distances, and who cannot replace lost service.

You hired Jarrett Walker to design a new bus network. In Human Transit, Walker writes that no formula can tell a city whether to prioritize ridership or coverage. That choice reveals what the city values.

The city asked over 1,300 residents if this draft would improve our public transit. Across age, income, and bus use, every group rejected this plan.

They rejected it because:

• It cuts the bus to Transformation Village. Women overcoming addiction and abuse live there with their children. It is also a Code Purple emergency shelter. Cut this route, and homeless people lose their bus to shelter on freezing nights.
• It cuts the stop at MAHEC. To reach a doctor, an elderly, pregnant, or disabled patient must now climb a steep hill from Hendersonville Road.
• It cuts the route to the Social Security office. Seniors and disabled residents depend on those benefits to pay rent and buy food.

The City showed that coverage could be preserved if buses came less often. Council chose ridership instead.

So what does the city gain? Buses will run more often on some routes.

On paper, the average resident can reach ten percent more jobs in forty-five minutes. In practice, a mother, a patient, and a senior lose the bus to shelter, health care, and benefits.

The people say this plan will hurt them. Your consultant says transit choices are not right or wrong; they reveal what a city’s leaders value. You value a theoretical gain in job access over the people who depend on you to survive.

Please reconsider this plan. Choose coverage over ridership. Build a transit system whose core value is love for our people.

Thank you.