Rebel without a choice

The past day for me has been a lesson in tradeoffs. This past week I’ve been visiting the Bay Area on business. To save money when in the Bay Area, I stay with friends in South San Jose, at a relatively rural location that is a significant distance from any public transportation access node. (Note that San Jose’s public transportation systems are notoriously limited: you can’t get from any point A to point B with any speed at ANY price, which forces most folks into cars and roads – private and shared – and spews the attendant pollutants into American skies. The system seems designed to serve exactly two populations: 1) those that can afford to both live and work sufficiently near a Bay Area transit station and own a bike, scooter or other “first/last-mile” solution, and 2) those that have no private vehicle option.)

At the end of my stay, to save money and limit imposition on my friends I booked a super-early Monday morning return flight, and a hotel the night before near the airport. My friends dropped me at Caltrain on their way to a Sunday afternoon party. We said goodbye and they drove away. That’s when I realized I’d left my cell phone at their house…

I asked two people in the station to loan me their cell phones to call for help. Both declined apologetically (COVID!) Due also to COVID cutbacks (or by design?), no transit attendant was available, and no public communication system at the station. I was stranded.

But I had options!! I stayed the course: bought a train ticket, arrived at the airport, rented a car (highway robbery for a last-minute rental) and cancelled the hotel. My tradeoff: the expense of the car rental for the room rental (the total just under $200) plus the inconvenience of a pre-dawn trip from outer-darkness to the airport. The cost of doing busines.

The past year has been replete with meetings, many via video, where the subject of “equity, justice and diversity” has re-focused our attention on the methods and metrics of our work. How are we accommodating “the most vulnerable among us” as we plan and implement public infrastructure? Many of these conversations are centered on company equity, board room composition, mentorship and training – all very important. My experience last night has me running along a different line of inquiry that is specific to the intersection of equity and transit. Are we convening the right stakeholders in the right ways? Are we planning for future infrastructure investment that assures the greatest useful extension of “service” to communities whose choices are limited by the vicissitudes of our economy? Most importantly, what deprivations are imposed when poverty – not COVID – imposes stay-at-home orders on “vulnerable” populations – and what can we do about it? What is the true cost of transit – beyond the capital and operating costs of the systems – when it fails to get transit-dependent people to and from where they need to go – school, work, shopping, etc.? What do “the most vulnerable among us” endure in order to get from here to there? How often does it mean they can’t get to a job or school – at ANY price?

This is a non-trivial topic in a region that, post-pandemic, will see GREATER inequity in terms of real estate affordability, driving development further out, and developing more driving as a result.

The name of the game for me last night was “tradeoffs.” The name of the game in the infrastructure industry MUST be to reduce the impact of tradeoffs on the safety and security of the people served by public investment – starting specifically with “the most vulnerable among us:” those lacking access to other options.