Safety
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
A classic political statement is “making the trains run on time.” We spend a lot of time in transit discussing on-time performance. How many of you out there measure that personally for your systems? And who can blame you. If your trains and/or buses are consistently late, you’ll take a beating in the press and your ridership numbers will drop. Being on-time is a key factor in any agency’s success.
But another question has to be how safe is your system. It seems like a simple, even stupid, question on the surface, but when you think about it, is it? We recently posted two stories on safety on the Mass Transit Web site, one on Portland considering changing its free fare zone to free fares during the day and early evening, and the other on a court case in Seattle finding the victim of a beating on board a bus was correct in that the bus driver should have done more to protect her.
So I ask you again, is your system safe? Sure it is. But here’s the problem. Transit has an image of being used by “that element.” I don’t know what constitutes, “that element,” but evidently it likes public transit. I’m sure you’ve heard this before … people being afraid of bringing that element into their neighborhood because of a new transit line.
The image of public transportation being used as transit for the worst of society is arguably a more prevalent image than even being smelly and dirty or being late. Agencies are fighting hard against both of those images by doing things like having arrival times at stops and changing to cleaner burning fuels or hybrid vehicles, but how about the safety image?
Are you going out there and promoting how safe your buses and trains are? Or are you just doing that after an incident occurs? I complained last week about the current administration being more reactive than proactive, and I hope our transit agencies don’t fall into the same trap.
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Friday.
December 15th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
The comments as reported by LA Times opinion writer Matt Welch about transit sum up the East Coast snobbery about buses and “that element.” He said:
” In the meantime, transit should be seen — and supported — for what is: A way for poorer people to get around until they become rich enough to buy a car.”
This merely enhances the image problem while overlooking the contribution that transit riders make every day, while deciding to leave their cars at home. Someone suggested to me that transit use use should be pitched as patriotic, using less fossil fuel, filling s space that is perishable (it would go empty without you and go anyway), while helping to create less greenhouse gases.
This concept that transit equals poverty is the opinion of many who don’t use the systems. This would be a surprise to many San Francisco Bay Area Transbay Commuters using AC Transit buses to get to their high-paying jobs in the Financial District. The Vice-Chairman of Southern Pacific Railroad used transit most days to get to his six figure job (before bonuses). He stated that it was easier and nicer. So transit, even buses, are not for the poor and criminally inclined, but this perception remains.
About eight years asgo, I was using AC Transit to get to the Harbor Bay Ferry, to go to San Francisco’s Financial District. The ferry had broken something and the service was canceled. Most got into their cars and drove to the city, but a dozen or so were left when an AC Transit bus pulled up and the driver announced that we were going express to the Transbay Terminal and no fare would be charged.
I jumped on board, had a seat near the driver and watched while the remaining folks refused to embark. The driver repeated the offer of a free ride (provided by the Ferry Service) and finally one woman spoke up. She said, “You just don’t understand. This is Harbor Bay (a part of the city of Alameda) and our clothes are CLEAN here.”
No one else boarded and I received personal escort service as the only passenger on a 55 passenger bus. In my ensuing conversation with the driver, he admitted he couldn’t understand their attitude (neither could I) but it was interesting anyway. I learned that AC Transit buses have no fuel gauge. And that’s the beauty of transit; you have the opportunity to meet people and learn things.
Changing the perception that transit use equals poverty is biggest challenge we face. We all grew up inculcated with the notion that personal transport meant freedom and luxurious personal transport defined our position in society.