Monday, May 19, 2008

Social Justice and Public Transportation

Jacob Ohlhausen has been doing work this month on a social justice issue he has noticed in Santa Clara County, California. He isn’t receiving any course credit or financial gain for this project, so I was curious to talk to him about what made him spend time and energy on it. I interviewed Jake on Skype early in May to learn about his project and to see what I could learn about global citizenship and poverty.

He began our interview by explaining “I’m working on a bus paper, which is trying to show that the county of Santa Clara cares more about affluent residents and their needs than lower income residents, and this is shown in the direction they’re going with public transportation developments. Basically, the VTA is trying to create one system for the rich with the light rail, and one system for the poor with the bus and trying to keep them separate. It looks like most of their funds and energy are being directed towards the affluent riders and the light rail. Most of their future construction and plans are concerned with the light rail.

“Rich people use the light rail to commute to work. Some of them park and ride, but primarily the light rail is a power alley through San Jose, from Mountain View to San Jose and Campbell. So its connecting the sort of higher income cities to down town San Jose.”

I asked Jake why poor people didn’t benefit from the light rail. He continued, “I’m not saying they don’t benefit, I’m saying it is a hassle for them to get to the light rail. They’re cutting bus routes. They aren’t really putting any money into the bus. The light rail stops aren’t in convenient places for lower income people. They’re all on Tasman, where the Silicon Valley businesses are, or in down town Mountain View – these are affluent neighborhoods.”

After our carpool broke up when I left the United States, Jake began to take public transportation more frequently. He said he started because “I would be waiting forever for the bus. I was paying a lot of money for the bus. And I just realized how inefficient the bus was. So I decided to start interviewing my fellow riders and keeping travel logs to see if I could notice any trends... to see if what I was seeing was really happening of if I was imagining it. It was really to satisfy my own curiosity.

“The next step had a lot to do with Defrosting Apathy. It provided me with a forum where I could post something. What’s the point of writing something that no one is going to read? I just started collecting the raw data, you know. I was having all these observations while waiting for light rail and busses and doing transfers and things, so I decided to start doing interviews to see if what I was seeing was really happening or if I was imagining it. It was really only to satisfy my own curiosity. I’d notice, well, there’s a lot of Hispanics on the bus today, and only a couple of Asians. I noticed the same thing yesterday. I wonder if there’s a trend. Maybe I should write down the stats every day and see if I notice correlations.

“You were the one who was like ‘well, if you have all this data, you should put it together in a report and then you should put it on Defrost.’”

I think Jake likes to be modest; his mom said he’s always felt bad about class differences, but he said, “it wasn’t like a spark, it wasn’t like bam! I’m going to do something today to go make the world better. Unfortunately, I wish it was, but it wasn’t. You suggested it, when I was collecting the data, I didn’t have a goal in sight other than to make pie charts or graphs. I just thought people were getting a raw deal and it wasn’t right.”

We also talked about Jake’s progress so far and his next steps. He says, “I’ve informed a lot of people I interviewed. I made them aware, and I’ve given them VTA’s website to contact and complain if they want. I don’t know if they’ve done that. I’ve been in contact with a director at the VTA, made him aware of my concerns and the focus of my paper. He’s proved to be interested in my results and helpful in providing me with information. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my concerns – that they are aware of the same concerns I have. The problem is, I don’t really think they care. I feel that a lot of the data I collected they’ve already collected. A lot of our information was very similar, but I feel like they don’t really want to put their resources into making the bus more effective. They want to increase the light rail in size and in areas that they can also develop into communities for higher income residents.”

Jake continued, “this matters because its classism. Its trying to keep the division between rich and poor and keeping them separate from each other. I don’t think it was intentional that it happened this way, but now that they’re aware that this is happening, they’re just allowing the gap to grow larger.”

I asked Jake how VTA could solve this problem. He said, “They could put more resources into the bus. They can just put more financial resources into the bus instead of the pittance they’re putting into it.”

He continued, “this also matters because its not just lower income people. I think its because I lived in New York with the subway system. I want to try to create an overall better system for Santa Clara and San Jose because I think its hopelessly inadequate.”

He also adds, “they’re trying to encourage park and ride. The more you use park and ride, the less you need the bus. Its like they’re trying to make public transportation for people who own cars. And I believe we need to take the car out of the equation. Its ridiculous to… public transportation should be primarily for people who don’t have cars or for people who don’t want to use their car all the time.”

Doing global citizenship in your community? Email me (liz.fleshman@defrostingapathy.org) - we'd love to hear all about it!

(Full disclosure: Jake's my guy. 6/12/2008.)

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