Building with the Community for More Equitable and Resilient Public Transport

Public transport is ultimately about ensuring that people can access their lives in a reliable, convenient, safe, and dignified manner. For that to happen, we need to build our systems alongside local communities. Transportation planning has built-in biases and blind spots, reflecting and reinforcing many societal inequities and injustices. To overcome this legacy of disinvestment and discrimination, we need to work with the community to understand their needs and develop solutions that will help build local power, while also increasing resilience to future disruptions and changes.

In this session, we talked about engaging the community to build better public transport systems for the future in and around the Boston, USA region. Specifically, we discussed how bringing different community members and grassroots groups to the table can help bolster outcomes around equitable transport services and planning.

About the Series: A Decade of BRT Work in the Boston Region

ITDP has worked in the Boston region for over 10 years, during which time the area’s BRT system has been consistently expanded and improved. This three-part series will reflect on and celebrate the work of the dedicated and visionary group of leaders who took part in this over the past decade, revealing the key lessons learned over the past decade of creative experimentation and bold demonstrations. Each session will focus on a particular phase of the work and showcase the perspectives of partners who made this happen. We hope you will join in learning from the Boston region about the role of having a creative strategy and public art in elevating public transport, how to foster a tactical urbanist approach to improving public transport, and how to build with the community to not just understand bus service but bus experience.

Moderator: Lisa Jacobson, Senior Program Officer, Mobility at Barr Foundation

Speakers:

- Reverend Myrlande-DesRosiers, Pastor and Director of the Everett Haitian Community Center
- Shavel’le Olivier, Executive Director at Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition
- Jarred Johnson, Executive Director, TransitMatters