Transit riders share stories at community-building event ahead of ‘Week Without Driving’ – BikePortland

Anna Zivarts is the voice of non-drivers. Through her advocacy with Disability Rights Washington and recently released book, When Driving is Not an Option, she has helped define and organize the 35% of all Americans who do not drive. She took the train to Portland on Saturday to speak and connect with a few dozen of them at an event that aimed to build interest in the upcoming Week Without Driving, a national campaign now in its fifth year that raises awareness about those who live without cars — and why better public transit is vital to their quality of life.

Zivarts, whose visual impairment prevents her from driving a car, shared her story along with several dozen others who stepped up to the mic at a gymnasium inside Charles Jordan Community Center in North Portland. Collecting those stories and getting them heard by policymakers and elected officials is Zivarts’ stock-in-trade. Beyond sharing stories, Saturday’s event was about networking and building community. Attendees were encouraged to socialize and a free lunch helped seal the deal.

While hearing stories about transit struggles was validating for many in the crowd, the folks they were meant for weren’t in attendance. Board members and local elected officials had promised to attend, and their presence got top billing on event flyers, but only one showed up (TriMet Board Member JT Flowers) and he had to leave for a family emergency before the event began. The absence of decision makers underscored the importance of the work Zivarts and Portland groups like Bus Riders Unite and Sunrise PDX are doing to give transit riders a stronger voice on important issues like bus service plans and perennial budget cuts.

Osman Abdelrahman moved to Portland one year ago. As a blind man, he wanted to live in a place with good public transportation. “So I looked up online and found a good address,” Abdelrahman shared with the crowd. “Theoretically the commute time should have been 36 minutes [on the bus]; but when I got there, I realized the hard way that there is an inaccessible road between me and the nearest bus station, so I couldn’t use that one in order to get to work.” Instead of the 36 minutes he planned for, one dangerous road turned Abdelrahman’s commute time into one hour.

Northeast Portland resident Karen Wells used her opportunity to speak to sing the praises of her favorite bus line and encourage others to help her save it. “I’m a loyal fan of the 17,” she said, “And TriMet has been threatening to pull the section of it I use for the last three years.” Wells urged everyone in the audience to join her in texting and emailing TriMet to tell them to keep it running.

Sky McRude, who’s also blind, grew up in Los Angeles where she said, “There’s no public transit whatsoever. I mean, barely.” She appreciates TriMet in Portland, but also wanted us to know their system has a long ways to go before it’s efficient and a viable option to the efficiency of driving. “I tried to meet up with a bunch of blind friends, and we all lived either in North Portland or Southeast — and so we could either meet downtown, or half of us would be able to hang out and the other half couldn’t,” McRude shared. If the groups of friends took the bus it would take over an hour. The same trip by car is just 10 minutes.

For Zivarts, these stories are all too common. She personally experienced the power of great public transit when she moved away from rural Washington and lived in New York City for a few years. “I had this huge freedom because there was a subway and it ran 24 hours a day. I didn’t have to think about being able to go somewhere,” she recalled.

Through events like the one Saturday and the upcoming Week Without Driving — which runs from September 29th to October 5th and will have over 500 hosting organizations in all 50 states this year — Zivarts is turning up the volume of voices too often left out of transit policy and funding conversations.

If Zivarts’ latest campaign is successful, transit riders like the ones who showed up Saturday, won’t have to speak and hope they are heard — they’ll be right at the table with an equal voice. That’s because Zivarts passed a law in Washington last year that gives transit agencies permission to appoint transit riders onto their boards as voting members, instead of those spots being filled by elected officials who often have zero experience using transit. “They don’t understand transit,” Zivarts shared with me in an interview Saturday. “They want to cut taxes and defund transit, and that’s not great for folks who rely on transit. So we want to the voices of people who are using those systems in the room.”

In the Portland region, TriMet’s board members are still appointed by the governor. And on a statewide level, lawmakers are headed back to Salem this week to try and pass a payroll tax increase that will help stabilize public transit budgets across Oregon.

“I hope the elected leaders and transit board members who aren’t here in the audience today, can listen and hear your stories,” Zivarts shared with the crowd. “Because I think it does start with those stories and by sharing sharing your experiences of trying to get around your community without having access to a car.”

“Non drivers exist,” Zivarts continued. “And it’s way more people than you recognize because it tends to be folks who are low-income and disabled and live in really rural areas, or who are seniors, or youth and children — and we just don’t think of those people as having the same valid mobility needs as you know somebody else who has a car and the income to pay for that. We just need to remember that if transit service is cut, the impact that’s going to have on people who really don’t have other options.”