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April 12, 2008 Dear Editor: In advance of Madison Metro's Tuesday hearing on proposed route changes, I speak on behalf of those who do not have cars: minority workers, kids, poor folks, emotionally challenged folks, entry-level workers, homeless people -- excluded folks. Or simply those of us who find keeping a car too much trouble. You'd think Madison Metro would be especially interested in us. In fact, they are not; in fact, they cater to the "choice" or "elite" riders, those who find it economical to leave their SUVs and pickups in their garages and take Metro into work five days a week. You've heard of the Chinese "death of a thousand cuts"? The flesh was cut from a person's body in very small pieces, and eventually the person died. Metro has been committing "the suicide of a thousand cuts" for the last several years, with its repeated self-amputations of routes and runs -- in small pieces, evenings and weekends. This most harms those of us who need Metro most, those of us who depend on Metro for our only vehicular transportation. For example, Route 3 serves my neighborhood, Marquette, probably the neighborhood philosophically and practically most committed to mass transit, and also serves the Darbo-Worthington Park neighborhood, not a hood characterized by a lot of automobile ownership. Route 3 no longer runs weekends. The route is partially covered by Route 7 on weekends, except Route 7 does not run past Olbrich Gardens! So much for people who might want to go to Olbrich on weekends Route 4 now runs only hourly on weekends and evenings after 6. This has personally inconvenienced me several times. Now I'm young for a 60-something, so I just walked. But Metro's job is not to encourage us to healthy exercise. Metro's job is to provide frequent, convenient, rapid, accessible, safe, comfortable transportation for all the people of Madison and environs. Some of us are not merely inconvenienced. Some of us depend on Metro for transportation to our jobs day by day, week in and week out, and some of us work second and third shifts, or at awkward locations. Or like my son, the certified nursing assistant, we work weird shifts involving weekends. This is a matter of justice, folks, plain and simple. Contrary to the dominant notion of society, wealthier people do not deserve more and better service than poor folks.
Ted Voth Jr. Letter to the editor — 4/12/2008 8:39 am |