What if there was an easy and rational way to radically improve public transit across the country and state? What if this idea was free to implement?

It sounds too good to be true right?

Eric Jaffe of CityLab (formerly Atlantic Cities) is on the case, and his idea is so simple it’s almost shocking. Encourage, make, or require that the people in control of our public transit systems ride the bus. If our transportation agency board members, senior leadership, and service planners were required to get around on the service they are in charge of even one day a month, I think over time, it would radically improve their understanding of the challenges riders face when using the systems that they control.

Jaffe tells the story of a rider turned board member in Houston who saw gaps in their vastly improved bus system redesign planning simply because he was a user of the system, unlike most of the decision makers in the room.

After chronicling how pervasive this problem is across the country when it comes to transit agency executives Jaffe makes this salient point:

Such a practice would be unimaginable in private industries—think of an Apple employee using a PC—and Spieler (from Houston) thinks the same should go for public transportation.

Locally and anecdotally, I do not think there is a transit agency in the state where the majority of its board members ride their services on a weekly basis. Many of our transit agency headquarters are co-located with the bus storage facilities that are barely, if at all, accessible by transit.

Houston’s Metro recently passed a policy requiring their senior management to ride their own transit system at least 40 times per month. Let’s follow their lead and make transit use the norm, not the exception for agency leadership. At the very least we must eliminate car allowances (page 4) for transit agency employees!

In doing so, elected officials and agency management will experience the life-limiting shortcomings of our transit systems and join riders in demanding funding for transit service in cities across the state. Funding that will allow for transit services that we can all be proud of; transit services that are functional enough for everyone to actually use.

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