I’ve been selected as a rider ambassador for my local commuter transit system. As part of my duties, I’m to utilize some form of transit (bus, carpool or vanpool) twice a week. This is the account of my first ride on the bus on November 24, 2010.

11:49 AM ET

I was supposed to do this a couple of weeks ago, but I’ll admit, I chickened out. A part of my rider ambassador responsibilities is to talk to people. I’m only good at that when I think my ideas won’t get shot down. In the meantime, the bus just drove past. I was expecting it to come down the road from the highway, but it appears to have come out of nowhere.

Oh well, even though the bus was 10 minutes late according to the schedule, I’m glad that it just came. It also put out a person. So for now, I’m going to put down my pen, leave my car and head to the stop so I don’t miss the bus again. See you on the bus

12:46 PM ET

So I got to the stop and ended up having a nice chat with a long-haired handsome stranger. A very-well dressed long-haired handsome stranger. He’d just left a seminar at the convention center adjacent to the bus stop. He asked me for a light and as I’m not a smoker, did not have one. We chatted about culture for a bit as we waited for the bus to come back. He’s Native American, orginally from somewhere up north and travels a lot by bus, all over the country. He works in construction and we bonded over talking about prior lives in Raleigh. He also mentioned how great it was to be in Greensboro with all the cultures, but his desire to stay out of the black-white drama divide.

As we got on the bus(and the driver looked at me for being too slow and talking to much, as well as sticking my farecard in wrong), I shared with him about the new Megabus coming to Durham. Way to go for me sharing about a bus system I’m not technically supposed to be advocating for. However, good transit is good transit.

Meanwhile, the bus got to the commuter hub, where all the buses from the main three cities in the Triad, the shuttles to the airport area office parks and the airport shuttle convene. The stranger left my bus for the High Point bus. I had to leave my bus, rescan my card and get back on. The driver thought I was trying to steal a ride at first, but realized I was just that naive.

As I’m waiting for the bus to leave so I can get back to my car, I’m noticing the bus is doing a good job waiting for folks to get off the buses from various other areas. The buses are also clean and full of a diverse crowd of people. We are moving again, so I will report back when I return to my stop.

12:54 PM ET

So I made it back safely to my car in about an hour. Looking back on the ride, it was pretty smooth, even seated sideways. (I’ve ridden so many public buses  sideways, the angle doesn’t phase me). I also saw a HEAT, the college connector bus come through just as I’m writing this in my car. If I had wanted to, I could have picked up the bus and gone over to campus. Well, I know for next time.

One last thing. For being a commuter line, proximity to the stop leaves something to be desired. I had to cross five busy lanes of traffic with no crosswalk. Oh well, that’s something the mall owners should address with the transit authority.

Stay tuned for part two, where we will take a quick jaunt downtown in a way I’m not used to.

I’ve read a few of the posts lamenting the loss of urban issues (inner city problems as well as transportation and development issues) as the focus of the Congress and many state and local governments. As we are now almost two weeks past election day, what should we do?

1. Start drumming up support from the private sector. Almost every other day I hear about a developer in DC helping to pay for a new metro stop entrance. Also, in Nashville, local businesses have embraced transit as their next growth machine project through the Middle Tennessee Transit Alliance. Years ago here in Greensboro, Duke Power ( now Duke Energy) started our first public transit system to get workers to their facilities. Yonah Freemark in his Next American City blog Grassroutes just addressed how Apple Computer stepped up to re-build a subway stop in Chicago.

2. Get rid of the “Ghetto Mentality”– Veronica O. Davis just finished a great series on Greater Greater Washington from the perspective of a black woman living in a “gentrifying” neighborhood. In the third part of her series, she discusses a community conversation in which consensus was made to get out of the “ghetto victim mentality”. I want to extend this idea to anyone who believes that lack of money means the end of an issue. The root of the ghetto mentality was that  blacks marginalized into ghettos losing the ability to run businesses in their neighborhoods. Then education became the domain of the white man and gangs got bigger and bigger. However, as more time and investment has gone into education across the country, I see more students of all colors valuing the time they spend in the classroom. Black businesses are returning. WE ARE NOT MINORITIES IN OUR SPIRIT. People in the hood, keep moving forward.

3. Remind leaders who are against “new” livability, that nothing about these ideas are new.– Congressman Mica, the soon to be new transportation committee head in the House seems to think that because people are driving cars more and having more kids, that we should continue to invest in roads. However in the next breath, he mentions that his elderly mother regretted the loss of her drivers license the most, due to her in ability to drive places. He also laments the loss of rail service to his small town. Sounds like he’s still a livability advocate. Elements of the new livability, such as walkable streets, are things my parents, even in on their rural roads, had. Streetcar suburbs, nature trails, Main Street storefronts, all these things are at least 50 years old.

4. Keep doing what we already do– As urban advocates (and likewise smart suburb and rural advocates), we all know the benefits of having a better built environment can provide. These movements would not be where they are if it weren’t for the Internet connecting us and allowing us to spread the word. The Internet is not going away so fast. No one is stopping you from starting a Meetup at Starbucks. Yes, so many of our projects cost money we don’t have, but if we keep talking and getting louder, eventually hostile governments will listen.

So advocates, what else should we do to keep the fires burning?

I am very excited to have the opportunity to serve as a rider ambassador for the Piedmont Regional Transit Authority (PART), our local regional transit authority. What this means is that I will be working in a bus ride twice a week and also volunteering to work at a rider awareness event several times over 6 months.

I’m going to use this opportunity to do some write-ups, interviews and also reflect on what it’s really like to use public transportation in a place that was always built for the car it seems.

Last night at one of our many grad student gatherings, we were teasing one of the girls for having to drive through the ghetto to get home. I was really cringing on the inside, because I feel like no neighborhood is the ghetto by default. There is rundown housing, drug drops and violent crime everywhere now.

However, it has not stopped developers from promoting and stroking certain fears among potential homeowners, renters and city government leaders, who would authorize the zoning decisions. Another fear that’s even worse in my opinion is the idea that student housing is either one of two things-

• Run-down, decrepit housing that’s just a pad for sleeping and high levels of alcohol consumption.
• Overpriced, student “McMansions”, that assume you want to only live with four people.

Dan Reed over at Greater Greater Washington, among others, has lamented the lack of decent, affordable student housing, as well as the campaigns to prevent developers from building more.

I’m sure at this point you stop and say, “Why not live on campus all four years. It seems like most students want to move off so they can be free”. Well, not always true. At my current institution, there were FRESHMEN who were shorted out of the housing market on campus. Also, there are efforts to encroach in the adjacent neighborhood because the need for student housing is so much greater than supply.

If we are going to be a nation that promotes college for all, we need to work on making sure that people at least have a place to sleep that is humane and affordable at the same time. Essentially, like the workforce housing movement of the outside world, there is a need for student housing. Especially for graduate level students and those with families, housing should not automatically assume that the student’s primary occupation is drinking.

I was riding down the road and noticed a billboard advertising a shoe store. This shoe store used to be on the High Point Rd Corridor but now has moved across town to the Battleground Ave. corridor. Funny thing is, both shopping centers are unsustainable (in environmentalist terms) strip malls, that are at least 25 years old. Both have been renovated and constantly occupied in recent years. Yet, the Battleground center doesn’t have rumors of rape and drug use lingering around it. The parking lots are both kinda dark at night, but so far, I have heard of nothing criminal at the Battleground center.

Usually, I’m ready to boycott the store who thought it so easy and so vital that they leave this struggling neighborhood. However, I had to think, if I’d been raped in the parking lot(or inside one of the other stores in the mall as one account alleges), would I want to return to that area? Especially being that the target audience of most shoe stores, especially a warehouse like this one, is women, I am all for safety.

Yet, the real root of the problem is what the title of this post comes from. I can wail all day long about stores leaving the community and also the community that doesn’t support its stores. However, the folks who really need this post, will probably never read it.

The business owner would, and probably agree with me on why they made the decision to move. Yet, I’m still concerned about the community around the stores that fails to first, speak out against these kinds of moves and second speak against the behaviors that cause them. I know we are in bad economic times, but criminal behavior is not the way to go.

There’s talk of legalizing illicit drugs, to lessen the allure and dangers of selling  them in the communities where they are almost the chief economic engine. However, we also have legal gambling enterprises on the High Point Rd. corridor. I have not seen where legalizing these places has really helped the community, it just appears that our neighborhood supports these type of enterprises in high numbers. (And doesn’t need to eat. As mentioned before, we only have one grocery within the stretch that encompasses the Greensboro city limits, down from three about 15 years ago).

I’ve said on this blog before, that my vision of smarter growth, especially within the retail area is that of a sustainable community. People of all backgrounds contribute to the betterment and maintenance of their community. Streets, sidewalks, parking lots and green spaces are clean, making the places, no matter their age or lack of designer wares look inviting and chic. We charge each other fair prices and we treat each other with respect in the shopping areas.

One day, we will figure out how to reach our communities for lasting change. Until then, choir, can I get an amen? What can we do to reach these communities the way they need to be reached? Not just in terms of the built environment, but other issues such as domestic violence, drug use, education and the like.