Why Public Transportation Should Be Everywhere

 Public Transportation is something that not a lot of people think twice about. Many not use it, or do not need it. For some, it’s just so easily accessible that they do not have to worry about finding transportation. Public transportation can be anything from public buses, scooters, or a bike sharing system to a system like SMART, a senior service healthcare van transport. According to the APTA (American Public Transportation Associations) 34 million times each day someone boards public transportation, and my town makes 0 contribution to that. I personally am from a small town outside of Springfield, called Petersburg (population approximately 2,225). In this small town, we have a doctor’s office, a grocery store, a few restaurants, and a Dollar General. It doesn’t seem like much, but when you are elderly, and have a hard time getting around, you may have difficulties getting to these places to meet your daily needs. The issue with having these stores sporadically around the town is this: how do people get to them if they do not have a car? 

Well, you might say “they can walk!” What do we do for these elderly people who cannot walk miles, let alone with their hands full of sacks of heavy groceries? Some of them have no family, have no neighbor relationships, have no way at ALL of transporting themselves around the town. This is where the bare minimum of providing transportation comes into play. Just because we are a small and rural community does not mean that we do not deserve the equal right to public transportation that the larger neighboring cities do. As someone from a small town, I ask you this: do you know someone who benefits from public transportation? If so, how would their lives be affected if it was simply 1) taken away without warning 2) not available all together?  

In addition to some sort of public transit provision for elderly residents of Petersburg to get around town, we also ought to consider regional transport lines, so that people in towns like Petersburg and Salisbury could get into Springfield, or persons from Springfield could come out to Petersburg, and then get back home later in the day. Years ago, before cars dominated, there were small regional inter-urban commuter lines for trains to move people between outlying small towns and the larger regional cities. We lack a small bus service to get people around the small towns of Havana, Kilbourne, Petersburg, Athens, Pleasant Plains, Greenview, and Mason City. Yet, car ownership is expensive. Estimates of the cost of owning a car range from $800 a month to $1,000 a month, after you consider the cost of insurance, annual repairs and maintenance, gas, tires, and the cost of paying off a car loan or saving money to purchase a car in the future. For retired or frail elderly in rural areas, and for low-income families looking for work, but hoping to remain in their small rural towns, a regular and dependable system of public transit to get them to centers of employment or get them around the resources of their small town could be an important service. It would make rural small town life more livable.