TRU - The State of Transit 2024, Final Segment (in-person recording)

1:11AM Jan 31, 2024

Speakers:

Keywords:

transit

legislators

transportation

riders

year

work

volunteer

candidates

amazing

evening

brings

drivers

people

bus

transit providers

motion

stand

nominated

roads

election

I want to say this. I'm a Daily Writer, Gina, I used it as my primary form of transportation. Mostly right every day, but on the weekends are my areas. Most of the work can you go to a pharmacy in the doctor's office companies or partners because doctor's office as well, I am really happy to sit you down as long as I stay ridership increase. They recently reported about ups with million rides a month. That's pretty impressive. I know that there's some issues, of course, with like late time service at nighttime, on weekends, or weekdays. But I'm very confident as DDOT have important to raise the wages that they're going to get more drivers on air. But in terms of where I live, I'm in Midtown cast corridors, my experiences aren't as indicative as the rest of the city, I grew up in a neighborhoods, water in Schoolcraft, I knew how to bus service was like thing.

So why not have the buses run a

little bit more frequently, and I have a lot of choice. If I can't catch the next dinner and you catch it, you line over Woodward, or even a Hamilton whenever that comes around. So maybe we'll get more frequency with some of the other routes across the city, especially those that cost into the neighborhoods. I've worked a lot on school craft, and I would love to see school craft one every 20 minutes, right. Grande River was my route that I grew up on, I remember I could skip it, because I can catch it in the next two minutes when I went to high school. And I think we're gonna get to that point going into this year for next year. I shouldn't be very critical, but I'm very optimistic that the trends, the wages are increasing, we're getting more drivers coming into the school, we're keeping them and then they're graduating and they're hitting the road. But what we need to do is make sure they are safe because of our drivers aren't safe or not safe. And the other thing is to keep invested in them. So I'm going to DC last year in December and talk to students leave talk to our senator delegation during Peters and that'd be stamped out it was unfortunately a stepping down. And she pretended are and they all agree that operations is going to be important. So from the federal government, there's this new bill called the strengthening communities, better transit bill, I don't go to HR number yet. That's got some other time. But this is going to invest $20 billion a year. So to look at billions over a few years, I'm not going to do the math, because we billion dollars a year for operations to raise the wages for drivers, for operators of streetcars and rail of all across the country. And what this means for Detroit is that the wage increases are going to be sustainable. So we need to be calling up to DC to the house and to the Senate and have them support this bill as well. And it's because the writers voices, writers from all of our different organizations to try to this platform true independent advocates and riders as well and just people from the community speaking about the need for higher wages for the drivers and higher pay and liquid that resulted in a solution last month, but the wage increases. So it's not just politicians that you saw in the providers. It's really riders, like myself, unlike myself, that use their voice to get what we need. And we need transit. And I didn't read the governor fix the damn roads. But guess what, the bus uses those roads too. So put more money into the damn buses

let's get some free from scratch

my goodness, how do I follow that call to action. Um, so tonight, we have heard a lot. We've celebrated some really big successes with our transit providers. We have learned a lot we've been really inspired to action by our legislators. So a couple of things apparently that we have to do one, we have to make sure that we are standing up and then we are using our voices as writers to we have an election coming later this year. It's a pretty big important election. It's not just the Presidential but we also have some pretty success essential Senate races that are also taking place. So we need to be out and about a town call and really demanding and asking questions of our of the candidates about where they stand on transit and how they will be able to push transit for here in the state of Michigan and then the federal level. And then lastly, we are also always going to be looking at how do we motivate and how to move forward transit to boots on the ground. So whether it is going up to the Capitol for legislative days, whether it is helping to spread the word or doing some phone banking and helping to get more people actively Ah in the fight, and more, we need our volunteers to continue to be able to support training. And speaking of volunteers, I want to take a moment to recognize my fellow transportation writer, United board members, if you are in the audience, please stand up.

And so I want to thank each and every one of you, they bring such a tremendous amount of diversity of thought and perspective to the work that we do. It is because of them that we're able to support the incredible work of Megan and her team and what they do on a day to day basis. This group of board members I have been so fortunate to be able to work with and lead with in this fight for transit has been one of the most dynamic boards I have ever had the privilege to be able to be a part of, and to be able to serve our community when they worked doggedly in terms of getting out and rolling up their sleeves and not just doing the nice pretty work of governing and nonprofit organization, but really digging their vegan their hand and feet into the work of doing the grassroots work. And so thank you so very much for all of your dedication and service over the last year.

Now on to one of the most exciting portions of our evening, earlier this week, you were earlier this year, you should have received the email from our from dev, alerting you to the fact that we are going to be holding board elections this year, this evening. So in November, we were able to start to be able to stauer Metro Detroit for amazing leaders and transmit those community members who wants to elevate their activism, and be able to join the leadership board to be able to join that leadership on transportation, right crushing it. And we got a tremendous amount of amazing town candidate applications that came to our organization. So over the course of last two months, we were able to meet as an order as a board and meet with our with our leadership with our staff, and be able to narrow it down. It's amazing slate of three candidates that you all are vote on tonight. Sounds like one of our candidates come and stand, come to the come to the floor. I'm as we call your name and give us a little bit about your background. So the first candidate who's going to be nominated for our slate today is Mitch Manley.

So we are so fortunate to be able to have Mitch who is a fellow Detroiter, to be able to want to be able to serve as part of the part of the leadership for transportation riders united. Mitch is a avid dedicated volunteer for transportation, right for transportation ration it. He also is a regular bus rider. So he makes the jump from his home in Detroit all the way up to his law practice, and Birmingham. And so given that experience that he's been able to have, he brings a rich and robust riders perspective to both counties through both stand up to multiple transit providers and really being able to help us understand what some of the issues are that riders are facing on the ground on a day to day basis. And so we are so excited to be able to have him and to be able to nominate him on for election to the forest.

Right next I'd also like to welcome another fellow the trainer for Rakuten, to the to the stage. We're so excited.

So we're so excited to have her application when it came across my desk. I think I said oh my god, Megan, how do we find her she's amazing. For Robins, the US has such a tremendous passion for transportation, advocacy, and also a very intricate understanding of transportation needs, not only here in the metro Detroit area, but also globally. She brings the US expertise on public policy, having obtained her master's in public administration from Harvard University. She's currently an entrepreneur working at the intersection of transportation technology, where she works with organizations such as new lab and tech town where she is currently working on platforms to be able to provide training to be able to hide a fee to be able to provide a one way ability method for you to be able to pay your fair across multiple vendors and so we're so excited to be able to have her bring her expertise to truth

And last, but certainly not least, I would like to be able to welcome Adam Goodman to the stage. We are so very excited to be able to have to be able to come and be nominated and bring him before to you on how to vote wanted to be able to vote on his election to our board this evening. Talk about being trans Hi, this evening, we are so fortunate to be able to have him bring his expertise and business development, and also obtain expertise and understanding what it like what it what it means to be able to live in two worlds, one that does not have access to transit, and one that hasn't really robust and rich access to transit, boring Oakland Hills, and currently a resident of Ann Arbor. He also brings us a connection to Washington County, which we have really been wanting for a very long time. And so we're so excited to be able to bring him to the group to be able to vote on for this evening. This amazing slate of three candidates will be able are that we're bringing to vote tonight will be able to serve for up to three years in their first term. And if I can't pass a current paid true member to be able to move for motion to the legs, this amazing set of candidates. Do I have a member that would like to make a motion?

So

second, all right, so I have a motion to elect at the Goodman fragomen And Michelle Manley to the new 2024 More of transportation riders, you name it. Congratulations and welcome.

Please stick around after our after our evening concludes and meet our new board members have opportunities to connect with some of our current board members. We'd love to be able to meet with you in on this. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. I'm like I'm just joined right away and I have the wrong rate. So. So for our current pay members that I have, and for everyone who is in agreement with this motion, can I have an I

have any nays abstentions? motion has passed. Welcome officially. Now I'd like to bring Matthew back to Clovis our

silver, much exciting news. So many awesome people. So much happening tonight. I really appreciate everyone. And I think we've had a lot of inspiration. We heard a lot of from both the agencies and from the legislators that we need to come together they need our help to to build the voice to build the call to demand more and better transit. Thank you guys, you can go sit.

But I want to encourage I do want to give you leave you with three, three parting requests. One, as Deb said, all of this work that true does does take funding. And certainly thank you. If you were able to donate to come tonight, if you've been a member, please consider what sort of level can you contribute? We've got some amazing monthly givers, and people who are making major investments in choose work. And that be you please think about what sort of support you can offer. Second, we certainly want as they said, We need to talk to our legislators, we are in fact organizing a whole team of meetings with local constituents and their legislators, we'd love to give you talking points to join you in that meeting to help make that happen. So if you didn't sign up, well, watch for an email it or we will forget everybody signing it. But watch for an email in the in the next week. And sign up please join us in meeting with your legislators. And as they said, Do you have friends, neighbors, colleagues, co workers, bus buddies who can get involved? We need to really grow the transit. We need to really grow teen transit to make a transformational difference. And then get involved. Stay involved. We've got a volunteer meeting coming up, I believe February 8. Well watch for email on that as well. We'd love to invite more people to get together with that volunteer team and explore more ways to get involved. We got some exciting stuff planned this year including some some surveys of bus stops. What were the the bus stops and intersections to integrate and where can they use some work and as we heard that something RDA is going to be working on so let's help shape that. There's some huge decisions coming on funding. Let's make sure to reach out and and push for funding to so Please can please continue to support true. Please join us in speaking out for transit and had a third thing but I guess it must be. Let's go enjoy some more nachos and have a great night. Thank you so much up