THINK Transit Thinks Broadly, Acts Locally

Among the alternative Spring Break plans that spread students across the country doing service and good works, one UNC organization headed north for the break to explore transit systems in other metropolitan areas.

As its members explored and learned, Teaching How to Incorporate New Kinds of Transit (THINK Transit), cemented its position as a campus organization focused on issues outside the stone walls.

THINK Transit's members spent the break in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York exploring the ways public transportation has been incorporated into city and regional planning.

The main purpose of the trip was for members to gain the experience they need to teach local eighth-graders how to use public transportation. They hope that by encouraging the students to use transit before the kids can drive, the students will be more likely to take buses or rail later in their lives.

It's a necessary mind-set adjustment in the South, where public transportation is so rare that few of THINK Transit's members had even taken it.

Without their Spring Break trip, the students wouldn't have realized how difficult it is to figure out a bus or rail map in a new city or how to know when to get off the bus in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

These issues can easily turn commuters away from public transit, so they're the kind of message THINK Transit wants and needs to pass on to its students.

The students on the trip also became advocates for good transportation planning as they took a critical and comparative look at the systems they encountered in each city, documenting the problems and solutions on cameras, video and paper.

In doing so, they established their organization as a credible player in the region's transportation network.

They quickly identified the reasons public transit isn't well-used in the United States and recorded their mishaps and their successes with signs, stations and trains.

They visited Reagan National Airport to see how the airport integrated rail to get its passengers into D.C.

They met a 96-year-old woman on a New York bus who knows every bus route in the city by heart but refuses to take the subway because she's afraid of falling down the stairs. Few, if any, of New York's subways are accessible to disabled passengers.

They explored Philadelphia's regional rail and found that the stops outside the city limits offer absolutely no information about the train's route or schedule and that the ones in the city are unfinished and unappealing.

They found that the colors on New York's subway maps have no real significance and could confuse riders accustomed to a color-coded system.

But along with all the problems, the members also saw how easy it is to move through a large metropolitan area once they mastered how to use public transit.

After students had spent four days learning how to navigate using buses and rail, THINK Transit President Brad Rathgeber organized a scavenger hunt through New York to test the students' skills. They passed with flying colors.

After experiencing all the benefits public transit has to offer, the members came home inspired about what transit could do for this area and determined to educate the community so local residents will be primed to use transit when it finally arrives.

While many UNC organizations are content to receive only recognition from the campus or do service only for individuals, THINK Transit went out and explored issues on a national level that its mission confronts regionally.

THINK Transit members should be commended for looking at issues that don't immediately affect students and taking the initiative to spend their Spring Break learning how to make a difference in the entire region.

Columnist Anne Fawcett can be reached at fawcetta@hotmail.com.