Transit DOES carry people who have no other choices—people who often have gripping stories to tell. I started my career in public transit over 25-years ago working for a Community Action Agency and believe wholeheartedly in the important safety net role that transit plays in improving the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors. But an exclusive focus on this role alone is a recipe for the continued marginalization and underfunding of transit. And as much as these stories tug at our heartstrings, the tone is actually negative towards transit—we may be grateful, but we are not happy about it and wish we didn’t need it. Transit is treated like food stamps, CPR or bandages.

The public perception problem bleeds into a quality problem. If transit is primarily characterized as a safety net, then any seeming luxury is questioned. The Pueblo bus is described as rattling, as if this is to be expected and tolerated. Transit is viewed as charity for those poor souls who have fallen on hard times. But let’s not go overboard, the thinking goes—just like we do not fund gold-plated homeless shelters, we wouldn’t fund extravagant public transit—either in attractiveness or convenience. And since beggars can’t be choosers, riders are not expected to complain about rattling buses, to say nothing of long trip times, low frequencies or inconvenient schedules.

If this is the environment that transit occupies, it will always be marginalized and will only reach a very limited subset of the population. As a result, fewer people will ride it and measures of efficiency, such as cost per trip, will show poor performance, leading to calls to defund it. If transit is treated like a charity, it becomes subject to whims and fluctuating generosity. Under this formulation, transit funding is dependent on just how good we are at tugging people’s fickle heart strings. Anti-transit trolls will counter the heartwarming stories with dismissive references to people taking the bus to methadone clinics. This transit-as-charity mindset forces riders into the unfair, patronizing, and often belittling role of being like Jerry Lewis’ kids—poster children for continued funding. If transit is dependent on capricious funding impulses for its survival, it is difficult for people to plan their lives around it given that it might be pulled at any moment.

Recently, the other existential vision of transit has reemerged, moving beyond the limited safety net understanding of transit’s importance. Transit providers such as Metro Transit in Minnesota have just ended displaying “Essential Trips Only” on their vehicle’s overhead message signs, which graphically made the case that some types of trips are more worthy than others. While the initial coronavirus-responsive stimulus bills passed by Congress (CARES Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act) have focused appropriately on transit’s rescue and relief, it is propitious that President Biden’s American Jobs Plan shifts the focus to transit as jobs, economic revitalization and equity—transit as infrastructure, with an emphasis not just on fixing what’s broken, but on expanding capacity.

What is the impact of valuing transit as part of the infrastructure, like roads and sidewalks? First and foremost, it maximizes mobility of the entire community—not just those considered to be too poor or infirm to drive or own a car. Under this understanding, transit is a public good—and as such, works most efficiently when it is used by everybody. The focus shifts away from the merits of individual trips, which must be considered essential to justify continued support under the safety net model, to the systemwide freedom of movement for all.

The contrast between these two visions was illustrated for me over twenty years ago when I secured Community Development Block Grant funding through HUD to extend the span of service on two bus routes in Burlington, VT beyond 11:00 p.m. HUD has historically had a social service mindset that is very much rooted in the safety net camp that views assistance as being limited to eligible recipients only. As such, they had initially requested that we collect intake information for every rider taking advantage of the added service. With uncharacteristic patience, I eventually received a waiver of this requirement by explaining that it was not reasonable, to say nothing of allowable under the existing operator’s labor agreement, to expect riders to tell the bus driver their income, age, marital status, or how many children they have. This was not about changing the service—it was about changing how it was perceived and justified by the funding agency.

To close, let’s return to the concept of equity that infuses the American Jobs Plan. On top of the $110 billion set aside for transit projects, Biden allocates an additional $45 billion in the bill to redressing past transportation inequities. This means ensuring that our infrastructure is invested in fairly, such that benefits and burdens are dispersed equally across all of our diverse communities. Although nuanced, there is an enormous difference between equity and charity. It is the difference between social justice and social service—the former is empowering while the latter is a handout. Civil rights are not given out of generosity. We fight for rights, we don’t plead for them. Look at the history of civil rights in the transit arena: Homer Plessy, Rosa Parks, the late Congressman John Lewis and his fellow Freedom Riders, and the disability activists who chained their wheelchairs to buses and trains, leading to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. These pioneers didn’t want charity—they wanted justice. Justice is high quality, attractive, convenient, and efficient public transportation for all that dispenses opportunity and freedom across the board. As such, transit shifts from being a last gasp lifeline to the very backbone of our communities—and it cannot be tuned out.