A few weeks ago, I had the chance to participate in what is known as \u201cTransit Tuesday!\u201d Joel, member of the Metropolitan Organizing\u00a0Strategy\u00a0Enabling\u00a0Strength\u00a0organization (MOSES), invited my coworkers and I to come downtown and help spread information about the upcoming vote to raise the SMART millage. We happily obliged and met Joel and his people in the heart of the city after work. I was excited to get active politically within the city.<\/p>\n
As soon as we got there, we started handing out flyers and educating folks on the importance of the SMART millage increase. It was interesting to hear what people had to say about the SMART buses, considering that many were not from Detroit, but rather the suburbs. I never realized how critical public transportation is to our region as a whole, not just to the city of Detroit. Hence, I really hope that the Locally Preferred Alternative plan the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) will be releasing in August advocates for the gold-standard, a metric used to describe the quality of a bus-rapid-transit (BRT) system. As we move increasingly towards a service-based economy, we will need transit for service workers to get to where service is demanded, thus the gold-standard would be great for the region.<\/p>\n
After a couple of hours, all who canvassed and a few others met up at a bar to play a game of \u201cSmartopoly.\u201d In his spare time, Joel designed this game where two teams compete to get their buses to opposite sides of the board, the city and the suburbs. One must travel the routes SMART buses take, and chance cards existed to make the game more interesting and highlight some of the inefficiencies currently suffered by the SMART buses, and those resulting from a lack of advanced regional public transit.<\/p>\n
The game was intense, but due to Noor\u2019s magical rolling-the-dice skills, we managed to get all our buses to the suburbs safe and sound before the other team. I really enjoyed mingling with others who hold a passion for BRT, and I believe the game of \u201cSmartopoly\u201d taught me a lot about the problems our region faces regarding public transit. It didn\u2019t hurt that the food was awesome too!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the last \u201cTransit Tuesday,\u201d however you can count me in next time! A good purpose, good food, good people, and an awesome game of \u201cSmartopoly\u201d makes for a great time, and one that will not soon be forgotten. So, vote to raise the SMART millage and go BRT!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to participate in what is known as \u201cTransit Tuesday!\u201d Joel, member of the Metropolitan Organizing\u00a0Strategy\u00a0Enabling\u00a0Strength\u00a0organization (MOSES), invited my coworkers and I to come downtown and help spread information about the upcoming vote to raise the SMART millage. We happily obliged and met Joel and his people in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1669,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cbrp-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1669"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16317,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947\/revisions\/16317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}