Getting There

Public transportation is great—if you have access to it. Now cities are starting to think about how to help people with the first and last miles of their travels.

- Sarah Scoles

ST. STEPHEN’S COMMUNITY HOUSE sits among single-family homes, recycling plants, wrecking yards, shipping centers, and parks, all occupying the Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. Begun as a Catholic social center in 1919, it has morphed into a gathering place that helps local residents connect with jobs, medical care, supermarkets, and transportation. And just as in its early days, the center also helps them connect with one another. So it is that at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in October, about 150 people gather to hear city officials present a reinvention scheme. Even the standing- room section is crowded.

A screen displays a slide deck for a 10-point strategy—called the One Linden Plan—to improve this historically underserved low-income area. Onstage, hip-high cubes show photos of happy kids clinging to smiling parents. While Linden is just a few miles from the city center, transportation options from here— to jobs, doctors, even grocery stores— remain mostly limited, slow, inaccessible, unreliable, or a combination of those factors. One Linden aims to change that.

In Columbus, as in many cities, the people who would benefit most from public-transit improvements—people with lower incomes, minorities, residents with disabilities, the elderly—often have difficulty accessing it. The world might be stuffed with bike-shares and scooters, but trendy wheeled devices serve primarily the young, solo, and able-bodied. Meanwhile, as urban areas get more expensive, poorer residents are often pushed even farther out. Cities struggle to get everyone from place to place without clogging freeways, spewing air pollution, consuming fossil fuels, or further disenfranchising anyone.