Welcome, whichever door you came through

“Great transit is a smart investment that benefits everyone.” That’s the first sentence that greets visitors to DaneTransit.org., and there’s no shortage of reasons for it. Transit is beneficial for the environment, including but not limited to efforts to address climate change; for economic growth, opportunity and justice; for individual mobility and freedom; for family and household budgets; and for public health and safety. On the front page of this site you’ll find a set of four fact sheets that talk about these and other examples of how and why transit matters.

There are, in other words, any number of compelling arguments for making it easier for people to get where they want or need to go without having to drive, and any number of doors through which to enter the room labeled “transit advocacy” and then take that advocacy into the community.

One premise behind DaneTransit.org is that the decision to enter the room is more important than the particular door chosen. For some, transit is an environmental issue or, more specifically, a climate issue; for others it’s primarily a social justice or equity issue; and for still others it may be either a workforce transportation issue or one of more general economic development. But really it’s all of these issues and more: a matter of regional quality of life not reducible to any one issue, and greater than the sum of all of them.

A second premise is that the particular transit mode on which one chooses to focus that advocacy is less important than the general pro-transit commitment. Maybe you think the answer is more and better buses, maybe you think it’s “light rail” or “commuter rail,” maybe it’s buses that behave more like trains, or maybe (and most likely) its some combination of all of these, to create a truly multi-modal and truly regional rapid transit system. Or maybe you’re less interested in any particular transit mode as than in land use, neighborhood development, and other local planning practices that make transit in any form useful and attractive to more people. A lively conversation about all of the above is more important, at this point, than guiding that conversation to some predetermined conclusion.

A third premise, and an especially critical one for DaneTransit, is that advancing a pro-transit agenda, and securing the resources to support more and better transit throughout greater Madison, won’t happen without a base of support that goes beyond current transit riders and a committed community of (no disrespect intended) “transportation nerds.” One reason DaneTransit is broadly (if by no means uncritically) supportive of the current Metro Transit redesign and planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiatives is their potential to attract new riders to transit and thus expand the constituency with a direct a stake in improving transit.

But even that isn’t going to be enough. Ultimately, transit’s future depends on transit being seen as useful and valuable even by many who may never set foot on a bus or train. This isn’t about selling the public on abstract talking points like “every dollar invested in transit brings X dollars of returns,” much as these may help (and even though you’ll find some of those here). The crucial need is for the public to internalize, not just at an intellectual level but in a more intuitive and instinctive way, a sense of transit as vital to the quality of daily life here in Dane County.

Research, data, and analysis can help, as can case studies and examples from around the nation and the world. But the main purpose of such information is to reinforce narratives that make transit’s significance as immediate, concrete, and specific as possible. Bringing those narratives to bear on live debates surrounding transit here in greater Madison is a big part of the work to which DaneTransit.org hopes to contribute. It’s at least one way to, quite literally, bring transit's value and importance home—and convert the many reasons to support better transit into a cause around which the whole community can rally.