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Members of Voices for Public Transit know public transportation benefits everyone. We’re keeping it moving.

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Voices For Transit

We All Benefit

Whether you ride or not, public transportation benefits all of us. It reduces pollution, eases traffic congestion, and helps our communities thrive. In cities, suburbs, and rural America, public transit provides vital connections to jobs, education, medical care, and our larger communities. Help us keep America moving.

  • Make Your 2020 Public Transit Advocacy Resolutions

    10 Jan 2020


    Make Your 2020 Public Transit Advocacy Resolutions

    Resolve to Participate in Your Primaries or Caucuses

    The new decade is here! Our nation and communities face many challenges—and public transportation must be part of the solution.

    Expanding public transit can help grow our economy, create jobs, fight air pollution, and strengthen our communities. But to win increased funding for public transportation, we must raise our voices, increase our advocacy clout, and make our wishes and aspirations clear.

    To kick off 2020, we’re encouraging public transit supporters everywhere to make key advocacy resolutions. Here is the first Resolution:

    Commit to supporting public transit in your primaries or caucuses—in every way possible

    The start of the 2020 caucuses and primaries is just weeks away, beginning in Iowa on February 3 and New Hampshire on February 11. Wherever you live, register to vote if you haven’t already and then participate! Voting is the fundamental way to engage in the political process and effect policy change.

    Here’s how you can make a difference:

    First: Learn about candidates—for offices at all levels of governments—and where they stand on public transportation. Visit candidate websites, read news coverage, and even email campaigns to ask.

    Last year, we conducted a flash poll of Voices for Public Transit members, and 68% said that increasing funding for public transit is “as important” as most other issues or “the top of my list” in the upcoming elections. You can support your priorities by learning candidates’ positions and voting accordingly.

    But wait, there’s more: During the primary season, candidates and their campaigns are listening closely to voters. If candidates hear enough passionate voices advocating for public transportation, it may impact their positions on the campaign trail and if they win office. There are many actions you can take during primary season to help make public transit an election priority, including:

    • Attend a campaign event and ask a question about public transportation—Your community may host a candidate forum, or you may have the opportunity to attend a “house party” for a candidate. Your candidates may even host online events like a Twitter town hall or a Facebook Live, where you can ask questions online in real time.These types of events are a great way to connect with candidates, share your views, gather insights about your candidates’ positions—and elevate public transportation as an issue among your neighbors and friends.

    • Write a letter to the editor—Local newspapers will be covering local races, and editors want to hear from readers. Write a letter to the editor highlighting a local public transportation issue and urging candidates to support increased funding for public transit. Look at your paper’s website for guidance on how to submit a letter.

    • Share your views and ask questions on social media—Leading up to primaries and caucuses, use social media to highlight public transportation as your key issue. You can even tag a candidate, voice your support, or ask a question.


    No matter how and where you engage, keep to the high road by being polite and respectful—and remember, public transportation shouldn’t be a partisan issue: it’s something Republicans, Democrats, and Independents can agree on because it benefits all of us. Show your passion for public transportation but leave the partisan shouting to others.

    We’ll be back soon with the next Resolution. Stay tuned—and in the meantime, get out and get active in support of public transportation.


  • 5 Ways to Celebrate Public Transit

    17 Dec 2019

     

    This holiday season, we encourage you to make public transportation part of your celebration!

    All year long, public transit helps millions of Americans get where they want to go. To work and school. To gatherings of family and friends. To doctor’s appointments, shopping, sports events, and more.

    Public transit helps our communities and nation as well. It supports job creation, economic growth, environmental protection, and so much more. So, let’s make transit part of our celebration. Here are five ideas to get started:

    1. Celebrate Safety—Let others know that traveling by public transportation is 10x safer per mile than traveling by automobile. Stay safe yourself by riding transit to holiday parties.

    2. Gift Fare Cards—Prepaid fare cards—available on many transit systems around the country—make it easy to ride. Celebrate transit by including fare cards as stocking stuffers or donating fare cards to local charitable organizations.

    3. Reach Out with Transit—Public transit makes our communities stronger by bringing people and communities together. This holiday season, invite a friend or family member who lives alone to take transit with you to a musical performance, holiday gathering, or other event.

    4. Save Energy—In the winter months, you may be using more energy to heat your home. But you can save energy and money—and help the environment—by riding transit. It’s another good reason to celebrate public transportation.

    5. Shop Locally via Transit—Public transit gives a boost to local businesses by creating connections with customers and employees. Celebrate transit’s economic impact in your community by riding to a local shopping district to hunt for perfect gifts for your family and friends.

    All month long, we’ll be highlighting ways to celebrate public transit on social media. If you’re not part of the conversation already, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

    Share Your Ideas for Celebrating Transit

    How are you celebrating transit? Let our community know what you’re doing to make public transportation part of your holiday celebration by posting on the Voices for Public Transit website or Facebook page. You can also tag us on Twitter and hit the hashtag #Voices4Transit.


  • A Thanksgiving “Thank You” for Public Transit

    27 Nov 2019


    On Thanksgiving, Americans around the country give thanks—for their health and happiness, for their families and loved ones, for their communities and nation. Today, Voices for Public Transit wants to offer two very big Thank You’s.

    We want to first thank every member of our nationwide community of public transit advocates. Your committed voices are helping to protect and strengthen American public transportation—for today and the future.

    And we want to give a giant shout-out of thanks to the people who plan, build, operate, and maintain our public transportation systems. We talk a lot about the infrastructure of public transit, but without the people none of us would get very far.




    Share Your Thanks

    Thousands of transit employees are working this holiday season so we can travel safely and connect with family and friends. Whenever you have a chance, please say “Thank You” to the people who get us where we need to go all year round.

    You can also voice your thanks by sharing our “Thank You” GIF (pictured above) on Twitter and Facebook.

     Have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving!

     


  • Flash Poll Results: We’re Committed to Solving Problems with Transit

    21 Nov 2019



    Last month for Halloween, we polled Voices for Public Transit advocates to ask, “What’s the scariest problem transit can help address in your area?” We also asked you to rank the importance of increased funding for public transportation, relative to other issues. Here are the results…





    We’re Committed to Expanding the Benefits of Public Transportation

    When it comes to mobility, there’s no question Americans face some big challenges—traffic congestion, costs of car ownership, access, and safety, among others. But we also have a lot to be thankful for. Public transit helps millions of Americans get where they need to go every day, even if they don’t ride public transit personally.

    Our poll also shows an overwhelming commitment to winning increased funding for public transportation. Next year, Voices for Public Transit will call on this commitment to win new transit funding when the current long-term transportation bill—the FAST Act—expires. We’ll also be watching and mobilizing on transit-related ballot initiatives around the country.

    By this time next year, we hope to be thankful for legislation that marks a new era for American public transit.

    Tell Us Why You’re Thankful for Public Transportation

    In the spirit of the holiday season, we want to hear why you’re thankful for public transportation. How do public transportation and transit employees make a difference in your life? Share your answers on the Voices for Public Transit website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.


  • THANK YOU! Advocacy Helps Protect Transit Funding

    13 Nov 2019


    We have great news! On October 31, the U.S. Senate passed the Jones-McSally Amendment to prevent a $1.2 billion cut to fiscal year 2020 funding for public transportation.

    Thanks to your efforts to contact your Senators, this legislation passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 82-11.

    Advocacy Helps Win the Day

    If the Senate had rejected the Jones-McSally Amendment, every transit system throughout the nation would have faced a 12 percent across-the-board cut. This cut would have hurt millions of Americans by reducing travel options that connect people to work, school, medical care, and other services affordably and reliably.

    Voices for Public Transit advocates from around the country sprang into action when the threat of funding cuts arose. A supermajority of Senators across the political spectrum listened and responded by voting to support transit funding.

    We want to shout out a big “THANK YOU!” to every Voices for Public Transit advocate who reached out to their Senators on this critical issue.

    Looking Ahead

    The FAST Act expires next year. We need to start urging Congress now to make sure we don’t slide back into old, bad habits of kicking the can down the road a few months at a time. We should never again have to face years of short-term funding. That approach limits our communities’ and regions’ ability to keep our existing transportation infrastructure working efficiently, let alone plan, build, and expand into more flexible, modern transit networks that can better meet today’s transportation needs.

    To help achieve a new long-term transportation bill in 2020, advocacy will be as important as ever—it may even be more important than it was in 2015, given our current political gridlock.

    Next year, we’ll be calling on the Voices for Public Transit community to tell Congress more investment in public transit is what we need to get America where we want to go.