Another One Rides the Bus

Last fall, the local bus company here in Denver posted a sign on the bus stop across the street from Senior Support Services.

"Rider Alert," the sign said. "This stop will be eliminated in January 2018."

My first thought was that this was pretty inconvenient for me, personally. I ride the bus to and from work every day, and the elimination of this bus stop would mean a few more blocks to walk on my commute. After a few seconds, however, I realized that the people I serve would be much more than inconvenienced. In many cases, the members of Senior Support Services would not longer be able to come to our building and receive needed resources. While many of our members are reasonably able-bodied, many others are not, and a long walk (especially in the cold of winter) might be prohibitive for some of the community members.

To add insult to injury, the company's website listed a date for a public forum to discuss and object to any upcoming changes. The forum was held the day before the sign was posted on our stop.

The first thing I did was send a complaint to the bus company, letting them know how much the stop is necessary. Then I talked to my boss about it, she agreed about it being a problem, and we worked on getting a meeting with a representative of the bus company. We also reached out to a few local news outlets, just to have a Plan B.

The representative was kind enough to meet us at the center. We explained the great need for a bus stop near our facility. It is bad enough that the stop is across the street with no crosswalk, meaning our members must sometimes dodge traffic to get to us. Requiring any more walking than this would make it impossible for us to serve some of our members.

As if to illustrate the point, a very infirm man with a walker happened to pass by the window of the meeting room at this time. The representative agreed that something must be done. Within weeks, the sign was removed. A stop two blocks down was removed instead.

Throughout this encounter, the bus company insisted this was about removing and consolidating underused bus stops. But anyone who regularly rides that route along our street could tell you that ours is arguably the most-used stop for several blocks in either direction.

It's hard not to see the motivation here as being more about making sure only the right kind of people are riding the bus. The neighborhood around the center has been slowly gentrifying the past few years, and -- while most people are kind and understanding -- certain neighbors would not mind if our membership declined due to difficulty getting here.

How I look at this depends largely on my mood and the level of charity I'm willing to extend to the world and people in general. It could be a story about people getting caught doing something callous and changing course only when they knew it would reflect badly on them. But it also could be a story about how people will ultimately do the right thing if you give them a chance.

And but so, there's still a bus stop at 18th Avenue and Emerson Street. Every day, as I wait for the bus, I reflect on how ignorant we humans can be about other people's needs, so wrapped up in our own concerns that we fail to notice the small things that make such a difference to our neighbors.

(About the title of this post: I guess I've had Weird Al on the brain lately.)

#SeniorSupportServices #stories