The first thing I’d do if I were in charge of the PVTA would be to go for a name change. In the lower valley a high percentage of bus users are Hispanic and, how do I explain this? Imagine if some Mexican city had a huge population of north-of-the-border retirees and its bus service had the initials CVNT. Maybe change the name? Just sayin’.
A bigger picture issue, though, has to do with one measure of urban western Massachusetts and one particular barometer of our success; where the people who are the most successful among us choose to live. This week the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority named a new administrator. She lives in Hamden, Massachusetts. Nice town. No bus service. The head of our regional transit system lives in a place where she couldn’t use it even if she wanted to.
I’m used to it. As I’ve listed before the leader of our most significant housing initiative in the city lives in the suburbs of another state, our best real estate developer does that too, none of the heads of our most important cultural organizations live here, and the presidents and CEO’s of all our major institutions live elsewhere. I don’t mean this as a scold this time, just an observation.
How many of those people are at least connected enough to Springfield that they COULD take the PVTA to work if they needed to? It’s a pretty large network:
When they all do, maybe we’ll have made some genuine progress.
This experience is my life. As of this weekend I’m 6 months into my new job working for a public transit agency (I’ll let you guess which one *wink*).
We serve the overwhelming majority of the state (I actually took the bus to work every day at my old job and when I started here but switched to bicycling when we bought a place in Providence). Headways are very reasonable, particularly for longer-range routes. We employ very nearly 1000 people all told. Every one of these people (and their spouse!) can ride any bus, any time, free of charge.
I’ve yet to see a single person take the bus, walk, or bicycle to work. Every single one of them drives, alone of course, every day. The parking deck (FREE, naturally) is larger than the office building. Exactly 0 bicycle racks (covered or otherwise).
Spanish is my first language, and I never once thought about the connections between the name of the PVTA and that certain word in Spanish.
However, I do agree a name change would be appropriate. Merge it with the FRTA and the BRTA and make it the Western Massachusetts Transit Authority.
Después de volver de mis años en España siempre lo veía así. Ahora lo verás, ¡perdóneme!