Six Stories, One City: Walter’s Transit Story

In the fifth video of our Six Stories, One City series, Walter explains how the bus makes it possible for him to travel to work.

“I live in north Charlotte. I’m in the Senior Citizens Training Program at the Crisis Ministry Center. I use transit because it gets me close to my job, right there. I need that…I can’t afford a taxi, so I need the bus. If I didn’t have the bus, I wouldn’t be able to make it to the job. I live too far away.”

While some residents ride transit by choice, for others it is their only means of personal mobility. Nearly 8 million people age 65 and older do not drive. 60 percent of people age 50 and over said in an AARP survey that they did not have public transportation within a 10-minute walk from their homes.

When a city develops a well-connected transit network, residents are able to more easily commute between home and work. A recent study has found that unemployed workers who live in areas with high sprawl and poor transit connections are likely to stay unemployed longer than those who live in well-connected communities.

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