My Transportation Story
For an upcoming interview on the Booked on Planning podcast I read Veronica O. Davis’s book Inclusive Transportation which is a quick and impactful read for anyone working in the transportation industry, or just engaging with the public. The reason I found it impactful is she asks her readers to stop and reflect several times throughout the book. One of those pauses for reflection was to consider our personal transportation story and how it has shaped who we are today.
When I was three years old we moved to a new subdivision on the edge of town. The main road behind our house was a two lane rural asphalt road with cornfields on the other side. Today it’s a four lane paved road with median and an entire commercial area with several more miles of neighborhoods beyond. My neighborhood had sidewalks on both sides of the streets, mid-block cut throughs on long blocks and the traffic generally was low and drove slower.
My elementary school was about half a mile away and starting in kindergarten my best friends and I would walk to and from school if we weren’t dropped off by car by one of our parents. Biking around was mostly recreation, getting us around the neighborhood for fun after school or in the summers to head to the park by the elementary school. I remember when my dad used to bike to work and thought of it only as a means to get in exercise and not “active transportation” as I would label it today. We drove almost everywhere though. To get to the grocery store, to my middle and high schools, sports, piano lessons, the movies, the mall, it was all by car. This meant begging my parents or my friends parents for rides to all of these places. I never really understood what the bus was beyond the yellow buses that took my classmates and I to field trips. I missed out on the field trip day where we rode the public bus in elementary school because I was home sick and didn’t ride a public bus until I moved to Minneapolis in my late 20s.
My generation was the kind that counted down the days and missed class to go take our driving test to get our license the first possible second we could. I recall getting my learners permit and then shortly after driving myself to school because we had moved out to the countryside and I was able to drive at 15 without an adult in the car. Now I think of how terrifying it is to hand a 15 year old the keys to a car and let them go, but back then I thought it was the coolest because I was driving myself before my classmates and had the freedom to get where I wanted or needed to go. I thought a car was the only way to get freedom to roam and never thought about taking the bus or riding my bike like I do today. I ended up in so many minor and somewhat major fender benders those first few years driving. My mom made sure to include a whole scrapbook page in my graduation book to document them. Today I look back and see them as crash statistics that inform how we try to make our roadways safer to avoid them, when back then all I could think was how much trouble I might be in and how much it would cost to fix the car.
It found it interesting reading how Veronica Davis basically grew up on a trajectory towards a transportation planning/engineering career. I feel like I fell into it based on a series of decisions over time. I started off in college wanting to restore old buildings and never considered the field of transportation planning until the last five years or so. I had always thought I would stick with architecture and historic preservation, but getting outside my car, thanks to the congestions of Minneapolis, and experiencing biking, walking, and transit started to really shape my perspective. Living that sort of lifestyle is what started me down the path of transportation planning. The freedom to leave when I want, get a little exercise, and park my bike at the door makes biking to work and to run my errands really appealing. I want others to have the opportunity and feel safe enough that they can do the same.
That leads me to my view of transportation in the future. It’s really a look back to transportation of the 1910s with a few upgrades like paved roads. As a preservationist this is where my two worlds blend well. I envision a community that is dense, walkable, filled with corner stores and parks within walking distance of all neighborhoods like we once had before the shift happened when cars become more prominent than bikes, walking, and trolleys. Our streets accommodate bikes, buses, and cars at speeds that make sense. There’s no need to drive 45 miles per hour through a city in my mind. I work daily on supporting complete streets in Lincoln, hoping one day to have achieved a complete network of roads that benefits all residents and every type of vehicle they choose to use—bike, bus, walking, rolling, or driving.
