Three Key Calls to Action to Improve Racial Equity in Transit Policy

Seeing the historical impacts of the lack of investment in public transit and racist transportation policy, Darnell Grisby set out to make a change. Grisby, the director of policy development and research at the American Public Transit Association, writes about childhood and familial experiences with inequitable transportation systems through the lens of the current reckoning with racial discrimination: "More than 50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. called urban public transportation 'a genuine civil rights issue,'" writes Grisby, "The nation’s infrastructure investments have promoted systemic racism, impacting generations of African Americans." Grisby notes three ways to change the trajectory of transit policy's relationship to race:

1. Change the structure of transit governance to address the needs of the most frequent users of transit: communities of color. 
2. Improve any policy that impacts transit advocacy with "effective provision of all municipal services" in mind, not just the ones that immediately effect transit systems. Understand the connection between seemingly disparate policies. 
3. Focus less on work experience when hiring for high-level positions in transit agency recruitment to give a new generation of highly qualified candidates of color an opportunity to use their skills as well as personal understanding of transit ridership.