An intriguing podcast idea has been underway for a bit in the Twin Cities. Here to There, by local public affairs agency Apparatus along with Transit for Livable Communities and St. Paul Smart Trips, is a 10-episode series that looks at different ways people are affected by transportation.
Co-host Laura Monn Ginsburg says the show is driven by a simple reality. “I have to get from here to there every day. How do I do it, what are my choices, do I even really feel like I have a choice?” she asks. “If we’re talking about a topic as broad as health, as broad as equity, as broad as accessibility, how do we remember that there are individuals living these things out day to day?”
In the first half of each episode, she and co-host Leili Fatehi join a Twin Cities resident for an actual trip, and then talk to an expert or advocate for a broader perspective. For a show on transit and employment, they ride along with a Lyft driver and popular local DJ who talks about the uncertainty of making rent in the gig economy. In the second half, they speak to a transit union president about how, perhaps paradoxically, this rise of transportation gig work is coinciding with a labor shortage for more traditional transit jobs like bus drivers, despite their relatively good pay and dependable schedules.
In another — Ginsburg’s favorite episode so far, she admits — she interviews her own dad, a super commuter who has been crossing the entire Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area daily for 10 years. It’s not a perfect arrangement, he says, but he’s found ways to make the experience comfortable: exiting the highway when possible to drive through neighborhoods he describes as “relaxing” and “familiar.” And yet, though there’s no convenient transit option that would take him to work, he expresses support for public transportation.
Read the complete article at nextcity.org
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