Program on the Environment

Transportation is the backbone of a functional urban city, and effective communication with the public, especially youths, is key in addressing the social, economic, and accessibility factors affecting their public transportation use. This foundational sector helps people attend school, work, the gym, outside events, restaurants, stores, and everyday necessities. While working with Seattle Subway Foundation, I participated in High School outreach to gather student feedback and see how we can best improve youth ridership in Seattle. The growing usage of cars increases CO2 emissions, worsening air pollution and climate change. Raising awareness about public transportation as an environmentally friendly option will help to sustain the city and lower carbon emissions in the future. This decreases our carbon footprint, but also saves time in traffic and money while promoting a clean city.

The purpose of this study was to discover the factors that directly impact high school students from using public transportation frequently. To accomplish this, I conducted my own set of survey questions and created an informational presentation, which I then presented in several high school classrooms. From my outreach and survey results, I found that students reported avoiding Metro Buses and Link Stations due to feeling unsafe, mainly from threats of violence from people with mental illness. Students also cited inconvenient transit routes and unreliable scheduling or delays affected their usage too. These key findings effectively highlight shortcomings of current public transportation services and explore opportunities to create future systems that will support youth ridership and engagement overall.