#9 Public transportation and justice
Don't ask about issue #8
Hey there,
Welcome back to Makeshift Mobility, my fortnightly newsletter about innovations in informal transportation.
How is this week finding you? If you’re in the US like I am, hang in there.
I think it is going to be a rough summer and it’s not at all clear that the November elections will save us.
If you’re based in one of the countries that have managed their pandemic response well, congratulations on having competent government!
The good news from those countries seems to be that, with the right measures in place, public transportation doesn’t spread the virus, and it’s not because these countries have well funded public transport systems.
Vietnam is proving that, with the right response, even informal transportation can be safe. We talked about their response in issue #3.
Btw, the IBON Foundation in the Philippines released a report that says the traditional, open air jeepneys are probably safer to ride in this pandemic vs. the new fangled “modern jeeps” that the government is pushing to replace them with.
This is an urgent issue because traditional (i.e. original) jeepneys have not been allowed back on the roads despite the easing of the quarantine. Passengers have no rides. Drivers are begging on the streets.
What was that?
You want to know what happened to issue #8?
I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.
I did have issue 8 on queue but as the protest movement against anti-Black racism in the US surged (and shows no signs of letting up), I felt what I was working on was irrelevant. (I was going to discuss automated/cashless fare collection and how they were disrupting local transportation networks and even credit card networks!)
Photo by Chuck Miller from the CityFix: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on this bus, now on permanent display at The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.
I tried working on a new draft that looked at the history of transportation and discrimination. (When I was working on trying to reform federal transportation funding in the US, my colleagues liked to point out that the first actions of the Civil Rights Movement against segregation started with a bus.)
I then wanted to go deeper into discrimination and informal transport, like how caste affects transport service in India—in one of ten villages Dalits are not allowed to take seats on transit or are ordered to enter last despite this being against the law; or, how the rigidity of the caste system was enforced and exploited by the British colonizers; or, how tribalism itself was a colonial imperialist (read: white supremacy) project.
I also wanted to highlight stories of discrimination, like this story of Chitralekha, who bought and wanted to drive an auto rickshaw but was hounded out of it because of her caste.
It was in 2004 that Chitralekha, a Dalit woman, bought an auto rickshaw on the back of a bank loan and began driving it from the Edat stand in Payyanur in Kannur district of Kerala. But right from the first day, she claimed she was greeted with casteist slurs and abuse by the male members of the rickshaw union affiliated to the CITU, the CPM’s trade union wing.
“They were all from higher castes and they were opposed to a Dalit woman driving a rickshaw from the same stand. I pleaded with them that I bought the vehicle after taking a bank loan and that I needed to repay it. But they didn’t care,” said Chitralekha.
Screencap of Chitralekha from a video by Firstpost
Needless to say, I got lost in my deep dives and lost the thread.
I gave myself permission to be in the moment and to listen.
I also realized that the anti-racist, anti-discrimination project needs to be fully embedded in this newsletter.
I reminded myself that this project to mobilize the world’s attention and resources to empower the transformation of makeshift mobility in our cities is all about inclusion and social justice.
The innovations happening in this space have the potential to correct injustice but they also have the potential to create new power structures that are racist or anti-poor.
I hope to discuss that continously—because informality is all about transportation and the cities we want to build. Cities that are not just “livable” but cities that are just.
To set things clear, I’m a brown-skinned immigrant and I believe Black Lives Matter.
I leave you with one of my favorite projects of all time. I hope to someday catch up with friends who are still working on this.
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I’m Benjie de la Peña, a transport geek and urban nerd. I live in Seattle by virtue of a green card that I earned via an F1 student visa and then an H1-B skilled worker visa. I think immigration makes countries better. I think a lot about strategic design, institutional shifts, and innovation.
I believe makeshift mobility could be the single greatest lever to de-carbonize the urban transport sector -but only if we can organize. If I had my druthers, the world would have a international, inter-city think tank dedicated to improving informal transportation.