It all started when I lived overseas. I lived in Derby, England for six months, and when I was there, I was able to walk everywhere; walk to the grocery store, take a bus, take a train. I did not drive a car for six months. And I came back to the United States, and I was feeling like something was missing in my life. I had an uncle who came into problems by not being able to afford a car and would have to walk over two and a half hours to get to work one way at times when family could not drive him. There was even a point where, sadly enough, he lived in his van at work so he could keep his job to continue to provide for his family because there was no public transportation. And over the years, I just felt like we need to do better as a region. We say we're a great place to live in, a great community, but then again, people can't access things like childcare or jobs or health care. That's a problem. If somebody can't access work or what or church, what about social activities and things to that extent? So I was lucky enough to find my position at CIRTA, and it was a great fit. It’s still a mission of ours- how do we improve regional transportation in our region? How do we provide a better customer experience? Because right now, we get calls every single day at our agency of people still trying to get to places that they can't get to because of a lack of transportation. And it's very real. It's so frustrating at times, too, because you hear everybody wants door to door transportation, but nobody wants to pay for it. So how do we get people to invest in this just as they invest in anything else, such as roads and schools. The state wants to bring in huge employers to the region, telling them to build their large corporations here, but we ourselves don't want to invest.
