wheelchair to look around the room. He’s here
somewhere, she says, smiling.
But Williams and her son almost didn’t
make it tonight. She had scheduled a ride
for 5 p.m. with a van service for people with
disabilities. It didn’t show up till 6 or so,
well after the meeting had started. While
she waited, her friends started texting her.
“They’re talking about you!” they said. Wil-
liams has been active in the transportation
initiatives, and she missed her onstage men-
tion—all because of a way-late ride.
This, of course, is part of the whole thing.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act,
cities must provide transportation for peo-
ple with physical or cognitive impairments.
But such specialized services are often less
reliable than buses, which Williams can and
does sometimes ride. But the fare box next
to the driver blocks her access. The maneu-
vering makes her nervous. Once, avoiding
the box, she broke the glass on the bus door.
“I was just so embarrassed,” she says. “You
know? I was just so embarrassed.”
Her solution is simple: “Everything
should be made for everyone.” She says it
with the same conviction that the commu-
nity just chanted, “Linden!”IN AN URBAN-UTOPIA VISION OF THE FUTURE,
everything is made for everyone—and in-
volves fewer personal cars, which pollute
the air, contribute to climate change, keep us
sedentary, and create cortisol-boosting grid-
lock. Multiple studies suggest that switching
to alternatives—walking, biking, public tran-
sit—increases physical and psychological
well-being, and even reduces mortality.The main challenge to getting around without your
own car remains the gap between home and public tran-
sit, and between a transit station and an office, factory,
store, or friend’s place. Depending on where you live,
that could make getting around difficult to impossible.
In Franklin County, where Columbus is, it contributes to
an infant mortality rate about 1.3 times the national av-
erage. According to city data, 7.1 infants died per 1,000
births between January and October 2018 in the county,
and the rate is 2.3 times higher for black infants compared
with other ethnic groups. The problem arises in part be-
cause mothers can’t make it to medical appointments—a
first-mile/last-mile issue if there ever was one.
Cities and companies are slowly chipping away at the
obstacles. In many urban areas, you can now rent a bike
to begin or complete your journey. Some places, like New
York City, subsidize them for lower-income residents.
On-demand services like Uber and Lyft come when you
call, and sometimes cost less than traditional taxis. And
then, of course, there is the Great Scooter Invasion of- Across the U.S., electricity-jolted Razor-style scoot-
ers have sprung up rapidly. After registering, you can pick
them up and drop them off around town. But these modes
usually require credit cards, bank accounts, smartphones,
the ability to stand or pedal, and confidence riding in traf-
fic. And you have to go it alone, without company or cargo.
That leaves out much of the population much of the time.
It amounts to discrimination, witting or not.
That’s something Sarah Kaufman, associate director
of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York Uni-
versity, has examined empirically. Her research found CL
OCKWISE^ FROM^LEFT:^ COURTESY^ SMARTCOLUMBUS;^COURTESYIBM;RAYMOND^BOYD/GETTYIMAGESReinventing
the Ride
Clockwise from
left: Columbus
recently
launched an
autonomous
shuttle
downtown; the
Smart Columbus
Experience
Center demos
tech and
electric cars;
Lyft hypes
its scooter
service
in Denver.68 SPRING 2019 • POPSCI.COM