The singular factor that can influence a person’s life is their access to transportation. Maux沙利文 came to understand this statement from a Harvard University study while in college in Chicago, but she saw it firsthand while working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Scranton, 宾西法尼亚, a hilly city that is hard to navigate without a car. At social services provider Friends of the Poor and, 晚些时候, at the drop-in Community Intervention Center, 沙利文 saw with client after client that transportation was a legitimate barrier for anyone seeking work who didn’t have a vehicle of their own. An Amazon warehouse on the edge of town was hard to access. Other employers could be reached on foot only by walking along a highway. The local bus system was an option – but not a legitimate one for anyone needing to clock in at 5 a.m.当时车辆没有行驶.

沙利文, who grew up in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, considers her time in Scranton “one of the most formative experiences of my life.” Having seen the community’s issues up close, she became deeply interested in understanding the structures and decisions that make inequities possible. 沙利文 returned to Chicago for graduate school, where she studied urban planning with a focus on transportation. After interning with Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority, 沙利文 knew she wanted a career in public transit – and felt called home to Denver. She now plans and schedules rail service for RTD, 包括野马队比赛的服务, and coordinates the bus service necessary to ferry customers between stations when rail lines are closed for maintenance.

沙利文从小就使用RTD的系统, initially during fifth-grade field trips and, 晚些时候, taking the Route 15 or 20 bus home from East High School. (Her parents actually met on a 16th Street Mall shuttle, when her father and his friends were singing Christmas carols – and her mother and her friends joined in.)在大学, she took part in a study examining how the proposed extension of a Chicago “L” line into the southern part of the city could affect the quality of life of a neighborhood with a large percentage of transit dependent riders. 在研究生院, she revisited the Red Line extension project, working with classmates to develop a community plan around one of the proposed stations.

现在, 在RTD, 沙利文 thinks extensively about gentrification, 无家可归和城市规划, and how these things interrelate with the services the agency provides. “There’s no silver bullet solution,”她说。. “I don’t know if any city has figured it out.” She wonders aloud how the city can continue to grow and change while retaining the history and soul that make it special. 

The deep level of community interaction 沙利文 values is crucial as RTD makes adjustments to its service three times a year. “None of us thinks that any schedule is perfect, and we are always looking for improvements,”她说。. “But we can’t do anything if we don’t know there’s an issue. It is important that people communicate with us.”

沙利文 notes that the public often thinks about service in terms of how it benefits them personally. 她鼓励更区域性的观点, noting that “the grocery store you go to is staffed because there’s a transit line that gets those workers there if they need it. And you will be taken care of at the hospital if you need to go there because there are workers that are able to get there via transit if they don’t have a car.”

From that thought, 沙利文 names two things that have inspired her during the pandemic. First is the reality th在RTD’s employees have kept working to serve people who rely on the agency’s system to reach their destinations. The second is an observation from Tamika Butler, an advocate for equity and environmental, 社会和种族公正. 沙利文 paraphrased her thought: “If we as a society have deemed that these workers are essential during quarantine, and these essential workers rely on transit to get to their jobs, therefore we as a society are transit dependent.

“我们都依赖交通运输.”