When you're ready to write a letter or email go over our talking points. Below is a sample letter. Use it to get ideas, but personalize your own letter to help us get our point across.
To the Colonie Center Mall Management:
I'd like to talk to you for a moment about public transportation. Sometimes buses get a bad reputation. There is a perception that rich people use cars, and poor people ride buses It's funny how that belief changes from city to city. The Capital Region for a long time has been a suburb community with good parking and cheap gas. It's lead us to do less to promote our public transportation system than cities like London and New York, but gas prices are rising and more and more people are riding the buses Of course, there is also the perception that poor people are less desirable customers at malls. This just isn't true. Even if they aren't wearing Armani, people who ride the bus are hard workers who want to go to malls to catch movies, eat at food courts and shop for clothes and goods. They are also the people who work at your mall.
It may seem like it's no big deal to move the bus stops out to the perimeter of the parking lots, but for people riding the bus it is a very big deal. In the winter not being able to wait for buses inside the mall will mean extra time out in the cold, risking their health and frostbite. In the evenings it will mean risking standing alone at a deserted bus stop where they risk harassment and mugging. Even during the summer, during the day, it means a long walk across a busy parking lot. Even if you provide safer corridors for them to walk in, the fact of the matter is that people, when they have to do same thing over and over tend to choose the path of least resistance. Unless the path is a nearly straight line to the mall they will wander off to a straighter line. It's got to do with selective reinforcement. They don't get hit by a car; they save time; they continue to do it. Of course, when they do get hit by a car, it's to late to fix the problem.
A simple safe solution to this problems is to let the main line buses come into to mall and to move the bus stop for the local shuttles up to the mall. This means a shorter, safer, more comfortable walk for people with shopping bags and schedules to keep.
I'd also, as a final note, like to add this. I do a lot of volunteer work with a local organization that works with people with disabilities. People with disabilities come in a wide range. Some are eligible to ride the Star Bus, others, who would certainly be eligible for Handicap stickers for cars, including the elderly who may just find it hard to walk as far as they used to, are not eligible to ride Star. Star is also a limited service that costs more to ride than the regular buses, requires up to two weeks advance notice to schedule and a preset pickup time.
Please help the Capital Region become as bus accessible as possible.
Thank You,
Nathan Smith
