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Delaware APRI Challenges DELDOT on Sunday Bus Service

(Delaware Way)

Delaware APRI Challenges DELDOT on Sunday Bus Service :
Joins with Ministers and Mass Transportation Advocates
to Issue Plan for Holiday Season Demonstration Project
By Nancy Willing

Members of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, local Ministers transportation advocates continued their campaign for expanded bus service in a press conference on Monday, October 1. The press conference was held at Mother A.U.M.P. Church at 9th and Franklin Streets in Wilmington. At the event, APRI Transportation Committee and Campaign for Sunday Bus Service chairman released the groups plan for Sunday bus service during the upcoming holiday period.

In a September 24 letter to DELDOT Secretary Carol Ann Wicks, Peaches Whalen, President of the A. Philip Randolph Institute of Delaware expressed disappointment that DART has not followed through on directives by the Joint Sunset Committee and Senate Concurrent Resolution 25 to begin moves toward Sunday and expanded bus service in our state.

“We consider the expansion of mass transit as critical for a number of reasons,” Whalen wrote to Secretary Wicks. “As documented by DNREC, tail pipe emissions constitute the largest source of poor air quality in our state.”

Whalen went on to make several other points in her letter:

“Transportation policy should be more closely linked to development policies which encourage denser development and wider preservation of open space.”

“…there is the negative economic impact the lack of mass transportation has on businesses, poor and low income communities…The United Food and Commercial Workers cite lack of mass transportation availability as a major cause for dismissing workers.”

Among the four requests made to Secretary Wicks in the letter are directives to instruct DART to implement the recommendations of the Joint Sunset Committee regarding the expansion of bus service, broader dialogue with communities regarding the choices between highway building and the expansion of mass transit and the implementation of SCR 25 calling for a Sunday bus service demonstration pilot during the upcoming holiday period.

“We began the Campaign for Sunday Bus Service shortly after the death of Rosa Parks two years ago. We see it as a civil rights issue. The lack of mass transportation is discriminatory and the source of unfair economic and health conditions for poor and low income communities. It affects us all with less economic productivity, more pollution and the absence of reasonable options to reach places of worship, commerce and recreation,” said Scott Spencer, Chairman of the Delaware APRI Transportation Committee and The Campaign for Sunday Bus Service.