The Richmond region’s long history of racism and racist policies have led to a fractured and broken public transportation system. After decades of investment in highways—often built directly through Black neighborhoods—and decades of disinvestment in the public transportation system, our region is left with a segregated, limited, and underfunded bus network:

• Riders who identify as Black or as a person of color take 74% of the region’s trips while white riders account for just 26% the trips.
• 77% of Black riders have no access to a car, while only 48% of white riders have no access to a car.
• 84% of riders who make less than $10,000 per year identify as Black or as a person of color, while just 16% are white.
• Just 30% of the region’s dwelling units are located within a half mile of a bus stop.
• Among its peer cities, Richmond ranks near the very bottom of transit funding per capita—below Hampton Roads, Louisville, Jacksonville, Nashville, Dayton, Providence, Rochester, Albuquerque, Charlotte, Buffalo, and Salt Lake City.

Black lives matter, and Richmond’s public transportation system fills a critical role in supporting Black lives. While the deficiencies in our bus network have a disparate impact on communities of color, the work of restoring the region’s transportation network cannot fall to Black Richmonders alone. From Virginia Community Voice’s recent email:

The pandemic and civil protests reveal what happens when White Americans do not commit themselves wholeheartedly to the work of racial equity. Centuries of systematic oppression and marginalization continue to threaten the lives of black, brown, and indigenous people of color (BIPOC).

No amount of unity messaging—We're All in this Together—can hide this country's racial wounds. But these messages do speak to the truth of the matter, that realizing a world free of oppression and marginalization requires all of us to do our part.

As Virginia emerges from lockdown and the Black Lives Matter movement grows, it is clear we cannot return to "business as usual" where historically marginalized and oppressed communities were left out of conversations that affect them. People of color must be centered in decision making about how to safely reopen Virginia and heal the wounds of systemic racism.

For white advocates like myself, now is an important time to follow, listen, and learn from transportation and mobility experts of color. Below you’ll find some resources to help with doing just that.

If you’re looking for articles to read about the intersection of race and transportation, here are just a few:

• A Tale of Two Truths: Transportation and Nuance in the Time of COVID-19
• Confronting Power and Privilege
• Judgement and Epiphany on Pittsburgh’s Number 79 Bus
• The Third Rail
• Walking While Black
• Why Public Transit Is an Equity Battleground
• Why the US Sucks at Building Public Transit

If you’re on Twitter, here’s a short list of advocates and experts to get you started:

• Keith Benjamin, director of the Charleston Department of Traffic and Transportation
• Tamika Butler, Director of Equity and Inclusion at Toole Design
• Dongho Chang, Seattle traffic engineer
• Azhar Chougle, Executive Director of Transit Alliance in Miami
• Veronica Davis, co-founder of Black Women Bike
• Louise Lockett Gordon, director of Bike Walk RVA Cam Hardy, president of Better bus Coalition in Cleveland
• Steven Higashide, author of Better Buses, Better Cities
• Helen Ho, co-founder of the Biking Public Project
• Lynda Lopez, organizer for The Untokening and advocacy manager for ActiveTrans
• Dan Reed, Montgomery County-area housing and transportation writer
• Courtney Williams, cycling equity consultant

If you’d like to learn how to center racial equity in any community engagement work you or your organization may be doing, consider attending Virginia Community Voice’s “Racial Equity in Community Engagement & Decision-Making” series.