Transportation
Who Wins When a City Gets Smart?
Last year, Columbus, Ohio, won a $50 million grant for high-tech transportation innovation, with a promise to help its most vulnerable families. Now some worry their needs are fading into the background.
COLUMBUS, OH.— Katrina Lewis could feel impatience radiating off the bus as she struggled to collapse the stroller. That was the rule on Columbus transit, the driver said, even with small children in tow.
That meant extracting her newborn and two-year-old from the big doublewide baby carrier as the four-year-old stood next to her. All the passengers seemed to stare as Lewis bent over the bulky stroller, baby gripped in one arm, crying. Her bad hip ached under the strain. She thought she heard someone on the back of the bus shout her name: Come on, Katrina!