“How We Roll” celebrates Metro Transit employees who commute and travel to many other destinations using transit or by biking, walking or carpooling.
How do you get around?
I predominately get around by walking and taking transit. I’ve lived in the North Loop now for several years, enjoying short walks to and from work at Metro Transit. For other trips, I take light rail or the bus. And I use Evie and Hourcar (car share) for longer trips I can’t easily use transit for, like grocery shopping or going out of town. When I travel, I also like to use transit and avoid renting a car when I can. I’m looking forward to a trip to Hawaii and taking transit there.
How did you become so multimodal?
I grew up on a dairy farm outside of Grand Forks but when I started at the University of Minnesota in 2012, I didn’t have a car. I’d never taken transit before, and it was a bit of a bumpy road at first. But I quickly grew to love it, thought the U Pass was the greatest thing ever, and am now a very unapologetic transit enthusiast. Where I used to see having a driver’s license as having freedom, I now feel like I have even more freedom because I don’t have to own and maintain a car to get around.
What do you like most about using transit?
The biggest thing for me is not having to worry about focusing on the road. When I take transit, I have a professional doing that for me, and I can relax, read, look at TikTok and do other things that are a lot more enjoyable than thinking about the car in front of me.
How does taking transit impact the work you do?
Because I regularly take transit, I look at everything I do from the lens of a transit rider and ask, ‘How is a rider going to interpret this?’ Working in transit information, little things can get missed if we don’t stop to think about how it’s going to affect people. The way I think about it, the work I do is going to affect thousands of other people – including me.