Hello newsletter readers,

Late last month, the story of a Raleigh, N.C., bus stop and it's most frequent visitor made its way around the internet. Lenora Southerland, an older adult and frequent transit user, experienced quite unpleasant waiting conditions at her bus stop. There were no facilities at her neighborhood stop; she brought two white buckets to serve as a makeshift bench so she wouldn't have to stand while waiting for her bus. A suitable solution. A neighbor, Jessica Peacock, saw Lenora's bench and thought there should be something better. Jessica tweeted at the local transit agency detailing the stop's plight and requested that permanent infrastructure be installed.

From there, The News and Observer wrote up about the situation and furthered the momentum started by Lenora and Jessica, creating enough visibility of the stop for the agency to consider installing a permanent bench there (watch the video of the installation in the Transportation Media of the Month section) and to consider pushing ahead with installing infrastructure at other bus stops system-wide. Lenora's story shows the value of rider & community feedback in improving service. The new bench was the result of community members making their voices heard on how conditions should be better. Making sure those in transit are more proactive in involving the community in the design of services can help make certain that the service works for them.

NCMM's 2021 Community Mobility Design Challenge grantees, when selected, will do just that. Teams consisting of a wide-swath of community members, importantly including those the designed service is intended for, work towards making a service that responds to the needs and wants of ridership. With the July 12 deadline for applying for these grants fast approaching, think about your community and how the opportunity to work towards a community-designed service, in a more equitable decision-making manner, can help prevent the need for tweets to be the push for change.

One more quick note: NCMM would like to thank all the transit systems and mobility management professionals for their work in linking individuals to vaccinations. Your work has been an excellent demonstration of your passion for helping people and ensuring they get where they need to go. NCMM will continue to post examples of this type of work in its "Transit's Essential Role in the Vaccination Effort" table, so if you have new examples to add, send them in! (Also, see the acknowledgement of your excellent work from the DOT Secretary, below.)

Additionally, NCMM's survey of the month is designed to ask you, our audience, how helpful our tools are for you. This month's survey repeats last month's and focuses on our advanced search engine, which allows you to search a topic across all of our offerings - from our Daily News to our webinars and beyond - as well as those of the other FTA-funded TA centers! Take the two-question survey below. We greatly appreciate your feedback!

Stay well,

Kirby Wilhelm

(202) 489-6020

The National Center for Mobility Management (NCMM), supported by the Federal Transit Administration, is now accepting applications for its Community Mobility Design Challenge 2021 grant. These grants will support communities in creating innovative mobility solutions for community members who face transportation barriers in advancing their personal well-being. Grants of up to $25,000 will be available as well as NCMM facilitation through the entire process.

NCMM hosted a pre-application webinar on May 27 in which the key activities of the grant, application process, and key elements of human-centered design and ethnographic interviewing were discussed. You can visit the webinar recording and download the application on the grant's page. The deadline for responses is July 12, 2021, 11:59 p.m. ET.

During this webinar, three mobility management professionals, coming from a diverse range of backgrounds and geographical locations, shared their perspectives. Insights, expertise, and experiences on the current state of mobility management, challenges faced in the wake of the COVID pandemic, and what the future of coordinated transportation will look like across suburban, urban, rural, and tribal areas following the restoration and stabilization of human-centered transportation services post COVID. 

On June 10, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration, along with the National Center for Mobility Management, offered a free webinar for HUD's Region 4 EnVision Centers on how to address mobility and transportation to support community needs.

Mobility management professionals will have a double-header Tuesday, Nov. 9, at this year's CTAA EXPO, which will be in person! In the morning, you are invited to a half-day Mobility Management Forum from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The morning session will feature two panel presentations: one in which former NCMM grantees talk about the value human-centered design techniques have brought to their work, and the other in which practitioners discuss technological innovations in transportation. Register at https://ctaa.org/expo-2021-home.

In the afternoon, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., mobility management practitioners will join other transportation professionals for an "unconference" on Mobility Innovation. For this session, the attendees drive the agenda-bringing forth issues they would like to learn and share with others in three fast-paced 50-minute sessions. If you have suggestions for other presentations or workshop content, please email them to Amy Conrick.

Begin preparing now to showcase a poster of your work on the CTAA EXPO Trade Show Floor. The poster sessions give mobility management practitioners a chance to shine, sharing their innovative practices in an informal setting with all EXPO attendees. $500 scholarships will be provided to all accepted poster presenters. You can find out more on the 2021 Mobility Management Poster Session webpage.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration (FTA) released a statement highlighting the more than 350 transit systems providing free transportation to vaccination sites or using their transit station, facilities, and vehicles as vaccination sites.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has created a resource, How to Build Transit Workers' Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines, that is now available through the FTA. It is also linked directly from NCMM's homepage.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials recently hosted an event focused on the convergence of public health and transportation. NCMM's Amy Conrick presented during the event. You can find the recording and transcript here.

The Transit Planning 4 All project, funded by the Dept. of Human Services' Administration for Community Living, hosted a webinar on Tuesday, June 8 at 4 p.m. EDT, focused on rural on-demand and demand responsive transit solutions. The webinar featured Valerie Lefler of Feonix-Mobility Rising and Kevin Chambers of Full Path Transit Technology discussing their experiences with related rural transit services. You can visit the webinar recording, transcript and presenter slides on the TP4A website here.

This newly released guidebook can help transit agencies understand where data can help them gather insights and how it can be collected, managed, and interpreted best. Read the guidebook here.

The guidebook on adopting green energy will help non-engineers understand the considerations agencies should make to set up systems for success. Read the guidebook here.

FTA funded eight Rides to Wellness demonstration projects in 2016 to identify and test promising, replicable public transportation health care access solutions that support increased access to healthcare, improved health outcomes, and reduced health care costs. You can download the recently released program evaluation report here to learn more about the successes of the demonstration projects funded under the Rides to Wellness program.

Here's the video of the installation of the new bench at Lenora's bus stop as mentioned in the newsletter introduction. A shelter is the potential next step in the evolution of Lenora's stop.

As always, send your transportation photos, videos, and infographics (and citizen-initiated transit infrastructure improvements) to the NCMM at [email protected].

Mobility Management News is the newsletter of the National Center for Mobility Management (NCMM), which is operated jointly by the Community Transportation Association, the American Public Transportation Association and Easter Seals under a cooperative agreement with the Federal Transit Administration.