 |
| Charleston Trolly Token, ca 1911 |
Charleston, SC- Money, Mutual Knowledge and Mobility are
some of what makes Charleston work. On Saturday, May 12, ConChaCo will help
your business, organization or family get more of all three by reinvigorating
the power of our 151 year old King Street transit line which has gone from
horse drawn street cars, to electric trolleys to diesel buses from the 1996
Olympics and may be on the way to electrically powered Pro Terra transit
vehicles made in Greenville. SC.
ConChaCo will use our existing, free #20 Upper King St.
Meeting St. CARTA Bus line to line five major community events: The Farmer’s
Market on Marion Square; Awakening Motion; Greekfest; The ConChaCo Pub Crawl
& Restaurant Hop and the Night Market. See the ConChaCo Map & Event
Guide.
It’s all enabled by the new Transit App which allows
everyone to get ETAs for their bus on their phone. The event has been designed
with an open architecture you, your business or your organization can connect
to. The person to person distribution of 5 thousand detailed programs in the
city has already begun. What can you do if you didn’t get on the “official
program?”
For a start, next year, answer our emails, but relax you can
still be involved.
Mary Smith, appearing as Sylphide, the spirit of mobility,
will be present at ConChaCo.
We’ll be focusing our day of informational effort around the
#conchaco hashtag on Twitter and social media. Tweet your sales, special offers
and activities on or within a few blocks of the bus route to the twitterverse
using the #ConChaCo hashtag. We’ll be monitoring and sharing what comes in at
our information tent at the Corner of Grove Street and King (The corner of the
Food Lion Parking lot), right by the bus stop.
If you want to go old school, bring printed paper literature
to our information center and we’ll distribute it for you. Discount coupons are
a good idea. Make sure it’s secured with a rubber band. What you print should
mention which bus stop people need to get off the #20 at and provide a map or
clear directions from there to your event.
Make sure you get copies of whatever you’re printing to local media and
that they understand your activity is part of ConChaCo. Consider putting up directional signs from
the stop to your event.
FRS Radio. We’ll be monitory and making announcements about
ConChaCo on FRS Radio code 3-3.
We’ll be distributing a flyer of updated information at our
tent which can list your event or activity. The cost for a listing is $25. (The
cost to be on the 5000 full color guides we’re handing out was zero.)
We have several organizations looking for indoor locations
along the route for activities that day. If you would like to host an art
exhibit, informational presence on healthcare or craft activities related to
transit, it can help raise your organizational profile and draw more people to
your location. Just contact us.
Please comply with all applicable city ordinances in your
activities and keep us in the loop. We’ll do what we can to drive people,
opportunity and connections to your ConChaCo Connected activity.
Hard Work for a Better Mobile Future
 |
| Transit Campaign, Labor Day, 2016 |
151 Years ago a black women in Charleston named Mary Bowers
gained the “right to ride” for all when she challenged the segregated horse
drawn streetcar system in Charleston. She protested and filed a formal
complaint with the United States Army.
Mary understood the power of transit to connect community. The location
where Mary did that is right on the #20 bus route, at Marion Square. The day
she did that was also a celebration of freedom, as the Civil Rights act swept
the debris of slavery from the post Civil War South. Mary saw no reason for the
promises of freedom and equality made to her that day to end at the sidewalk.
She believed they should move on the streets as well.
We’ll remember Mary on the 151st anniversary of her victory
for human dignity on Thursday, May 3rd at 6 pm on the East Side of Marion
Square, across from Citadel Square Baptist Church. Following a short
commemoration, we’ll walk over to the Gaillard Center for a screening of
Citizen Jane, a documentary about Jane Jacobs whose ground breaking book The
Life and Death of Great American Cities and activism killing Robert Moses’s
cross Manhattan Freeway project helped revive an understanding of the value of
transit and urban living. While we’re doing that, Ben Ross will be on the last
stop of his All Uphill for Transit tour helping organize a campaign for better
transit in Greenville, SC after stops in Columbia and Charleston (May 1, 7 pm
at the Longshoreman’s Hall.)
Connect with ConChaCo.
Created a Transit Connected Charleston on May 12.
Contact #ConChaCo
William J. Hamilton, III
Executive Director, Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc.
(501c3)
www.bfltransit.com
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299
No comments:
Post a Comment