.JPG)
Update- Our report on Congresswoman Nancy Mace, the location of her new office off the transit system on Daniel Island and our effort to sensitize her to the importance of Transit on Feb. 4. Read the Report on Nancy Mace and Transit.
On January 28 at 5 pm the Trump Administration unilaterally and illegally shut off all Transit funding across the US. Unfortunately, due to the shutdown in communication from Federal agencies ordered by Trump, we do not have timely or complete information on the extent to which shutting down nearly all Federal Grant funding will impact CARTA and Tri County Link. However, these grants are critical both to ordinary operations and to construction of the Lowcountry Rapid Transit project, which voters approved in Charleston County in 2016. See national CNN report.
Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit will launch a program to warn local workers and business owners of the risk Trump's defunding of transit and connected affordable housing initiatives poses to the Lowcountry's tourism and medical sectors on Monday, Feb. 3. The effort will continue through Transit Equity Week, which honors the memory of Rosa Parks, a woman who changed the world by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery Alabama. On the birthday of Rosa Parks, Tues, Feb. 4, Transit Equity Day we'll join a national town hall on public transit in the Carolina's from a meeting room at the Charleston County Library on Calhoun Street from 12 noon to 2 pm. We're also inviting local churches, businesses and organizations still willing to make a stand to share Rosa's pancakes that week, using her personal recipe.
We will deliver notices to prominent Republican controlled businesses and organizations asking them to intercede on behalf of Lowcountry transit and housing initiatives with Trump to preserve their own supply of low cost labor. We will identify them to the transit riding public and report on their response. We will also ask the public to contact their Federal representatives in the House and Senate.
Please expect this information to be updated, like many executive orders erupting from the Administration, this decision is incompletely explained and vague in application. We are willing to respond to questions through blue sky at wjhamilton29464.bsky.social; email at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299
We will be maintaining a blog on this issue at https://bfltransit.blogspot.com/2025/01/dont-give-up-your-seat-lowcountry-sc.html
While Trump did carry SC in the Presidential Election, we're certain local Republican business owners never intended this outcome. Charleston's economy hinges on low cost, transit supplied labor from areas of relatively affordable housing to the downtown centers of our tourism and medical industries. 65% of CARTA passengers are traveling to and from work. Approximately 20% are tourists on DASH buses putting money into our tourism economy. Downtown Charleston's tourism and medical districts can't accommodate the amount of traffic and parking needed to transport these people to and from work. Most of these jobs don't pay enough to support the cost of maintaining an automobile while still paying astronomical local rents.
Trump's policies may strangle CARTA, kill the LCRT and shut down the desperately needed plans to build affordable housing in N. Charleston, the one place where a sustainable population of local service workers might be maintained. While low paying tourism is a lousy way to build an economy, the value of our downtown area's economy and commercial real estate is now bottomed on it. Without people to make beds, wash dishes and treat medical patients, businesses will collapse. We already have business locations all over Charleston which can't operate at full capacity because people to do the work just aren't available. A multi million dollar restaurant space like that at the corner of Market and East Bay Streets is worthless without reliable cooks, dishwashers and bus boys.
.jpg){kind=spacer}
The Lowcountry's economy is committed to a future where much of it's income is generated from tourism and medical services. These services are not nor will they ever be possible without transit and housing for service workers. A robot McDonalds may be possible, but nobody spends a thousand dollars per day on a vacation to eat at one. Trump's sudden and illegal interruption of grant funding threatens those jobs, those employers and the value of the real estate they lease or own.
Even in a political world where the happiness and dignity of the Lowcountry's service workers isn't valued by those in power, their Republican bosses must have their work to generate income. Since President Trump only values the opinions and needs of his MAGA supporters, it is up to them to make sure their supply of workers remains available. If we are to continue to sell moonlight and magnolias in the City Rhett Butler was from to tourists and to supply medical care to those who need it, we must make sure housing and transportation for those people remains available.
Right, Social Media Banner Promoting Rosa Pancake Effort, from 2022.
