Help Build Mt. Pleasant Transit Ridership Wed. May 30

Mount Pleasant can build transit ridership now on the #41 Coleman Blvd. Bus Route to help with the Wando Bridge emergency on Wednesday, May 30^th and use the results to increase the Town’s chances of obtaining improved permanent bus service in the upcoming CARTA budget process.  Volunteers and donations are needed to make the effort more successful.

Update- Today's canvass will go forward as planned. We'll stuff bags indoors until the weather breaks about 11 am, then send our teams out. We still need some volunteers. If you would like to help by making copies of the canvass handout you can download the printable PDF at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByXEuvB49CMSQVlEWnY3MFdKdVdSOHR3czJVNk91UldqZ3JV/view?usp=sharing  It's important to use heavy weight paper if you can due to the moist environment we're working in today. Bristol, cover stock, index paper or 32 pound are all find. Black and white or color are both welcome. If you want to just pay for copies you can make a tax deductible donation through the Coastal Community Foundation to our fund there. 

Transit Coaltion Meeting

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit will conduct a neighborhood transit canvass in Mount Pleasant on Wednesday. May 30 to help residents of the Old Village, Shem Creek and Mid Town areas take advantage of greatly improved bus service now being provided as part of the government response to the Wando Bridge emergency. The effort will target over 1,000 residences and businesses with location focused transit adopter information.  The outreach effort  will operate out of Smoke BBQ on Coleman Blvd. and begin at 9:55 am.  Smoke BBQ is on the #41 bus route and is served by the stop at the park in front of the Moultrie Middle School Athletic Fields.

There is a Facebook Signup for this event where you can find updates.

300% Increase in Bus Service

Banner Pitch at Folly Beach

Mount Pleasant residents in this area currently have bus service over three times as often as they did before the bridge was closed, Head ways on the #41 have been decreased from a dysfunctional 90 minutes to a useful 30 minutes. The route connects to the #40 Mount Pleasant Bus and #2 Express running over the bridge to downtown. When the overburdened Ravanel Bridge locks up of they just want a change of pace, the #41 bus also connects  with the Water Taxi departing from Mount Pleasant Waterfront Park to landings at Aquarium Wharf and Waterfront Park downtown.

It’s a plan to keep Mount Pleasant moving during the bridge closure, but it only works if residents know about it. A sidewalk survey of 40 people in the area Saturday, May 26 revealed that none of the 40 people talked to had specific knowledge of the new, more frequent #41 bus service. Most had some vague awareness that something was happening with the buses, but didn’t know where or when.

The Wednesday Canvass will cover the area roughly one half mile from the #41 Bus Route from where it crosses Shem Creek, along Colman Blvd. Ben Sawyer, Chuck Dawley, Midtown and around Wando Crossing shopping center. The area we’ll be doing outreach into is bounded on the North by Shem Creek and Highway 17. In includes over half the old village, which had an electric railway system linking it to Sullivan’s Island and the Isle of Palms a century ago. Work will begin at 9:55 am and continue until 5:55 pm and will be coordinated from the front porch of SmokeBBQ on Coleman Blvd. Volunteers are needed and welcome and should bring a hat, good walking shoes, a water bottle and a bag suitable for carrying literature. A reusable grocery bag works fine.

This area was the object of a smaller outreach effort seven years ago and proved very responsive to transit outreach.  It includes hundreds of food, beverage and hospitality jobs, the Boulevard Apartments and several other Apartment complexes, including some large new ones located in midtown.

Outreach Effort Launched Last Week

Last week, members of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit contacted over 1000 residences and businesses on the #40 and #41 Routes, including the area around Town Hall, the Greenhill Community, the Queensboro shopping center, Heritage Village and other surrounding communities.

Bus Stop at Mt. Pleasant Town Hall

Sponsorships of the three major outreach zones are available.  The area Between Shem Creek and Coleman Blvd. is available for $250; The Northern section of the Old Village (Roughly within a half mile of Coleman Blvd is $350 and the canvass area East of Chuck Dawley Blvd. is $225. Smoke BBQ is already providing work space and a BBQ lunch for the Crew.  Breakfast for the 15 person outreach crew  and 1500 door hanger bags are also needed. Tax Deductible financial donations in any amount are welcome and can be made to Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit Fund at the Coastal Community Foundation. https://coastalcommunityfoundation.org/donate-today/. Donors will receive a T-shirt with the Organizations “Together, We Go Forward!” logo and recognition online and in the event video. 

Staff With Plan Your Own Transit System Map

The closure of the Wando River Bridge reveals the weakness of a transportation system almost completely dependent on the automobile.  Mount Pleasant has been moving towards a true multi modal transportation for over seven years.  A partnership of Town Government, Business and Transit Advocates working under the name Hungryneck Straphangers tripled bus ridership before CARTA cut service in 2016.  Over 200 thousand dollars has been spent on  comfortable, attractive bus stops with shelters adapted for our hot, sunny climate. The #40 route recently added an access loop to serve East Cooper Hospital. Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, our regional transit advocacy organization continues to work actively with the town for more and better service, an effort expected to continue into this year’s CARTA budget negotiations.

Updates and More Information

Work on the canvass will be documented on the Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit Website at www.BFLTransit.com and on twitter using hashtag #chstransit. To contact the organizers call (843) 870-5299.

Bridge Emergency Mt. Pleasant Transit Outreach Begins Today - Wed. May 23

Real public transit has come to Mount Pleasant after years of service cuts as the result of the failure of the Westbound Wando River Bridge and bus service on some routes has been tripled. Ferries now link Mount Pleasant to Charleston. Now is the time to get the community on board, build ridership and hold on to this service into the future when the 29 year old bridge may need to be replaced.

Wednesday's outreach effort will begin before dawn with a special action to get Mt. Pleasant's attention. Watch our facebook feed and twitter, hashtag #chstransit for updates.

We'll be available to spek to the media all day at Mount Pleasant Town Hall. We need printing, plastic door hanger bags and meals for our crew and volunteers.

On Wednesday, May 23, Best Friends of Lowcountry Tranist has mobilized the entire Corps of Conductors to get the word out about these expended transit options. Starting at 9 am at Mount Pleasant Town Hall, we'll begin outreach across the town on a scale never before attempted by our organization with the goal of reaching over 1000 households and over 2000 potential tranist riders in a single day.

We've prepared our own outreach materials to improve upon the online materials released by CARTA. Due to the backup of East Cooper Print Shops, we need to crowd source making copies from offices and private individuals. Print shops appear to be the only businesses in Mt. Pleasant making more money at the moment, but their staff can't reliably get to work from where they live across the river. People in Mt. Pleasnat can't easily travel to N. Charleston to pick up printing. This means places like Staples are slammed with orders while staff to finish them can't get to work on time.

Except for acute moments, the mammoth traffic snarls of last week have vanished East of the Cooper. However that is because people aren't driving, moving or spending money. Local businesses have seen drastic reductions in business. The car economy has failed Mt. Pleasant and transit is needed to help get our community moving and save our local, family owned businesses. Unless you are a copy shop or a business attempting to replace goods or services traditionally purchased across the river, you aren't making money in Mt. Pleasant right now. With Spoleto and a critical tourism weekend ahead. The community has to act today.

Please go to our Facebook Feed, download the most recent version of the two page flyer, make copies and bring them to Mount Pleasant Town Hall Wednesday. Updates and corrections are expected. We requested printed materials from CARTA, but we don't know what, if anything, will actually arrive.

This is the version of the Flyer we had at the time this blog was published. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WbFZKpPEaEk86CWM4sGDPL5wsIFpk-YT/view?usp=sharing

We'll be working out of Mount Pleasant Town Hall all day, improving outreach materials and sending teams out to reach the community before the holiday weekend.  If we reach people now, they'll talk about it over the holiday and be ready to ride next week. If these new transit services aren't used, CARTA will cancel them.

Come by Mount Pleasant Town Hall at or after 9 am. Wear comfortable walking shoes, bring a bag to hold literature, a water bottle and a hat.  This is a make it up as you go along, do anything which might work effort under emergency conditions, so expect a bumpy ride. For immediate information call Best Friends Executive Director William Hamilton at (843) 870-5299.

Together, we'll go forward.

Break a bridge get better bus service

Fantasic increases in bus service begin tomarrow in Mt. Pleasant and on other routes to deal with the shut down of the Wando River Bridge. We'll have more buses, more often. Get that Transit App. and anjoy this wonderful increase in service. https://www.ridecarta.com/wandobridgeupdates

A new route for the #41 brings bus service (and paratransit) to parts of Mount Pleasant which have never had bus service. Service has also been increased on the #40 and #2 Express.  Routes are longer and run more frequently.

This is the largest increase in CARTA bus service since service restarted after the 2002 to 2005 shut down.

Social Justice to be Focus of New Tri County Transit Coalition Friday, May 25

North Charleston, SC- State Rep. Wendell Gaillard (Convening) with State Representative Marvin Pendavis, and Mayor Charles Duberry of Lincolnville, invite you to the Organizing Meeting of The Tri County Coalition for Transit Equity on Friday, May 25 - 11 am at North Charleston City Hall.

* see endnote on opinions in this post

The purpose of the coalition is to help guide the government planning process for the proposed Lowcountry Rapid Transit line and other transit projects towards investments which will enhance opportunity and quality of life for all residents of the Lowcountry

There is a facebook signup for the meeting at https://www.facebook.com/events/1953251274706507/

You can download a printable flyer to distribute about the meeting.

The purpose of the coalition is to help guide the government planning process for the proposed Lowcountry Rapid Transit line and other transit projects towards investments which will enhance opportunity and quality fo life for all residents of the Lowcountry

For more information on the current issues facing Lowcountry Public Transit see the links thoughout this post, including the list at the end or contact-

·         Rep Wendell Gaillard- 843-209-3123; wgilly@bellsouth.net

·         Rep. Pendarvis. Ph. (803) 212-6716; info@marvinpendarvis.com

·         Mayor Charles Duberry- 843.478.1348

·         William J. Hamilton, III- wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299

Congressman Mark Sanford sees the Citizens Committment to Tranist.

At the last CARTA board meeting a series of major planning meetings for the Bus Rapid Transit system all slated for the dead zone of summer, when governments traditionally push matters through actions they wish to minimize public involvement with. Two years ago, it was at that time of the year that County Council stripped the referendum question of all specific content regarding transit spending. The BRT discussion starts in this video at 57 minutes in. Do not skip these meetings. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/114957408

It’s clear organizing a social justice focused Transit coalition for the Lowcountry has to begin immediately.  Over the past 15 months Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, using the proceeds of a 20 thousand dollar Transit Center Grant, has been building the elements needed to bring the social justice community together on this issue.  Our original plan for Summer 2018 (as submitted to the CARTA board last week in this memo.) had been to wait to call for organizing a coalition until fall of 2018, but it’s now clear the planning effort for the critical BRT line may be largely complete by then, making getting needed changes made difficult or impossible.  We’ve been organizing activism on the Transit issue here for 7 years now and we’re well aware of the challenges of operating during the summer. 

The Lowcountry is committed to an economically unsustainable overbalance on the automobile. the build the new roads and lanes voters demand, we've neglected maintenance on structures like the Wando River Bridge, which is failing after 29 years for reasons noone in charge is willing to agree on but certainly include deferred maintenance. Those cables should have been replaced years ago. https://www.postandcourier.com/columnists/hicks-column-charleston-s-bridge-over-troubled-waters-is-just/article_6a085e96-5aa9-11e8-94d4-ab7a2a141352.htmlhttps://www.postandcourier.com/columnists/hicks-column-charleston-s-bridge-over-troubled-waters-is-just/article_6a085e96-5aa9-11e8-94d4-ab7a2a141352.html

Robot cars aren't going to save us either, but we'll get to that later.

We were anticipating advocacy regarding the CARTA budget and lack or transit access to the beaches this summer, working in cooperation with other social justice organizations. Those issues are an annual concern and a disappointment, like last year’s CARTA budget allowing 11 million dollars in bus operating funds to be used as an interest free loan for road construction, always have window for correction a year later. However the BRT line is a 350 million dollar project which will have a permanent impact on the Lowcountry. 

The impact of bad or unjust planning could be devastating on the region’s future.  The chronic I526 Johns Island Controversy and new Wando Bridge Failure mean highway projects will have even more pressure to raid transit funding. Weak participation in this summer’s meetings would be an invitation to have our transit system shoved into the “maybe later” pile. The status of this project is protected by a mere resolution passed by County Council and could be changed by a simply majority vote of council, which several members of County Council, including Chairman Vic Rawl, have insisted they have the right to consider.

We recognize that this new set of meetings may be just another round in the 20 year cycle of planning which goes nowhere, however we have indications that an engineering firm has a local office and has begun working on the project. There has been selective communication with favored local “stakeholders” not reliably connected with the social justice, food and beverage, labor, differently abled and minority communities. While these groups profess a nominal interest in alternative transportation, nearly all their constituents drive automobiles and they’re not reliably motivated to challenge power on important issues such as the sue of the “Low line” railroad corridor for transit access to the heart of the city.

We can improve regular bus service starting this year, provided local governments pass an appropriate CARTA budget. Mt. Pleasant rejected last year’s CARTA budget because it did not provide adequate bus service to the town’s residents. Unless this year’s budget provides significant improvement, we’ll fight it again. We need “gold standard” BRT which transports everyone from the Center of Summerville to the Center of Charleston without transfers or waiting, not merely because that would save us time, but because nothing else will really work. These are not things politicians facing an election in November who believe cars vote and transit riders don’t are going to go to the trouble of supporting unless it is clear that in November, there could be a high cost to neglecting it. We don’t’ want our BRT system to end up being an inadequate effort which disintegrates in a generation like the Wando River Bridge. It must be the spine of a real transit system for the Lowcountry which offers mobilty and dignity to all.

Rep. Gaillard, Rep. Pendarvis and Mayor Duberry ask representatives of all the organiztions working for a more just Charleston to join them Friday, May 25 at N. Charleston City Hall.

A preparatory online conference call will be held for supporters and members of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. the previous evening, Thursday, May 24^th. At 9:00 pm. Sign up online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/forward-online-conference-call-tickets-46193975424

* Note: the opinions set out in this statement are those of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. and the statement’s author William J. Hamilton. They may differ from the positions of Representatives Gaillard and Pendarvis as well as Mayor Duberry. For an accurate statement on their views, please contact them directly.

Carolina Carpocalypse- Buses and Boats are Better

When a broken bridge is adding an hour to your morning commute, you should park your car and take the bus. It saves time. You can use your time on the bus which would be wasted sitting in a car. I've been salvaging my extra 40 minutes on the bus thanks to free WiFi, mobile computing and the cell phone.

The steel cable which held the Westbound span of the Wando River Bridge together was installed in the 1980s and ratcheted to the high tension required to hold the bridge together during hurricanes and earthquakes. I-526 was the 1950s sanswer to our future.  We were promised free flow traffic conditions for our cars. Now we're being told a thirty year old bridge may be at the end of it's useful life.

Our traffic savior turned on the Lowcountry before it reached middle age. It’s likely to be a while before we get it back. If repairs are actually completed on June 11, it will be the first major emergency repair job in human history completed as planned without discovering other problems which need to be fixed.

Heavy steel cable like those needed used to be made by Americans at Georgetown steel, seventy miles up the coast but that mill is closed. The union men at Georgetown Steel who made the cables which holds up the Ravenel bridge are now frying burgers for tourists in Myrtle Beach. Replacement cable may have to come from far away, perhaps Europe or Asia. Daniel Island, North Mount Pleasant and the Wando Port Terminal have boomed on the promise of a quick direct trip Westward to the employment, interstates and business that is in N. Charleston.

I take the CARTA #40 bus from the stop at Shelmore Blvd. to the Visitor’s Center in Downtown Charleston to get to my law practice on Church St. After I reach the visitor’s Center, I transfer to the DASH 211, CARTA 20 or HOP bus to complete my trip. I leave home at 8:15 am, get on the $40 bus at 8:30 and walk into my law office at 8:54.  It’s a trip of 6.5 miles and takes, door to door, 39 minutes from my morning egg to my stack of active files. I’ve been making this trip, or one similar to it since 1978.

This morning we got up an hour earlier and boarded the #40 bus, which arrived on time.  Unfortunately, before the bus had gone a mile, traffic locked up on Mathis Ferry Road, the frontage road and Highway 17 South in Mt. Pleasant. I arrived at my law office at 8:45, meaning the entire trip now takes 90 minutes, over twice as long.  Of course, anyone who decided to try to reach Charleston or N. Charleston at their regular time must have faced a worse delay.

However, if we’re going to live in gridlock, it’s better on the bus. A professional Amalgamated Transit Union driver fights the traffic. A 31,500 pound 1996 Atlanta Olympics legacy American Flyer transit bus iin the hands of a skilled diver is vastly superior weapon for the war on the roads we’re committed to at the moment.

I am able to work on my tablet and phone. My son Jackson finished his homework on his laptop and submitted it online using the free WI-FI. I did 45 minutes of paid work on the bus this morning. I still had time to contemplate the vast disaster our over-reliance on cars and roads has brought us to which one can see in every direction from the top of the Ravenel Bridge.

You are going to lose an hour every morning and afternoon fighting the Carolina Carpopolypse if you are sitting in your car. You can use that hour on the CARTA bus.
The CARTA express bus blew past my stop, avoiding the traffic on the main highway by running on the frontage road. CARTA drivers at dispatch are working out ways to shave minutes off our express service and get the buses back to the time table which is their religion.

Just use Google Transit on Google Maps to figure a trip from a place you can park to where you need to go downtown or in N. Charleston. Make sure your phone and laptop are fully charged. You can’t take your morning beverage on the bus due to sanitation concerns, but you can talk with frinds, do your work, make your morning phone calls and look out at the view of gridlocked roads and open water which surrounds us in the Lowcountry.

That water wasn’t gridlocked this morning. Our creeks and rivers offer as a alternative transportation system just waiting to be used.  The new Daniel Island Ferry makes its first run Thursday.  There are boat landings all through North Mt. Pleasant which can be pressed into service now as ferry landings. We have a vast fleet of commercially licensed tour boats and water taxis tied up to our docks. Like the allies and Dunkurk, we must call up our fleet to save us from this emergency.

I honestly love the bus. I’m legally blind and I’ve never been able to drive. I’ve fought successfully as the Executive Director of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit to win the 2016 referendum, to get new bus stops built, to raise awareness of what transit can do for the Lowcountry and to successfully run the first CARTA Kino game at the Recovery Room on King St. I’ve done all of this work with the help of wonderful, often struggling people. I’ve grown to like a hard fight, against long odds shared with people who have problems.

Our problem is that the automobile and highway have finally betrayed us. We’re facing a week of rain and high tides with a broken bridge leading us into a major tourism weekend and the Spoleto Festival. Our politics is screwed up in ways the rest of this newspaper can tell you. Our country is screwed up. We wasted the muscle and treasure of the republic for 50 years importing Arab oil while we neglected our transit, industry and infrastructure. (It’s infrastructure week Ironcally.) Now the Satan must be paid for our autocentric sins.

However we are Charleston. We’ve been through Hugo, the Civil War, pestilence, earthquakes and worse. We’re a water going people and ferry’s and rivers were our transportation system for the first 150 years of our history. The rivers, boats and docks are still there. I could take a boat to work. I did it two years ago when the Ravened Bridge locked up. Once you are downtown the free DASH buses take you everywhere. Our elected leaders need to call up the fleet, shut down the excuse makers and put our community back on its boats.  The elected leader who steps up and leads this effort now will get a promotion in the next election. The ones who don’t will likely be sent home with an appreciation plaque.

Then I’ll need to decide if I want to take the bus from the Shelmore bus stop or the Ferry from the I’On Communty dock on Hobcaw Creek. It’s a choice I welcome. A little more freedom is a good thing for an American.

William J. Hamilton, III
Executive Director
Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc.
Home- 32 Sowell Street (I’On), Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Work- 171 Church St. Ste. 160, Charleston, SC 29401
(843) 870-5299

Bus2Beach 2018 Banner Production Begins Sunday Night, May 20

“CARTA- Bring Buses Back to Our Beaches”  won the voting by a plurality to be the slogan on this summer’s banner for the return buses to Folly Campaign. I rather favored “Return transit to the Atlantic” but we can always do another one later.

Here is the design for the banner. We’ll pencil in the lettering on Sunday evening, May 20 downtown at the Hamilton Law office at 8 pm. It’s quite an operation. We have a wooden skyhook that hangs off the railing from the second floor of the atrium balcony and the projector puts the image on the canvass rolled out on the first floor below. Volunteers using knee pads, (the floor is brick) pencil in the lettering using carpenter’s pencils.

Digital projector mounted on the Franke Bld. Skyhook

Of course once we have all of this gear set up, we can do a lot of layouts quickly. If you have a piece of hall runner canvass that you’ve blocked with regular light colored latex paint, we can bang out your design from your PDF at the same time.  Using painted canvass makes the entire operation work much better and the resulting work is more durable. We also have a grommet kit.  Grommets make the banner much easier to use and allow the use of corner stays, which are like the plastic inserts for shirt collars, but for banners.  To paint the canvass, just get some old white paint and roll it with a paint roller on the end of a broomstick.  They’ll give you all the recycled paint you want at the Charleston County recycling center on bees ferry road.

We need volunteers to help Sunday evening at 8 pm. We can meet on the sidewalk in front of the Franke Building at 8 pm and the work shouldn’t take more than an hour.

12 x 15 foot map of the low-country being painted 

We'll begin painting this banner at or near the Folly Beach Farmer's Market, weather permitting on Monday, May 21.

For more information call (843) 870-5299 or email wjhamilton29464@gmail.com. I don’t like texting and don’t count on good or consistent results from that or random comments on facebook If you want to change the world, pick up the phone and talk to people.

This method of hand painted banner production was taught to us by Greenpeace which makes some really huge ones this way. We first used it to produce the 12 x 15 foot canvass map of the lowcountry we use for school visits.

Move Transit Forward Starting Wed. May 16 at CARTA Board meeting.

Fifty thousand stationary automobiles are waiting on the highways, bridges and streets of the Lowcountry to go somewhere this morning because a reinforcement cable on the ageing Wando River 526 Bridgesnapped.  Offices are empty throughout the Peninsula. People take vacation days and sick leave on a Tuesday in May because they don’t want to spend four hours or more in traffic. CARTA is tied up in the same traffic as everyone else.  Betty Beus, the Coffee Shop on Church Street which employs the disabled and provides the extra Java I need today, can’t open.

Sylphide and Siggy at #ConChaCo

The future has arrived in a city fixated on the past and the needs of an elite few. It is ugly. Even the internationally awarded tourism experience is occasionally degraded by traffic, disappointing interactions with tourism workers who can’t successfully hide their anger at being victims of the community they enable and on one occasion last year by being taken hostage by a dishwasher who had just murdered a chef.

The good news is that this crisis has finally jump started ferry service between Daniel Island and downtown Charleston. Please get on board when it starts Thursday. See their website.

We’ve spent over three million dollars planning a regional transit system over the last 25 years. We have a shelf of unused studies and a rusty monorail model train set to show for it.

We need to start fixing this problem at Wednesday’s, May 16^th CARTA Board meeting.
We need to go out to Folly Beach for some time with the sea and we need to come back in the Fall and start buiding the transit system with the money we voted to spend on it two years ago.

On Wednesday at 1 pm The CARTA Board will meet in the Lonnie Hamilton County Services Building. Come and speak if you can. Buttonhole the board members before the meeting starts and make it clear that the time for excuses ended a year ago. We expect them to:

• 1.      Propose a budget that uses more of our half penny sales tax money to improve regular bus service instead of giving 11 million dollars of it away to fund suburban road construction including improved service to James Island, Folly Beach, N. Charleston and Mount Pleasant. If another starvation budget is proposed, We’ll oppose approval by the municipal governments as we did in Mt. Pleasant last fall, which rejected the CARTA Budget. We’re prepared to do that in six Cities and Towns now.
• 2.     

  

  Our new banner will be twice as large as this one.

  Start limited bus service to Folly Beach on the Friday before Memorial Day. We’ll be painting a banner at the Folly Beach Farmer’s Market on Monday evening and you can pick the wording which will appear on the massive 5 x 20 foot banner. If you miss the Market, you can drive out to Folly with the crawling traffic on the Saturday before Memorial day to see it staked up where the Folly Boat used to be. We’ll be the people in the gold T shirts having Mimosas under the pop up tent nearby. If the traffic and the mimosas don’t stop us, we’ll even go to the beach. Later, join us for the second Bastille Day at the Beach on Saturday, July 14.
• 3.      Fund, deploy and complete a nose to nose, boots on the ground outreach effort to make the HOP bus work. Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit is prepared to provide skilled outreach workers to get this done for One Thousand Dollars which can be donated to our fund at the Coastal Community Foundation. CARTA’s reliance on traditional media and top down communication has failed because of cultural and class issues in the F&B Community it’s interactions with management and ownership leaves them blind too. We’ll guarantee that the Hop Lot will be full four days a week by the end of Spoleto or return the money.

Grove Street Station, our busy #ConChaCo Info Center

#ConChaCo was a success. We talked to tens of thousands of people about riding transit downtown. However when it came to riding CARTA’s inadequate, once every 50 minutes #20 bus service, it was faster to walk, even for our own Best Friends of Local Transit Staff.  Our event partners at the Greek Festival, which was running fast, efficient shuttle buses enjoyed a massive increase in participation and revenue. People downloaded the transit app, but the amount of waiting required to use the bus and the slow speed of service left them wanting better bus service than we have and walking instead.  It was a day of missed opportunities for CARTA, when running an extra bus or two might have shown the area what real downtown bus service for local people would look like. 

Carol Explains planned BRT System at #ConChaCo

The Greek Festival Shuttle, the kind of downtown Transit CARTA ought to be running, was packed and making the festival a success, in part because we invited thousands of people to take transit downtown. Unfortunately, most took the private Festival shuttle and our own staff found out it was faster to walk several times that day, heading back from Market Street when the Transit App showed a 40 minute wait for the #20 and a 20 minute ride vs. a 30 minute walk back to the Recovery Room.

We’ve learned a lot in our first year of Transit Center grant funded advocacy. We’re ready to make a difference. Together, we go forward!

Gamble on Transit at #ConChaCo

Gamble on Transit and Traffic in Charleston Saturday to benefit F&B at the Recovery Room

SkyeLynn, former #chs F&B Worker at Fast and French

May 12– 5 to 8:30 pm- How to play ##ConChaCo CARTA Kino and win prizes

#ConChaCo is a day long festival built around Charleston’s free #20 bus route which can take you to the Recovery Room from the pressures of the South (29401) where tourists, prep, and history produce the stress to the North (29403) where family, bills and taking care of old houses before you are gentrified out of your neighborhood causes the stress. That’s three miles of stress with our reliable source of relief & PBRs in the middle.  On May 12, our bus will take you to the Farmer’s Market, Awakening Motion, the Greek Festival and the Night Market in addition to the all important ConChaCo Pub Crawl and Restaurant Hop to support F&B workers which we plan to win by turning the largest number of F&B support cards.

The Rules of CARTA Kino

1– Get a numbered ticket before 15 minutes of the next hour by making a purchase or filling out an F&B workers support card telling CARTA and the Mayor our F&B workers need better transit and parking options so they can get to and stay at work downtown. You can also just ask for one.

Download printable F&B support cards to share with customers and friends for deposit into the Fair Box at all the pubs and restaurants on the crawl. 

2. Deposit your ticket in one of the 12 containers based on when in the next hour you think the first Northbound #20 bus will pass (and hopefully stop near) the Recovery room.  Get a red cow bell when you deposit your ticket. If you think the bus will come at 12 after, deposit your ticket in the container which says 10-14.

3. Wait, this is a bar so get a beer, talk to your neighbors, or sit out on our front patio watching Charleston go by.  Hold on to that cow bell. When you see the Northbound #20 ring your cowbell so the official time keeper will know to look up from his beer and record the time. If you ride CARTA you already know how to wait. You can use an app to cut down on your waiting for the bus, but don’t count on that to win CARTA Kino because downtown traffic, like kino, is a game of chance. Prizes cannot legally include alchohol, but we’ll sell you all the drinks you want. It’s how we pay the rent.

4.If Sylphide’s (Pictured left) luck shines on you your ticket will be in the slot which wins for that hour. If you have the only ticket in that slot, you can keep the prize for yourself.  If you share the win with others you have two options: 1. Share the prize or 2. Draw from the winners for the final winner who gets to keep the prize.  Return your cow bell.

5. Start the game over, throw the old tickets away and start putting new ones in the slots because while buses in Charleston don’t come every 10 minutes, they do come eventually.

 Printable one page flyer on CARTA Kino at #ConChaCo

Learn More see www.BFLTransit.com

ConChaCo! Together We Go Forward!

1 day to #ConChaCo

#20 Bus Northbound at Market St. & Meeting

Note- This is the fifth of five public statements to be issued by Best Friends of Public Transit, Inc. (501c3) to prepare the community for Saturday’s ConChaCo event, a Charleston City Wide Transit Focused Festival along the #20 Upper King / Meeting Bus line linking the Farmer’s Market, Awakening Motion, The Greek Festival, the ConChaCo Pub Crawl & Restaurant Hop and the Night Market. Full information can be found in this previous media release. The Statements will be titled by our organization’s Motto: Together We Go Forward & ConChaCo and will announce a 6 pm event each day to help create better transit in the Lowcountry. Friday’s word is “#ConChaCo!”

Media should monitor the hashtag #ConChaCo for further updates on the event. We’ll also be updating our Facebook page at www.BFLTransit.com online.  Load The Transit App on your smartphone now and get control of your transit experience.

Friday Reminder- ConChaCo press Conference with the Executive Director of Americans for Transit at 10 am at Charleston’s Main Library on Friday morning.  ConChaCo kickoff party at the Greek Festival starting at 6:30 pm

Together, We Go Forward. CARTA has promised to send as many buses as we can fill Saturday. We’re going to try to fill all the buses they can send until the #20 grows from a sleepy neighborhood bus route to a mighty urban backbone of public mobilty that links the Holy City North and South. The critical time is in the morning when we need to fill buses to standing room only status to get CARTA to send more. Let’s grow until we can really go with fast, frequent service. You’ll find brand new benches at many of the bus stops on the line thanks to the new Charleston City Transportation director Keith Benjamin.

ConChaCo is a cooperative effort of people, organizations and businesses along the three mile #20 bus route, running from Joseph Floyd Manor on Mt. Pleasant Street to Broad Street in our tourism district along King & Meeting Streets. Over 30 different organizations and businesses are involved.  Today they’re at all sorts of different levels of understanding in our confused and busy community but they’ll come together Saturday when the #20 starts running, just like Transit helps our community come together every day. Use the Transit app to track the bus. The additional pusher buses CARTA may add to the route won’t be on the printed schedule, but they’ll be displayed in real time on the app.

Here are some pointers to make your #ConChaCo move you forward.

Emblem design by RustinJones

Park all day in the new HOP lot for five dollars and take the free HOP bus to ConChaCo.  Park on Morrison Drive and the HOP bus will take you directly to the Charleston Visitor’s Center where you can visit the Free Best Friend Museum and get on the 20 to reach all the ConChaCo activities. https://www.ridecarta.com/route/7-hop-shuttle/  You can find and monitor ETAs for the HOP on the Transit app

Watch #ConChaCo on Twitter. Paper can’t keep up with everything that is happening. People were joining the ConChaCo effort yesterday and that’s going to continue through to Saturday night. Look for special offers and events up and down the bus line.  We’ll update everyone about what’s happening using the hashtag. Update us and everyone else when you make a ConChaCo distovery.

Go Greek for free. We’ll have free specially marked admission tickets to the Greek Festival at our Information tent in the Food Lion Parking lot at the Corner of Grove Street and King (Next to Scott’s BBQ), Every 48^th person entering the festival with one of these tickets wins a free Greek Dinner made by the ladies of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. #20 Stop is Congress Street, just follow the sound of the music on block South and West.

Gift Baskets at the Night Market- Some people going to the Night Market will receive special gift baskets from the vendors there. #20 stop Market Steet.

CARTA Kino at the Recovery Room- Get tickets and bet on when the next CARTA bus will pass Charleston’s Iconic Local Dive bar which sells more PBR than any other bar in the Western Hemisphere. Ring your red cow bell when you see the bus coming. We did one round last night and a lucky patron won a plate of chicken wings and bragging rights. The Bus passed about 2 minutes after it’s scheduled stop, but on Saturday additional, unscheduled “pusher buses” many be running. #20 stop is Line St. Learn how to play CARTA Kino.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xxo--lzlg5XwdRygCfuEk4v1nYVnPoWV/view?usp=sharing

Keep your powder dry. Charelston’s oldest public building, the Powder Magazine, will upgrade your regular Saturday paid admission to a year long membership if you mention ConChaCo on Saturday. One lucky visitor will win a drawing for a school group guided tour of the museum. #20 stop in Chalmer’s St.

Bike for a year for $5.  Holy Spokes will be selling year long bike share system limited memberships to income qualified people for five dollars Saturday and regular memberships as well. They’re going to be set up right next to our information center at King and Grove Street. #20 Bus Stop, Grove.

Charleston Electric Streetcar Token, ca 1911

Support our F&B Workers by filling out a F&B support card. You’ll find red “Fair Boxes” along the bus route. Fill out one of our support CARDS asking for better parking and transit for F&B Workers and we’ll take them to the Mayor and CARTA Board. All the pubs and restaurants on the Pub Crawl and our information center will have cards and fair boxes. (they’re actually sort of pink, but that’s what you get when you buy stuff on Amazon.

Get a Best Friend of Charleston ConChaCotail at South Seas Oasis during the pub crawl. It’s supposed to be based on our famous railroad locomotive and like the locomotive it has a lot of fire in it’s boiler mixed with a little water. Be careful, too many Best Friends and you might blow up like the historic engine did. It’s a powerful drink.

ConChaCo Buttons Each on is Different

Make a ConChaCo button at our information center. Color your own unique ConChaCo button and we'll use our button press to turn it into a memento of the first ConChaCo festival. We'll have the button blanks and materials you need at our information center at Grove and King Streets from nine to five pm.  We'll also have Bus to Beach button blanks and many other options.

Ride the Bus- Everything depends on having a huge amount of people ride the #20 bus. The more people we get on board, the more buses CARTA will send and more often the buses will come. Once that happenes, more people that will be able to ride and CARTA will send more buses. Let’s show each other how we can build up transit from a sad necessity to a powerful force that can liberate Charleston from traffic congestion and open the way to construction of the Bus Rapid Transit line to the Tech Neck, N. Charleston, Ladson, Lincolnville and Summerville. The bus is up to us and it works faster and better when Charleston uses it.

Remember to ConChaCo when you see friends at the stops or on the bus. It’s a fist bump and a hearty ConChaCo!. It’s the official greeting or our Transit focused festival.

For more information contact Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or call (843) 870-5299. Leaving comments on obscure corners of Facebook won't get it done. We don't believe in texting either.

Forward!- How Best Friends is Going to Push Improvements in Transit for the rest of this year.

Forward!- How Best Friends is Going to Push Improvements in Transit for the rest of this year.

2 days to #ConChaCo

Note- This is the forth of five public statements to be issued by Best Friends of Public Transit, Inc. (501c3) to prepare the community for Saturday’s ConChaCo event, a Charleston City Wide Transit Focused Festival along the #20 Upper King / Meeting Bus line linking the Farmer’s Market, Awakening Motion, The Greek Festival, the ConChaCo Pub Crawl & Restaurant Hop and the Night Market. Full information can be found in this previous media release. The Statements will be titled by our organization’s Motto: Together We Go Forward & ConChaCo and will announce a 6 pm event each day to help create better transit in the Lowcountry. Thursday’s word is “Forward!”

Slipping Backward, Putting the CARTA gearbox into Forward

On election night in November 2016 the staff and volunteers of the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign, many young and full of idealistic energy, believed that once 600 million dollars in funds for public transit were obtained through the half penny sales tax that better transit would be on the way, rapidly and with the full support of CARTA and local governments. We were wrong.

CARTA had answered every demand for improvement with the claim “we have no money.”  It turns out the obstacle to better transit was never cash, but commitment. The Lowcountry has an inadequate public transit system because that serves the interests of both the old plantation legacy aristocracy and the new Comeyas with Cash. Slow, infrequent transit is a tool for controlling a restless and increasingly angry population. 

The people selling off what remains of their inherited wealth to maintain appearances and send their kids to college (from which most will refuse to return to Charleston) and the people showing up to buy trophy houses with their millions don’t want to share the Lowcountry with a working class that has the time and energy to demand a fair share of the money, power and space left before the ocean starts covering the land.

Two days after the election, at a meeting of CARTA Rider’s advisory board, a group of transit riders the authority uses as an occasional sounding board required by federal regulations, CARTA Director Ron Mitchum declared his job was to “control expectations.”  At the next CARTA board meeting a letter painstaking drafted by the younger members of the Tranist Complete the Penny Staff requesting a serious sit down meeting about the future was ignored.

Then they were talking about finishing the Bus Rapid Tranist line to Summerville by 2023. Today, a year and a half later the timeline has slipped backwards two years.

A set of badly needed bus shelters funded years ago with hundreds of thousands of dollars form the state thanks to the efforts of State Senator Marlon Kimpson and City of North Charleston Transit didn’t meet hurricane standards and had to be rejected. We don’t know if that effort was in the order or manufacturer yet. in the Lowcountry isn’t going forward, its in reverse. 

After we exposed serious defects in the Hurricane evacuation system last fall, the same collection of inadequate and inappropriately located signs await the emergency of the coming storms.
We’re facing another summer without transit service to any of our beaches while CARTA Chairman Mike Seekings says “someday.”  That’s no comfort to the parent with a rare day off from their downtown F&B job who would like to take their child to see the ocean at Folly Beach.

We're seeing Some Improvement

New Bus Stop at Mt. Pleasant town hall. 

CARTA and local governments do surrender improvements when the pressure is high enough. The new HOP Bus gives downtown workers a $5 a day place to park and a quick ride to work. The CARTA board  is already talking about cuts to the service if the lot doesn’t fill soon. But our request for pamplets to hand out as part fo our three week promotional effort for ConChaCo, which put 150 staff hours of face to face outreach on the sidewalks of the Lowcountry got about 200 brochures.

Benches appeared along the upper end of the #20 Bus line which is the backbone of Saturday’s ConChaCo festival this week. It’s cast iron progress you can sit on.

Some new buses have been added to CARTA’s fleet, allowing the less reliable ones to be retired to the reserve lot.

We continue to have some great drivers who push CARTA’s aging vehicles through our increasingly congested traffic. They’re getting recognized more often and hopefully their pay will improve. You can make more money pulling containers to and from the port and they don’t try to beg to make the trip for free.

We’ve burned through over half a 20 thousand dollar grant from Tranist Center in the last year and have talked to over 50 thousand people about better transit in the Lowcountry. We make more noise at lower cost per unit of hell raised than any transit advocacy group in the US, in part because I don’t get paid for the 20 hours a week he puts in as Executive Director.  Julia, my sainted wife does get the standard $10 an hour stuff pay for her time and 14 cents a mile for the miserable driving she does. Knight Printing, the Turning Lef Project (where former prisoners rehabilitating themselves trough job and life skills training make our gold T-shirts) and the Mount Pleasant Staples copy center get paid full price.  So does Kelly’s BBQ on our many trips to the north end of the future Bus Rapid Transit line on Highway 78.

What we're going to do to bring better transit to the Lowcountry this year.

Our grant making friends tell us to keep working and they’ll keep sending money. We’re going to find out if their telling the truth by years end.

1. We’re going to push to bring transit back to Folly Beach throughout the summer, beginning with a community paint of a 5 x 20 foot banner demanding Buses be returned to our Beaches we’ll unfurl where the Folly Boat used to be on Memorial Day.
2. We’re working to establish our first unit of Guardians of the Line based in Lincolnville to push for faster progress on the Bus Rapid Tranist line. It will cover the section of the line between I26 and the County Line, including the future at the Exchange Park Fairgrounds and Lincolnville at Royle Ave. To prepare for that, we’re going to demand better regular bus service to the end of the line CARTA stops on Highway 78 on the #10 Rivers Ave. line and the miserable bench and shelterless #3 Summerville Express bus stop at Dorchester Village where people have been standing in the rain waiting for buses for the past four years.
3. We’re going to fight to build on the flawed but important option of park and ride access to downtown Charleston by actively promoting the HOP Bus and fighting any attempts to cut service until it has been operating for one year. We’ll be working with the now organized F&B Workers Community to do that.
4. We’ll be pushing for better bus service for the East Cooper area, Daniel Island and James Island. We’re going to actively resist another year of County Councils “Pay Go” plan which robbed transit of 11 million dollars in current bus operating funds so it could be used to build roads by asking local municipal governments to reject the proposed CARTA budget as Mount Pleasant did last year.
5. We’re going to go forward using strategies and approaches we’ve learned from activists in New York, Seattle, Oakand, Houston and Portland, Or through our friends like Ben Ross, Americans for Transit and all those smart, good looking kids who wear smart watches and go to seminars with us in the shining towers of Seattle thanks to our support from Transit Center.
6. We will continue to begin our staff meetings by pouring a pitcher of sweet tea into the ground, because the polite, patient approach to transit leaves too many discouraged people shivering in the rain for buses which come once an hour or even less often in places like James Island. My yard is a mess anyway, so it doesn’t matter if sweet tea kills the grass.
7. ConChaCo is Saturday, May 12. We’re asking everyone who can to come downtown, even in your car if you have to. You can park in the HOP lot for $5 all day. Let go of the steering wheel and grab Charleston. Everythigns on the free #20 bus line.  Enjoy the Farmer’s Market, Awakening Motion, The Greek Festival (we’ve got free passes at our #ConChaCo information tent at the Corner of Grove and King next to the food lion and every 48^th person to use one get a free Greek dinner from the ladies of Holy Trinity Church), our Pub Crawl, CARTA Kino and the Night Market (free gift baskets for lucky customers. Lets not lose our connection to our historic urban core because cars don’t function well there any longer.
8. ConChaCo is the celebration that is also a demonstration but instead of making signs with magic markers which say, “Improve Transit” we’re throwing a three mile long party which offers an indea of what a transit enabled Holy City would feel like. Drop by our information center and make your own brightly colored button. My wife Julia will work the button press for you at the lordly compensation of $10 an hour. I’ll be working for free. Most of your staff and volunteers, aged 82 to 8 will be working that day. Sylphide, our Fairy of mobility will wield her staff of energy and present her shield of community throughout the city that day.  You can count on her picking up a PBR at the recovery room later for CARTA Kino. As we point out to the shocked politicians she dresses down about her miserable struggle with the transit system, she’s a fairy, not an angel.

Come ConChaco with us Saturday. Together, we’ll go forward!

END END END

Sigute "Siggy" Meilus

Contact William Hamilton at (843) 870-5299 or wjhamilton29464@gmail.com. More information at www.bfltransit.com onlne. We’ll hold a press conference on ConChaCo on Friday, May 11 at the Charleston County Main Library on Calhoun Street at 10 am with Sigute "Siggy" Meilus, national Executive Director of Americans for Transit, who will arrive in Charleston on Thursday afternoon and join Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit on CARTA for the ride into the City.