Living Hope advocates for a more equitable and just society. The ability to get to where we need to go, mobility, is of utmost importance. The voters of Houston just approved a 3.5 billion bond to improve transportation in the greater Houston area. Living Hope members attended today's Metro board meeting and advocated for:

• Recruitment of bilingual personnel that reflects the diversity of the population that METRO (and MetroLift) serves, especially in supervisory positions. We request that Metro name a designated person who is bilingual that can interact with community. We also request better training for new drivers so that they can better serve their riders.
• Metro better serve more vulnerable populations such as people with disabilities. Many buses are ADA compliant. Great. But there are other factors that need improvement such as better access to bus stops, more overhead shelters at stops and clearly-marked street crossings. Imagine not being able to access that ADA-compliant bus because someone in a wheelchair cannot access the bus stop. It happens everyday.
• We want to work together and be proactive about transportation. We ask to create a truly responsive process for community to interact with Metro. This should be an on-going relationship not just an invitation event every few months. Proactive and not so reactive, with mutual accountability. Have a tool, interactive, where community can see progress. If there is already such a tool we need to know about it and be shown how it works.

We invited Metro to review how METRONext priorities are going to be organized because for us it is a matter of quality of life, security and in some cases, life or death. Metro board accepted our invitation to spend some time with us to learn first-hand what it looks like for us using Metro. We look forward to working with Metro.