I work downtown. I personally take the bus to work and walk.
While getting feedback from our paid intern’s experience, one complained about having to pay for parking.
Because I naturally always support the interns, I pushed for that perk. Why shouldn’t they get all the help they need? They’re young, they have a busy life and they’re trying their best.
But my coworker (who drives) said, “Theres street parking and they are complaining they have to walk 14 minutes over.”
Now my internal “Fuck Cars” position is battling with my “Give the Interns everything”.
I’m not the deciding factor. Just wanted to share this.
At my work everybody gets a monthly bonus for transportation. It’s roughly the same amount of money as monthly parking. But, if you don’t drive, then it’s just a bonus. I think that’s more fair than only giving money to certain people for certain things.
I don’t really know what town or how good the public transit is, but interns don’t really make anything. Advocating for a transit allowance or something that could cover public transit and could be used to help with parking could be good. If they live in town, going over biking or transit options with them could also be good, and maybe also “park and ride” options as well. But yeah, $18 daily when you’re an intern isn’t easy.
Maybe take them to lunch on transit to help ease the scary new things factor of taking transit. Once they’re comfortable they may be more inclined to do it for a commute.
When I was an intern and first moved to the city, all I had ever known was driving to get everywhere. The suburb I grew up in didn’t have any public transit other than school buses.
I think for a lot of Americans (making an assumption here), they don’t even consider modes other than driving. Maybe as part of orientation you can explain the public transit options available.
That’s a really good idea! I’ll float that to the trainer.
Better outcome: people being compensated for greener/healthier commuting. Walk, you young MFers!
Yeah, free transit passes is a good push in the right direction.
They prolly live in suburbs because of crime in the city… So public transit is too high risk for these elites
Both have been said, but just to reinforce: I think a combination of an information campaign (send an email, put up a sign in the break room) about local transit options and maybe some subsidy for transit could solve the problem.
I know around me a lot of companies provide employees with a regional transit pass.
