Strategy Team 1 is trying to get somewhere

I dropped in on the Strategy Team meeting focusing on "engaging the community to assure that all people have their basic needs met" this morning and was energized by their excitement. For their next meeting they are planning to ride the Columbia Transit System to various destinations like a doctors office, Walmart, and work. Seem odd? Not really when you consider that one of their three year outcomes is that "Safe, affordable, convenient transportation is readily available." This little field trip/experiment will give them some firsthand knowledge about the convenience of Columbia's system. They started by trying to gather information about the system online. Check out www.gocolumbiamo.com to try this exercise yourself. After tracking down transit system info, they started figuring out routes. I consider myself a pretty smart guy but I had to wrestle with it to figure out how I'd get from my house to my office at CMCA. Anyway, the point here isn't to criticize our current system but to look for ways to support our community's efforts to get people where they need to go. There's been a lot of work done on this and we aren't trying to reinvent the wheel but I get the impression that we're gearing up to be part of that conversation.