The transit beat is becoming the climate beat
Back in July, as I was in the middle of my morning routine of coffee and local news, I read a headline that made me stop mid-sip: “Third Avenue Bridge in the Bronx gets stuck due to heat, DOT says.”
I live in Brooklyn (I was, essentially, sitting next to my AC as I read the story), and I empathized with the bridge; I too found it hard to function in the heat. But it wasn’t the only thing having issues. A brush fire and malfunctioning electrical equipment took out Amtrak and NJ Transit trains, while faulty AC units sent riders on the 1 train to what Gothamist called the “fast track to hell.” Further afield, overheated rails prompted DC-area transit agencies to slow their trains down. Through all the stories, one thing became clear to me: the transit beat is, more and more, overlapping with the climate beat.
“Transportation is just an essential part of daily life for so many people, in particular lower-income folks and people who don’t have the luxury of working from home,” said Erin Stone, the climate emergency reporter at LAist, a nonprofit newsroom that is also the home of the LA area’s largest NPR station. “I definitely see the intersection between transit and climate, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to incorporate into my coverage more.”
Stone is, notably, not a transit reporter — her newsroom used to have one, but they left for a different opportunity and the position hasn’t been filled since. But, Stone says, her job as a local reporter requires thinking about what kind of coverage her readers need in their day-to-day, which means she often thinks about transit.
“A lot of times, people are not drawn in when climate is the top line,” Stone told me. “So I like to start with [a question like] ‘O.K., what’s affecting your daily life?’”
That question led her to write a story about bus stops that lacked shade structures, which meant people who relied on public transit would have to wait for extended periods of time in direct sunlight, which is a dangerous proposition during heat waves. That was a story that began at a very local level — people in a community were advocating for more shelters at bus stops — but allowed Stone to draw the connection to the larger, planet-spanning problem of climate change.
When I covered climate change, this was the type of story I was most obsessed with. Our infrastructure is not made for climate change, but it’s also (quite literally) the foundation of modern life. And, sometimes, they allow local communities to imagine a future filled with climate hope rather than fear. When Stone reported on an initiative to expand access to e-bikes in South LA despite a lack of biking infrastructure, for example, the people she talked to told her they didn’t just want their e-bikes for the sake of getting to work or school; they also wanted them because they were fun.
“That was really powerful to hear,” Stone said. “Part of building resilience is quality of life, because it changes how you interact with your city. It makes you care.”
Stories like that, Stone said, are a sort of salve in an age when the news — and the media environment at large — feels insurmountable.
“Everyone is always like ‘It must be so depressing, covering climate stuff,’” Stone told me. “And actually, I used to cover mental health and domestic violence…But I actually see so much hope [in climate coverage], because people see the intersections. And that’s very hopeful to me.”