HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
NO WAY OUT
town factory workers, eschewing
the suburbs for life within pedestrian proximity to shops and
restaurants.
While this trend may eventually
yield better-connected neighborhoods, the present is still colored
by mismatch, with major employment centers setting up out on the
periphery, far from mass transit.
In recent years, two major employers set up in an office park
some 14 miles east of downtown.
Volkswagen manufactures its popular Passat sedans here, employing some 3,200 people. Amazon.
com has set up a distribution center that employs 2,000 people.
Yet one major barrier prevents
would-be job seekers like Stinson
from securing positions at either
of those locations: The nearest
bus stop is a half-hour walk away.
The bus line that stops there, the
Number 6, offers limited service,
requiring that passengers call a
dispatcher to request a bus.
That bus doesn’t run before
6:45 in the morning, making it
difficult for people on early shifts
to get to work on time. It doesn’t
run after 6:45 in the evening,
making it challenging for people
who work nights to get home. On
Sundays, it doesn’t run at all.
TALKING TO GOD
On Sundays, when Sharon Smith
must get to Amazon.com for her
minimum-wage job cleaning the
restrooms, she must walk along
the shoulder of a highway for
more than three miles.
She takes the Number 4 bus.
She steps off at a busy intersection flanked by a BP gas station
and a SunTrust bank and sets out
on foot, walking alongside speeding cars for about 90 minutes.
Smith, 43, is willing to make
that walk because her job at Amazon amounts to her escape route
from the downward spiral that
seized her last fall, when her beatup 1997 Infiniti finally succumbed
to wiring problems. Fixing the
car would have cost $2,000. That
was money she did not have, not
on the $9-an-hour she was then
earning cleaning the restrooms at
the Volkswagen plant through a
staffing agency.
Once her car died, she could no
longer reliably get to work, and
they were cutting her hours anyway. She had often driven all the
way out to the plant, only to be
sent home after an hour or two.
Without a paycheck, she fell behind on the $350-a-month rent
and was eventually evicted from
her apartment. She landed in a