Transit Diaries;Final rept

摘要

Transportation has the power to transform lives through 'accessibility.' People depend on transportation to come and go to work, for entertainment, for education, and to reach services fundamental to living, such as medical care. Concealed in rush hour, and hidden in the crush of the commute or the trip down the road to school and the doctor are stories that connect people and quality of life issues to transit systems. Transit Diaries will turn cameras to buses, trains, vans, and other forms of mass transit to document stories of users in documentary style vignettes. The stories will evoke diary entries through interviews and voice-over. They will focus on riders' representative of diverse census segments within the Baltimore Metropolitan Transit District. The stories will provide snapshots of rider's lives formed by aspirations, necessity, responsibilities and professions, against the backdrop of the Baltimore Metropolitan Transit District and its web of communities. The stories will illuminate human impacts and interactions with transportation systems and consider the technological, social, environmental and safety aspects from a user's point of view. Transit routes will be examined as economic corridors and users will describe how their lives would be different without mass transit 'accessibility.' In addition to professional documentation, each user will use a small handheld camcorder to capture personalized views of a day in the life of their transit journey. 'Kodak' moments from these video transit diaries will be integrated into the narrative of the documentary to further resonate the authenticity of user experiences.