A Transit Map to Close the Gaps in Milwaukee
In 2020, during our first pandemic Thanksgiving, I had the pleasure of volunteering with an organization called DreamTeam United Milwaukee. On that day, the main organizer Farina Brooks gathered each volunteer to say a prayer in front of the main tent where people could grab a hot meal and groceries for home. In that prayer, she mentioned this amazing moment that led a woman to the event.
This woman got on a bus that morning to go to the local Salvation Army. When the bus arrived, the pantry was closed. However, all hope wasn’t lost, the bus driver knew of a local event nearby, the one we were volunteering at. The driver knew that there would be hot food and groceries and dropped the lady off on 35th and Center, so she wouldn’t be stranded at the closed Salvation Army.
In Milwaukee, 55 percent of Black men don’t have a valid license and the same goes for 49 percent of Black women, according to a 2006 UW-Milwaukee study. During my interviews with people facing food insecurity, many said that transportation was often the biggest barrier to finding free or affordable food.
As a new student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, this reality sparked a question that would later inspire my work: How can journalism address issues related to transportation?
As an engagement journalist, I am excited about creating tools and content that are useful to communities. My goal is to use the information we gain from reporting to equip people, not just inform. While studying this semester, I specifically learned how to create a start-up business or project related to journalism.
While pursuing my degree I have focused my work on the Metcalfe Park neighborhood of Milwaukee. In doing that, I have subsequently looked for ways journalism could be useful to community organizers and mutual aid organizers who are doing the real work in Milwaukee.
To create something from scratch that could be useful to my community here in Milwaukee, I created a transit map that combined the routes of each bus in Milwaukee county with each prominent food pantry in the city of Milwaukee. I call it “Resource Routes.”
This map will help Milwaukee residents who want to find resources (food, home goods or housing) by highlighting current resources available on each bus line and alleviating the confusion around how to find transportation to essential aid (unlike communication efforts that simply provide a description and address).
To create this map, I filed an open records request with the County of Milwaukee and received GeoJson and Shapefiles that I later edited and uploaded to a program called Mapbox. I also researched pantries in the city and developed an excel sheet. In that excel sheet, I geocoded the addresses of each pantry and then combined the data with the data I received from the county. Now, this map can be embedded on a landing page or shared via the direct link.
Throughout the semester, I was able to make four iterations of the map and I look forward to seeing what else could be done with this concept. The earlier versions of this map used data from Madison. I used a program called Datawrapper and Carto to create that map. The final Madison map has lots of colors and is a bit easier to look at.
My goal is to make the latest Milwaukee iteration more user-friendly by customizing its search capabilities. (Although It is already searchable. Residents can look for their address or place of work and see what bus lines and resources are near them. )
When asking for feedback on this iteration of the map, one piece of feedback I got from a fellow engagement journalist in Milwaukee is to consider how to make the product more accessible to residents. Another weakness is that Resource Routes is currently restricted to a landing page or website. I think for it to grow, it must be in collaboration with more residents and organizations in Milwaukee.
I hope this project can continue to mirror the mutual aid organizations and people who inspired it. The idea is to fill in the gaps and silos in the city’s social aid landscape, but I know to do that it will require money and audiences interested in the product.
Although key revenue streams are not the main objective of this product, down the road I expect it to find grants that might help me expand this project. I also believe this kind of product could be useful to both the city and county and I am open to exploring those platforms as a home for this map.
Looking forward, it would be great to see this idea developed into an app. This kind of map would be marketed to people like the woman who was dropped off at 35th and Center on Thanksgiving and the bus driver who knew to drop her off.
The goal would be for Milwaukee residents to open a Resource Routes app and be able to filter the kind of aid they want and be prompted to an app that shows those resources and every bus line in the city (with live updates from the buses). Additionally, this app will be able to show you just a single bus route and every food, housing or financial aid resource available along that route. One day, I’d love to find a way to make events to be submitted to the app as well.
I think this tool could be incredibly useful to bus drivers and city workers who are tasked with helping Milwaukee residents make ends meet.
So, next time someone finds themselves stranded or at a lost every bus driver will have the tools to get their riders to the places they need to be.
