Laura Flanders has made a name for herself with challenging video programs that ask difficult questions. Coming up on December 20 on PBS, the latest episode of the Laura Flanders Show will dive into the issues of mass transit, and less-than-mass transit. Flanders observes that transportation in America has always been unequal, making the journey of low-income people harder to get to where they need to go. The Shawangunk Journal got a sneak previous of what the show will entail.

In our area we have a limited amount of bus transit, the UCAT services in Ulster County, (Ulster County Area Transit), and in Orange County a variety of systems, with a primary focus on commuting to the New York City area, from Middletown depots both rail and bus.

UCAT normally runs its fleet of 30 or so buses on 11 routes, fanning out from Kingston, with a preponderance on the eastern side of the county, which is inevitable since that’s where most of the population resides. On the UCAT “Integration Plan” draft report from 2017, the route map demonstrates clearly how that works, with the orange Ellenville line along Route 209 handling the southwestern side, and the blue Woodstock/Belleayre line snaking up Route 28 into the Catskills. When cross-checking with maps of areas show both people and “zero vehicle household density” recorded, the concentration of routes on the east side appears justified. But very visible is the population center of Ellenville, which also has a lot of households without cars.

Across the county line, the smaller population centers of Pine Bush and Montgomery are also visible, and they share the “Dial-a-Ride” service, which is pretty much it for any public transport in northern Orange County.

In her upcoming episode, Flanders, who spends time in Sullivan County, will demonstrate the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shrunk transit revenues and cut services, with the panic a century ago over tuberculosis, which had a profound effect on the use of trains — moving Americans towards private car ownership in time to make Henry Ford vastly wealthy and change our patterns of urban and suburban life.

The current pandemic has disproportionately hit the very workers regarded as essential, who keep the lights on, who serve in grocery stores and hospitals, and who need transportation that is safe and efficient.

Flanders plans to examine our national approach to transit. In the show, she’ll ride a revived old-time train in rural Pennsylvania, which has the feel in the video of being a movie set, so accustomed have most of us become to cars and planes. The shift away from trains that began in that earlier epidemic was then cemented in place after World War II by the huge effort to connect American cities with highways. The rewards went to construction and oil companies, while the rail business abandoned the less profitable passenger side and concentrated on heavy freight.

The O&W (Ontario and Western) line shut down in 1957 depriving the Rondout Valley of train service to New York City.

Flanders interviews Sajaa Ahmed, director of UCAT, who came to Kingston from a career in New York City with the MTA. Ahmed is performing a balancing act, but she notes the principal problems UCAT faces, perhaps one that is surprising. “Small areas have less of everything,” she says, “Less bus drivers, for instance, which is the crisis our department is facing right now.” She adds, “It’s very important in this crisis that rural systems not be left behind.”

But Ahmed makes another point. “Most important to me is not letting any driver or worker get COVID-19.”

Flanders cross-references that thought with brief chats with some UCAT drivers, such as Ray Morero, who says, “We are always watching to be sure everyone is wearing their masks. We have a great group, and great management, we’ve been supplied with everything we need, face shields, masks, sanitizer.”

Doug Rowles, Ellenville’s master of Christmas lights, also drives a bus for UCAT. He has driven “every one of the routes,” though he is most familiar with the Ellenville to Kingston route. “Every morning at 6:30 a.m. the bus to Kingston leaves and at the same time the bus from Kingston down to Ellenville leaves. They go back and forth all day.”

Each trip takes “an hour and a quarter, because there are the stops, like at Shoprite and the hospital.”

As the Shawangunk Journal discovered in discussion with some of the folks that can be seen waiting in the Gazebo in downtown Ellenville, the bus link to Kingston is crucial in both directions. People have jobs in Ellenville and live in Kingston, and vice versa, of course. For those without cars, UCAT is vital to survival.

During the show, Flanders moves to the point that the pandemic seems to be making for us. Just as the tuberculosis crisis set up a great change in American habits, so is the COVID-19 pandemic. And riding behind that are the inevitable changes that will be driven by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “We are at a critical juncture,” says Flanders, “the revival of lovely old-style trains is unlikely, but we have to reignite a conversation about public services. The next generation has to balance accessibility and equitability with the needs of the planet itself. Thanks to new technology we can do it.”

Flanders also speaks with Roman Partida Lopez of the Greenlining Institute, a policy shop with an organizing arm that works for racial/economic justice and is headquartered in Oakland, California. Partida-Lopez explains that the US transport system is “rooted in institutional racism. See what freeways have done to our communities. We see efforts to retain cars in the central place within the transit situation, but even with electric cars there will remain issues of congestion.”

The pandemic has exacerbated all those issues, making bus and rail transportation more difficult and dangerous for the very workers that our cities and towns depend on to simply function.

And that brings to mind the current ominous threat to the Port Jervis line, which the MTA has discussed closing for good after the disastrous decline in ridership because of the pandemic.

Flanders spotlights some other rural models in use in California as well. Private ride services using vans and SUVs have become quite popular. But though there are some pilot programs in California, she notes the general “vacuum of government funding,” for public transportation.

The show will premiere on World Channel and PBS on December 20, and will also be available on Laura Flanders’ YouTube channel at 11:30 a.m. eastern the same day.