Take Transit with Confidence: How Free Travel Training Helps Anybody Get Started

Community Transit’s free service helps anybody learn to use transit by personalised, one-on-one help.

Vee Harris has been using buses for greater than half a century. She’s made lifelong friendships on the Metro buses as a teen, commuted throughout Seattle all through her profession, and he or she as soon as fell asleep on a visit downtown — waking up previous her cease and navigating her manner again. For her, taking transit has at all times been part of life.

When she moved to Lynnwood in 2008, she discovered herself driving greater than she had in Seattle. After retiring a number of years in the past, she was able to strive using transit once more — however issues had modified. The system felt completely different. Light rail had arrived in Lynnwood together with new Swift stations and new bus routes. And for the primary time, the lady who had ridden transit all her life felt uncertain.

“Light rail is a good thing — I know people who rely on it to get out and about — but it just intimidated me,” she says. “Walking up all those steps, going through the parking garage, trying to figure out where to go. I’ve got some arthritis, so it can be a lot.”

What Vee wanted wasn’t a map or a schedule. She wanted somebody to assist her get began. She discovered that particular person by Community Transit’s Travel Training program.

What Is Travel Training?

For many individuals, the most important barrier to taking transit choices just like the bus and lightweight rail is uncertainty. New routes, unfamiliar stations, bodily challenges, or just not figuring out the place to start out can cease somebody earlier than they ever make a journey. Travel Training addresses these boundaries straight by a free, one-on-one service with a educated specialist who meets you the place you might be — actually — and goes with you.

 When you are taking Travel Training, an actual particular person walks you one-on-one by stations, practices actual journeys, solutions questions, and helps you construct confidence till you might be able to trip solo. For people who find themselves uncertain how one can even plan a visit, trainers additionally stroll you thru instruments like Plan My Trip and Find My Bus, taking the guesswork out of getting began.

Sessions is usually a single hour or stretch throughout a number of journeys, so long as somebody wants. The objective is easy: assist individuals really feel able to trip transit with confidence.

The program is open to anybody who desires further help earlier than venturing out on their very own.

Getting Started

Vee found Travel Training by a brochure on the Lynnwood Senior Center. In December 2024, she started working one-on-one with journey coach Asch Qattawi.

“To find out that someone actually has the time to offer this kind of help — that meant a lot.”

Vee and Asch met in a Safeway parking zone. They began with a brief journey. Next time, they went farther. Asch confirmed her stops she hadn’t recognized existed — routes that crossed the identical road however led someplace fully completely different.

“I was used to the transit I knew from years ago,” she says. “I didn’t realize there were different colors and different lines that could take you to completely different places from the same street. That opened things up for me.”

One session took them to Everett Station — someplace Vee wouldn’t have thought to discover on her personal. They walked round and took within the sights — the station’s grand corridor, its massive arches, the long-lasting clock. It was greater than a transit lesson; it was an journey.

“Did you know there’s beautiful art there? Culture in the middle of the train station!” Vee says. “I wouldn’t have found that on my own.”

Support That Builds Confidence and Connection

What Vee remembers most in regards to the expertise isn’t any explicit route or cease. It’s Asch.

“Asch was so personable and empathetic — especially working with seniors,” she says. “Asch helped me slow myself down.”

The relationship prolonged previous the classes. Vee talked about she was downsizing and had a set of CDs she’d somewhat give to somebody who’d get pleasure from them. Asch was that particular person. They bonded over music — rock and jazz — and so they nonetheless keep up a correspondence.

Their connection factors to one thing actual about what makes Travel Training greater than only a useful choice for individuals. Feeling seen and heard, having fun with human connection, and having a useful particular person at your facet when making an attempt one thing new could make all of the distinction.

Vee nonetheless has her automobile and he or she’s prepared when she wants different methods to journey.

“I don’t like to drive at night anymore,” she says. “Knowing I have options as I age — that’s important.”.

For Vee, probably the most stunning factor about Travel Training was merely that it existed, {that a} transit company had thought rigorously sufficient about its riders to supply one thing so private.

“It’s really a good thing,” she says. “And people need to know about it — so they have the option.”

To study extra or request a free Travel Training session, go to communitytransit.org/traveltraining.

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Source: Community Transit