Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.
Sohaila Nabizada had never driven a car when she resettled in southern Vermont in January 2022, one of almost 100 Afghan refugees in the first wave of those who fled after the Taliban took control of their country. Back home she was used to riding public transit, she said, but found few options for that around Brattleboro.
Her first year here, she received rides from her landlord until she could get a driver’s license and a vehicle, she said.
Nowadays she can get around without issue. But other refugees in the area still struggle, she said. “The biggest problem for other people are housing and transportation, housing, transportation and job,” she said. “There are people, they do not have the job they wanted. They do not have the house or housing they needed because they could not find a good job … And there is not public transportation.”
Southern Vermont is a difficult place to travel without a car. It’s rural and the buses don’t travel off the main roads or after 5 p.m. Second- and third-shift workers without personal vehicles can be left to rely on carpools, biking or hitchhiking.
Through the Moover, a program run by Southeast Vermont Transit, people in southeastern Vermont can ride free buses painted with white and black cow spots in an effort to fill transportation gaps.
And this year the free transportation service has rolled out new offerings in Brattleboro that could further help people like those refugees get to and from jobs, health care and more. About five months ago Moover introduced MicroMoo2, a microtransit system. That’s the new buzzword in the transportation industry, as Randy Schoonmaker, CEO of Southeast Vermont Transit, puts it.
On the ground, microtransit systems function similarly to rideshare services Uber and Lyft. Users can go online or call to reserve a ride from any location — in Moover’s case, within the limits of Brattleboro and between 5 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. The Brattleboro service isn’t a network of individual drivers, though; the MicroMoo2 is a 12-seat bus.
Schoonmaker knows of about 12 refugees who have benefited from using MicroMoo2 to travel to their second- and third-shift jobs since the service launched in April. The new microtransit service averages 30 riders a night. “They had no way of getting to those jobs without the service,” Schoonmaker said. “So the employers are filling shifts, and the refugees have higher-paying jobs than they would (otherwise).”
Refugees have been resettling in Vermont since the 1980s. In the last decade or so, more than 2,600 have found new homes here, coming from countries like Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, according to a state report this summer. In the 2022 and 2023 federal fiscal years, 315 refugees from Afghanistan resettled in Vermont, according to that report.
Regional planning commissions across the state see refugees as one group of people who need transportation equity improvements, according to a Vermont Agency of Transportation report last fall. The report suggested the state Department of Motor Vehicles can work to better understand new immigrant communities, the languages they speak and how their needs can be met. Navigating English-language drivers’ education can be difficult for people coming from countries where English isn’t widely taught or spoken.
Back in late 2021 and early 2022, when the first wave of Afghan refugees arrived to resettle in southern Vermont, the Brattleboro Ethiopian Community Development Council stepped up to help welcome them, said Ian Hefele, the group’s community engagement manager.
Before MicroMoo2 started this year, Hefele said he knew of refugees in Brattleboro biking at night with no light or attempting to hitchhike to get to work. Now, people who used to be limited in getting around past 5 p.m. have more options to go shopping, make appointments and visit friends.
Any Brattleboroean can benefit from MicroMoo2 — and the need for area microtransit had existed for years prior — but the influx of resettled refugees made the need for transportation even more urgent. Leaders had tried to get MicroMoo2 funding in the past and it didn’t come through. But several organizations joined together to get the project off the ground this year. The Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. put $100,000 toward the launch phase with a grant, and the Town of Brattleboro provided $24,000 through its human services fund. That will fund the service for about 10 months, Schoonmaker said.
The state Agency of Transportation pulled in $40,000 in federal money and $10,000 from state funding to support the service once the initial $124,000 runs out. Those government funds, announced in May, will go into effect next February and cover the program for three years.