William Sheets – Amazon Teamsters

My name is William Sheets. I am an Amazon delivery driver and I bring packages to Chicago’s doorsteps. I’m a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Transit has been essential for me since coming to Chicago. I ended up losing my car in May. It impacted me significantly, and I needed to start riding public transit. I was taking two buses to get to work at my last job. Since I started working with Amazon, I sometimes take the train but also still have to take buses often. 

At the Amazon warehouse I work at, we have the Chicago Transit Authority bus stop and the Pace Bus stop. The CTA bus gets you only so far, then you have to wait for the Pace Bus, which can be a huge time-suck. There have been times where I’ve missed the bus to work because it didn’t arrive at the scheduled time, or it bypassed me completely with no explanation. Those instances make it much harder for me, and I end up having to walk half a mile to complete my commute. I feel like, at the very least, public transit should be able to get you to work. We don’t make enough money at Amazon for me to be able to call a cab or rideshare in moments like these. Buses later on at night around 5pm and after work sometimes are late and take too long between buses, and I just decide to walk a long way instead. 

For my life outside of work, sometimes it’s challenging because I can’t constantly see my friends in the suburbs due to transit not reaching those areas. I do get to other places for my hobbies like playing cards, where I need to take the bus once per week. I am happy and fortunate that I can generally walk to the doctor and grocery. In my home town in Michigan, I would have been screwed without a car, living my life and working, but here in Chicago transit has been an absolute lifeline for these things. 

I feel that many others have similar experiences to me and rely on good public transit. It’s a vital part of the community. I see the same folks riding here and there and everyone is living their own story. I’m able to see and interact with that everyday, parents taking kids to school, people going to work, people traveling in and out of the city. But there are areas of the city where trains and buses don’t reach or don’t come too frequently, where you’ll only maybe have 1 or 2 line options that only take you in a couple directions. Certain neighborhoods are simply left behind or have poorer service, and I feel like race and income level play a role in who is suffering with those issues, like marginalized folks down in the South of Chicago for sure. 

It would be great to have more stops for certain bus routes to get to certain places around the city, and to get all the way to work. Improving the bus frequency especially would have a hugely positive impact on my life and community. It would also be a huge improvement to connect communities with better and faster and more options. We should want general freedom of movement and mobility for all people, not even to go just where they need but where they want to go. For trains, some are very old, awfully dirty and in disrepair, so those could be nicer, cleaner, more beautiful and inviting. It would also be a positive for the trains to connect to more outer and suburban neighborhoods, and that way I could more easily see the people I care about. 

Finally, protecting the climate is very important to me. I grew up around a lot of nature, and I cherish it. Winters used to have snow and be real winters. Now it has gotten warmer, winter starts later, less snow and seasonal change. Protecting the Earth itself too means protecting ourselves. Transit would decrease those emissions, which we desperately need to be doing.