NewVA Moves

Pretend You Are a Tourist in Your Own Hometown

We are currently doing a project, in conjunction with Valley Metro, that involves an on-board counting of the number of bus passengers boarding and alighting at different stops.  The purpose of this project is to estimate bus ridership using a random, statistically speaking of course, set of observations.  While I was doing some of this fieldwork, I started noticing parks, schools and other amenities that I never knew existed in the Roanoke Valley.  This suprised me since I was raised in this area, and after returning in adulthood, have lived here for the past 8 years.  The beauty of this fieldwork is that it takes me on bus routes to neighborhoods that I rarely frequent.  Eventually, I started pretending, to myself not to the other passengers, that I was a tourist and I would challenge myself to notice as many interesting things as I could along the way.  For the average long-time resident or newcomer, this is an excellent way for you to better know Roanoke.  For the cost of bus fare you could pretend you are a tourist and explore an area of town where you have yet to venture.  An hour later you will be back where you started in Downtown Roanoke (Campbell Court).  Give it a try and see what you can discover.

From Jeremy:  I noticed the same thing while doing my part of the project.  I've discovered places to take my daughter than I wouldn't have noticed before.  In fact, my daughter (who is just shy of three) has a blast on the bus, so simply riding it around with her can be a lot of fun.  A few weeks ago we took the bus to the Kid's Day event at Tanglewood Mall rather than driving - not only did it save the gas and emissions that I would have spent driving myself, she got to enjoy the afternoon outing even more.