By Sonal Gupta, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer Lana Putnam was already doing something that made her feel small: climbing onto a Vancouver bus without fare money and hoping to get where she was going before anyone noticed. Then she tripped. Putnam, a 70-year-old Cree Elder, was carrying her belongings when she fell in front of the other passengers. She wasn’t helped up; she was scolded. “Some of the people were saying, ‘Everybody pays,’” she said. “Instead of being worried about my fall.” Putnam’s experience is what a new clean-mobility pilot program in Vancouver is trying to address: how to make everyday travel more affordable and usable for lower-income urban Indigenous residents in one of Canada’s most expensive cities while also cutting transportation emissions. In Metro Vancouver, a…
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