For 11 years, Christine Cole had a job she loved as a fraud investigator for Lazarus. In April, she had to stop working. Her decision was based on a number of factors, but the basic picture went like this:

In 1997, the 32-year-old single mom discovered she had multiple sclerosis. For mobility, she switches between a manual wheelchair and a motorized one and says that, although she can still "sort of" write, her right hand is undependable and there's no guarantee anyone can read it.

When she was no longer able to drive, she called upon friends and relatives to get her to work and back, but she soon realized that couldn't go on forever. In short, she lived in Mount Healthy, worked in Mason, and couldn't get from here to there on public transportation.

Transportation has long been the No. 1 concern of people with disabilities. Vying for equal attention is the deplorable 70 percent unemployment rate among people with disabilities. The two problems are tightly intertwined.

Without transportation, you can't get to job interviews. Without transportation, you can't go to work. For many people with disabilities, public transportation is the only viable option.

You can't get from Mount Healthy to Mason on a bus. You can't get from Western Hills to Madisonville. Even though it's not a tremendous distance, you can't even go from Wyoming to Finneytown.

MetroMoves, on the ballot Tuesday in Hamilton County as Issue 7, is the most positive step toward removing the barriers of transportation and unemployment Cincinnati has seen in years.

Joyce Rogers, advocacy coordinator for the Center for Independent Living Options, sums it up this way: "We're voting for a 0.005 percent (half cent) sales tax, the exact amount we voted for the stadiums. But this is ten thousands times better for the people in our area than the stadiums were."

Sure, some of the project won't be implemented for another 20 years, but many improvements to existing bus service will be effective almost immediately.

"Many of the route expansions would be processed right away," explains Sallie Hilvers, Metro spokesperson. "They're in place, ready to go. We just need the money to hire more drivers."

Transportation improvements in the right-away category include extending routes (adding miles and adding trips) to such areas as Milford, Cleves, Blue Ash and others. Crosstown buses connecting such areas as Western Hills to Hyde Park or Northgate to Wyoming would mean that bus riders could reach destinations in a timely manner, rather than the two hours for a 15-minute distance generally required with existing services.

Neighborhood shuttles with three-mile radius routes would make it possible for nondrivers to travel from home to the grocery, the senior center, church or job on public transportation. Even the two proposed streetcar lines would be in place within the next three to five years.

For those people with disabilities who use Access, Metro's paratransit system, the same benefits that MetroMoves brings to fixed-route transportation would enhance paratransit as well. The law requires that when Metro increases service areas, Access availability must reflect that increase, Ms. Hilvers says, translating to a 25 percent increase in service for Access passengers.

Reasonable public transportation is a necessary ingredient to enable nondrivers to get off government assistance programs and travel to the 80 percent of jobs that lie outside the Metro service area. But it's not, as some might mistakenly argue, just a good idea for people who are old or poor or disabled.

When we think about the numbers of fatalities and serious injuries among teenage drivers, elderly drivers and drunken drivers, it becomes clear that public transportation that carries all of us where we need to go is a plan where everybody wins.

Contact Deborah Kendrick by phone: 673-4474; fax: 321-6430;

e-mail:dkendrick@earthlink.net.