Carsten Applegate, September 13th, 2024
Title
Carsten Applegate, September 13th, 2024
Description
In this interview, Carsten Applegate talks about his work with the Detroit Department of Transportation and how it was affected by Covid-19.
Publisher
Detroit Historical Society
Date
9/13/24
Rights
Detroit Historical Society
Language
en-US
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
Carsten Applegate
Brief Biography
Carsten Applegate is a lifelong Detroiter, having lived in Huntington Woods and Detroit proper. He is also a longtime Detroit Transportation worker.
Interviewer's Name
Kevin Hawthorne
Interview Length
15:37
Transcription
Kevin Hawthorne: Hello, this is Kevin Hawthorne with the Detroit Historical Museum for the oral history on climate change and Covid-19. I am joined with here today. May you please introduce yourself.
Carsten Applegate: I am Carsten Applegate.
KH: Hello, and how long have you lived in the Detroit area?
CA: My whole life. I'm 35.
KH: And also, just for the record real quick, could you please spell your first and last name?
CA: C a r s t e n A p p l e g a t e
KH: All right. And you said you live in Detroit area your whole life. Which areas in particular?
CA: I grew up in Huntington Woods. I moved to midtown Detroit when I was 22 and I've lived in the Morningside neighborhood on the East side since 2018.
KH: And the morning side area. How have you found that area?
CA: It's nice I like it. There's a, like, streetscape on East Warren that went in recently, and there have been some new businesses that have popped up. There's a street festival tomorrow that I'm going to go to and looking forward to that.
KH: Excellent. And what is your line of work?
CA: I am a planner with the Detroit Department of Transportation specializing in bus stops.
KH: And how long have you had that position?
CA: I have had this Exact job title for about nine months and before that I was a planner One since 2017. And I've worked at Ddot overall since 2008.
KH: So you have quite a big experience with it.
CA: Yeah.
KH: So shifting to Covid. Do you remember what your first reaction is when you heard about the disease?
CA: I think it was—I think I experienced it kind of the way that you know, like there have been other. Disease outbreaks like swine flu and Ebola and things like that where, you know, it sounded scary on the news for a while, but it never really came to my area or never seemed to affect me that much. So I just kind of saw it the same way It was like, it's just another thing that, you know, is on the news that's far away that hasn't come here yet.
KH: And what was the first thing that made you realize this was a different beast?
CA: That's a good question. I think like it was— So it's another another story that I was like I was. Planning a wedding that ended up not happening for other reasons as well. But I think when I realized that I was going to have to cancel that or postpone it because, you know, people were coming in from other places and you wouldn't wouldn't be able to come and we wouldn't be able to have a gathering of that size. I think that was that was kind of where it was like, this is this is real.
KH: And from your position, being a transportation planner with the city of Detroit, how did Covid affect your job? Both when it first happened and, you know, to this very day, how has Covid affected your job?
CA: It affected it? I mean, in terms of in terms of the working conditions. We had to figure out how to. Run the system mostly remotely in a very short period of time. That was something like we didn't really have any preexisting culture of remote work. And so it was something that had to be figured out very quickly on the fly, while it was happening. And I think like as far as it went Like it like that. That works pretty well. In terms of like the content, in terms of like the. The output of the work that we're doing. I think every transit system in the country and probably in the world. Dealt with the effects of— For one thing, a major drop in ridership because people haven't felt safe riding transit. But, you know, we're only now kind of recovering from. And in terms of like having to figure out mitigation policies for the busses to protect the drivers and the riders.
KH: And so you said you've only recently returned to like pre 2020 numbers in terms of like ridership with the busses and stuff like that?
CA: Yeah, I think it was a it was a very rapid drop and then I kind of slow rebuilding.
KH: And so for like the busses never closed correctly and they were still running during like the 2020 to 2021 era when, you know, pre pre vaccine was the busses were still running, correct? Or did the busses completely stop?
CA: They never completely stopped. I think there was a there was a. This is this is all from memory. So it's a little fuzzy. But my my recollection is that. The bus drivers at one point Were staging a protest action pending the implementation of better mitigation policies. And so there was a brief, you know, maybe a few days, one when the service didn't really go out for that reason. But. It did. It was basically operational for most of that time with with a reduced schedule. We weren't collecting fares, so we there was like all the boarding mass requirements.
KH: And did you?
CA: Sorry?
KH: No, no. Go on.
CA: There was one incident. There was a there was a bus driver by the name of Jason Hargrove who died of Covid. He posted a video where he was. He was concerned—He was talking about like there was people coughing in his face and all of a sudden, you know, this is crazy, you know. And then. And then shortly after that, he got infected and died. And so I think that was that was galvanizing for for the drivers in terms of making amends and and for the agency in terms of. Devising ways to mitigate.
KH: Yeah, definitely. So seeing that video kind of made it seem a lot more real to people.
CA: Yeah, very much so.
KH: And then were you involved with any of the planning of trying to mitigate the Covid things in particular? What was your specific involvement?
CA: For my job. It wasn't. You know, I wasn't too directly involved with with that. That was that was kind of other areas of the department that were more that were more concerned with that.
KH: And then just in your own personal life, like what did you see the effects of Covid in your own neighborhood, in your own life?
CA: Well, I think it's it's. Certainly reshaped the way that I Interact with the world have. You know, I have really started to be thoughtful about where I go and just kind of don't don't expose myself unnecessarily to big crowds of people. Wear a mask if I'm going inside somewhere. You know, in a public building and.
KH: And did you catch Covid in the past four years?
CA: It's like my, my, my life. My Way of moving in the world is just completely different.
KH: And did did you catch Covid at any time in the past four years?
CA: I did once yeah. I was in Germany at my sister's wedding. And my I was staying in an Airbnb with my parents and. My dad got Covid and then my mom and I got it from home.
KH: And what was your experience like?
CA: It was it was pretty miserable. It was for the better part of a week. I was pretty much just confined to bed. Like I remember I was I had moved from the Airbnb to a hotel room because I was trying to avoid catching it from my dad, but it turned out it was too late. But like, I remember having like a. Like a breakfast roll. Sitting on my table in my hotel room. And I would spend all day eating small bites of it because I just didn't have the energy to eat more than a couple of bites at the time. I might get up and nibble at it. Just go back to bed. Coughing constantly and feeling very like feverish. My thoughts are going all kinds of weird places and. And at the same time, like because I was I was in Germany, I was supposed to be flying home. I had to figure out all the logistics, just like rebooking my flight and making sure that my cat was going to be taken care of, like communicating to my boss and I was going to be off work an extra week. I'm actually going to get a PCR test. So it was it was like it was very inconvenient because I had to figure out all that stuff. And also had no energy and was very sick. And so, yeah, it was it was a pretty, pretty unpleasant experience. And it took me. Quite a while to be able. Normal again and be able to move around and go out and do stuff.
KH: And and with all of this had having happened in the past couple of years, are you worried about seeing another large scale disease like this within your lifetime?
CA: Absolutely. I think I think this I think this experience has shown me that like ghat the Public health infrastructure that I thought was in place to deal with this sort of thing is a lot weaker than I thought it was and a lot more susceptible to political influence and. Though it does not seem like we're in a good place to deal with further disease outbreaks.
KH: And in general, how did you feel the national response and the local response to the pandemic were?
CA: I think. I think initially it was— It looked when it, when it first happened and it was like, okay, where we're shutting down, go home, shelter in place, we'll give you money. I thought that part of it was handled pretty well. I thought I'd like the enhanced unemployment to help mitigate the effects of people staying at home. I think that part of it was successful. I think I became really disheartened by the response later when it seemed like we ended a lot of public health stuff and really stop trying to figure out ways to deal with it. Not so much because the threat was gone, but more just because people were tired of it. And it was like, well, it's time to get back to normal. And I think there's still a lot of things that we could be doing, like better ventilation inside buildings and especially in schools that has just kind of fallen out of the mainstream conversation and I find that really frustrating.
KH: All right. And is there anything else that we haven't discussed on in this interview that you'd like to speak on now?
CA: Well, I think this covers it pretty well. I think. Yeah. And glad that this history is happening and. Being recorded and yeah thanks for doing it.
KH: All right. Well, thank you for your time today.
CA: Yeah, sure.
Collection
Citation
“Carsten Applegate, September 13th, 2024,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed February 10, 2025, https://oralhistory.detroithistorical.org/items/show/1072.