Are you enjoying Super September here on Transit Unplugged?

I know I am.

It's been great talking to these leaders, and today we bring you another amazing

episode on Transit Unplugged Podcast.

I'm Paul Comfort, and I recently had the pleasure to sit down and talk

with Jon Gary Herrera, who is the president and CEO of VIA Metropolitan

Transit in San Antonio, Texas.

One of the oldest and coolest cities in America.

That's where they got the Alamo, you know, and the river walk.

We talk about all that and it's some really interesting things about it,

you may not have known about some big rock musicians and the connections

they have, British rock musicians, the connections they have with San

Antonio, but Jon Gary took over the role of CEO earlier this year and has

already taken it an amazing direction.

They recently won a big referendum with the voters who have

turned in extra money for them.

And we talk about what they did to earn that trust.

And we also talk about the fact that for the last two years running, they've

led the nation in customer satisfaction.

And we ask 'em, how have you done that?

Because that's big, all that, and more on this in-depth interview, which

is both philosophical and practical with my new friend Jon Gary Herrera.

We're gonna go visit him too next year and do an episode of our

TV show there so we can show you everything we're talking about.

It's gonna be fantastic.

Just like this interview is on today's episode with Jon Gary

Herrera, president and CEO of VIA Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio.

Paul, great to be here.

Appreciate the time.

Absolutely, brother.

San Antonio is one of my favorite cities.

My dad spent some time down there, when he was in the service.

So tell us some about, you know, San Antonio.

I mean, you know, I know it for the Alamo right.

And the river walk, which is probably what a lot of people think about.

But you just told me something interesting.

It's vying to be the oldest city in America.

It is.

It's over, we celebrated 300 years as a community five years ago, and 300 years

ago this community was established.

Incredible to think that it's older than our beloved United States of America.

But, it was indeed operating as a community prior to our independence as

a nation, and it's a beautiful city.

I'm lucky I get to call it home.

I grew up here as well.

Have many, many relatives in and around this part of Texas and San Antonio.

You know, just a great city.

A great, great community.

Yeah.

So this is where Davey Crockett, was he the one that came to the Alamo?

Is that what I learned when I was in school?

Absolutely.

You know, he there's a number of urban legends that happen around, you know, the

Davey Crockett and David Bowie as well.

Oh yeah, the buoy knife.

Jim Bowie, right?

Bowie.

The Jim Bowie.

There you go.

Yeah.

Jim Bowie.

And you're thinking about, you're thinking about David

Bowie the rock star, aren't you?

Yeah.

Well, and maybe I'm doing that purposely, Paul, because he has admitted, the

rocker before he passed away David Bowie-

Yeah.

That wasn't his real name.

He, his, Bowie is his stage name.

He took it from Jim Bowie.

Ah!

-because England, they would show the Alamo, as you know, a

really popular American film.

Yeah.

And he fell in love with the idea.

And so it's interesting he hit it, that is something that, he's named after.

I mean, to keep on, to keep on this British theme here as well, Paul.

It's also interesting that the gentleman who was with Genesis, oh,

after slipping on his name right now.

The drummer?

The drummer, yes.

Yeah.

Phil Collins.

Is that who you're talking about?

Phil Collins.

There you go.

Yeah.

Okay.

Phil Collins.

He has the largest private collection of Alamo artifacts in the world.

Really?

He's just been fascinated with the Alamo as well.

And he has been buying, you know, Alamo art, artifacts for 40 years.

Yeah.

He has just recently donated a big portion of his artifacts over

to the Alamo for this new museum.

And it's gonna be compliments of Phil Collins.

So they're building, I've been there a couple times.

Are they building something new?

Yes, absolutely.

Big investment happening at the Alamo, and a big investment includes a big

new museum slash visitor center.

There's a whole reimagining of the grounds itself to bring out more

of a look of what it was indeed as in existence, back in the day.

Yeah.

It's incredible amount of investments and a re-imagining that's going on over there.

Well, hopefully it'll be done.

You know, I'm, I wanna come out there and film an episode of our show.

I'd love to see that again, man.

Absolutely.

I think it'd a great idea.

Okay.

So we've talked about the city itself.

Oh, and talk about the river walk, man I love the river walk.

It's probably my favorite one in the country.

It's also another moment that makes us super, super unique is this river walk.

The San Antonio River meanders through our downtown area.

And, it was indeed a moment of this community recognizing the

importance of water, over the history of this area and this region.

But then developing around it in such a meaningful way, it's very unique.

There, there are plenty of other communities and cities that have

rivers that meander or, you know, go through their urban parts, but

the way that this one has really integrated into the architecture and

the landscape and the actual, you know, businesses themselves is super unique.

I don't know of anywhere else in the United States much less the

world that is quite similar to this.

Yeah.

A great experience.

I've been there with my wife and kids.

We walked it, you know, in the evening and rode the boats and all that.

Oh, that's right.

The lights that come over.

I've had so much fun at restaurants there with friends of mine

laughing and joking under this.

The atmosphere and the vibe is fantastic, Jon.

It's just something.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So, all right, so tell us about, one more question.

Do you know like the population of the area you serve there in San Antonio?

So San Antonio is, also happens to be one of the fastest growing

communities in the United States.

That's what I thought.

What we call San Antonio proper is about 1.7 million.

The county, which San Antonio operates, you know, finds itself within?

Yeah,

It's just about 2 million people.

Okay.

And you serve, VIA serves what?

The whole county or just the city or what?

It's both, but we don't serve the whole county, but we serve

99% of the city of Antonio.

Okay, I gotcha.

So tell us about the transit system.

You know, what services do you offer, et cetera.

So we are the largest system that is a bus only system in the United States.

Uh, okay.

As its main mode.

We do have a microtransit system that has launched in 2019.

We took a pause during COVID, but now we got about five zones.

And together those five zones or six zones, are generating a great

deal of interest and ridership.

But the workhorse of our system here is of course our fixed route bus

delivered routes that we have here.

And do you operate yourselves, or do you have contractors, or how do you do all.

We operate them ourselves, and we operate them out of one garage.

So we have something very unique about VIA in San Antonio, is we operate

over 500 buses out of one depot.

Typically the size of a depot, or at least a number of buses that a

depot will support around 250 to 300.

Well, we're doing 500 out of one, out of one location.

But that's also because this location we've had since 1947.

So it's been around for quite a while.

But we serve all parts of the community with these vehicles and

doing so every day, because of the hard work of our employees.

Now when Jeff Arndt was there, I visited, I'd had him on the podcast.

I think I did it in person.

And you all have this cool round, like circular building?

Yes.

Are you still in there?

I am.

That is where my offices are at.

That's what we call the Grand Building.

Okay.

That's separate than our main facility that I was just referencing in terms of

where the 500, where our bus yard is.

Yeah.

But this facility used to be a turn of the Century Railroad Union Station

and the railroad Union Station, you know, decorated together with,

you might remember the stained glass that really adorns this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Well, it's incredible, incredible architecture out of this building.

We're we're proud holders of this history here and continue to operate out of it.

That's amazing.

Now you've been in that job, you started, I mean, you've been there for a while.

Tell us some about your background.

Yeah.

So you know, I'll be actually, I'm finishing my seventh year

going on my eighth year here with this agency with VIA.

Right.

But as of January of this year, the board of trustees handed me the

keys to be the president and CEO.

Keys to the kingdom

Hit the ground running in January.

And look, I blinked in eight months, uh, you know, later.

But great things happening here at VIA a lot of excitement that's happening, Paul.

Because of the opportunity that we have, we're one of the few transit

agencies, in the United States, Paul, that's actually gonna be receiving

additional money coming in next January.

We're gonna be getting an additional sales tax percentage coming in from the

citizens of San Antonio who took the vote to reallocate some sales tax in perpetuity

over to VIA, and that starts in January.

So those are gonna lead to big investments, and those big

investments will lead to big improvements for our system.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

I recently had Mark Aesch on the podcast.

I know you know him and work with him from TransPro and Mark was proposing

this idea, you know, and it ties in with the documentary that we hope to

film next year, which is, you know, what's wrong with Transit America?

Why only 5% of Americans Ride Transit?

Sure, sure.

Um, and what we can do about it.

But Mark says, yeah, while less than 5% of Americans ride transit, 84%

of the community sees value in it.

And he talks about, you know, making sure that we focus not just on our ridership,

but also on messaging the other 84%.

And when I asked him, Jon.

Who in your mind, mark has the best transit system in America?

He said You do.

Oh, he said that you, for two years in a row, San Antonio has led the nation

in customer satisfaction, and that's what he feels is the most important.

So you must be doing something right.

Talk to us about that

And to get a compliment from such a professional and somebody who's

actually very passionate about what transit does and improving

transit is a great compliment to us.

I definitely appreciate Mark saying that and being that evangelist as we

call it on the customer experience.

So, you know, I'll describe this Paul of, I also came from the private

sector before I came over to this industry, and I brought with me the

absolute, you know, embedded idea that it is about, that customer experience

is what's gonna be at the core of your adoption, of your service.

And coming into this agency and then and coming into VIA keeping that focus

of what is important to the community, but what is important to the customer.

And the customers will tell you, Paul, that my whole business career, I have

learned early on that the customers will tell you what's important to them.

They will either sometimes verbally tell you or they'll tell you by

their adoption of your service or adoption of your product.

And if you listen to that, those, they're handing you gifts, they're handing you

what I call a gift of improvements.

And doing something with those gifts is the way I think we've

distinguished ourselves because we take a meaningful approach.

Just as we're doing this year, as we're preparing our budgets for

next year, we're taking meaningful approaches about what're the things

that the customers have just told us recently that are important to them.

And we're gonna translate that into meaningful improvements.

And then we're gonna tell 'em that we're doing that too as

well, so we can make that full rounded connection to that customer

suggestion, the customer expectation, and then the delivery of that.

And I think that's in a big way of why we are experiencing such good customer

experience and relations scores from our customers because, you know, as every

business wants to say it, you know, because we listen to our customers.

But in this case, I will definitely say, well, not only do we listen,

but we act upon what they say.

And what have they been telling you?

I mean, obviously you've won them over 'cause they just

voted to give you money, so-

Yes.

So what are they telling you?

And it's, and that's an important distinction too as well, Paul, because you

know, back to your point that, you know, it's less than 5% of the, of San Antonians

are taking the service on a daily basis.

But many of 'em have had experience with our service.

You know, on other aspects, maybe it's a park and ride to a Spurs game.

Maybe it's a park and ride to the Alamo Dome, which is, you know, a big

multipurpose facility that we have here.

But then it's at the core of what they know and appreciate is

we're connecting people to jobs.

At the end of the day, that's the number one reason folks are taking

our service, is to get to a job.

And recognizing that that's gonna be power in the economy.

Those are the things that I believe our investors and our

customers have come to appreciate.

And again, we're in a good position to be getting additional dollars that

they have allocated over knowing that it's gonna to be dollars well spent.

So you're hearing them say that's what they value?

And that's what you're providing.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

How many trips would you say you're providing a day or a

year, whatever, on your bus?

Do you know?

So this past year, we delivered over 30 million passenger trips in this system.

But we know we can do more.

So I'm gonna say that 30 million for me is the baseline.

As I come in as president and CEO, I'm only gonna increase that number.

I only want to increase that number from year to year.

Because I know that we can do more and serve more because we're gonna

get new money and new money's gonna be new investments into quality,

and the quality of the service is gonna attract more ridership.

We deliver good customer experience, as you heard, you know, so that's

a good moment too, that we can be confident that once we attract somebody

that's not riding us today, and then they decide to start taking us in

the future, we're confident that they're gonna be handled really well.

And, that's an important part of this equation of delivering that value to the

community, as Mark likes to emphasize, delivering that value, you deliver

that value, the ridership's gonna come.

And it's not starting off with ridership.

If this was only about ridership, Paul, all of transit in the

United States would be free.

We would open the doors and just let everybody, you know, ride it for free.

It's not, it's about the quality of the service that we want to deliver.

And doing so in exchange for very small investment from the consumer,

and to continue to invest in the quality as I keep referencing.

And that will return ridership.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Transit Unplugged.

Right now we're in the middle of Super September.

We have an incredible lineup of guests.

Paul is talking to leaders from some of our greatest transit systems, including

New York, Chicago, San Antonio, and more.

Be sure to subscribe to Transit Unplugged where you listen to

podcasts so you don't miss an episode.

Now, let's get back to this week's episode of the Transit Unplugged podcast.

So Mark is big on, that he, he pointed when he's done surveys across the country,

by the way, when they've asked the 84%, what do you value most in the public

transit system that you don't ride, but you still value it enough to pay for it?

Number one is access to jobs, just what you said.

And then number two is helping the elderly and people with disabilities,

which we do through our ADA services, right and our senior services.

Absolutely.

And then third would be helping lower income people, you know, get

to other appointments, not just jobs, but get to social services

and health appointments and all.

And that's what you all have made a priority, right?

I mean that's why Mark told me when he said the best, I think

he meant the best in terms of meeting what the customers want.

Absolutely.

You've proven it, two years in a row through these surveys and

through a big vote from your voters.

You know, Paul, I had this discussion with Mark that I'm still putting

together this idea of the industry and particularly, you know, transit ourselves.

To me there's a lot of similarities to a college or university.

And what I mean by that is if you take a snapshot of colleges or universities

today, of the individuals that are going there, they're gonna be low

income, they're gonna be folks, kids.

And I call 'em kids.

Right.

Because that was a long time ago since, since I went.

Yeah.

But these kids are part-time jobs.

I have one that's in college right now.

And if she were to ask how much she makes, she would say under 25,000 a year,

'cause she doesn't have a full-time job.

Her full-time job is to go to school, right?

Right.

We don't measure that success of that university based upon what that

individual is at that moment of time.

We base that value of that university after they graduate and what they become.

So a lot of what transit does is making those connections, and a snapshot of their

lives that they need that affordability.

But that doesn't define the group that we take for the

entire span of of our existence.

Great example of that is we just had a chair of our board that was

a tier one supplier of Toyota.

He has made multi-millions of dollars as a manufacturer

over the course of his career.

But he says, he would pronounce this every time he'd gets, if he didn't have

VIA back in the day when he needed to go to the community college, or he needed

to then go to the four year college here, he would not have been able to graduate

and become the path that he went on.

Wo I think that's another great example of where the value of transit is a tremendous

value just like colleges and universities.

But we're not measuring a college or university to Mark's point

by their attendance, right?

Or the number of students they have.

Oh, well they got a lot of students.

They must be successful.

No.

What's gonna be successful is what their output is, right?

Right.

Who they become, right?

Yeah.

And what they become.

Yeah.

And we have a big role in that in the community that we serve, not

only for those that are needing the help at the moment that they have.

But they're also as they get elderly as well, that we're that safety net

for them, that they know that they can continue to enjoy the ability

to get in around this community.

That's another aspect that is a great value we definitely take that serious.

Jon, when I first started, I worked for Department of Aging.

That was 38 years ago now.

I can't believe it.

And I was a transportation coordinator and every day I felt wonderful because

I was helping hundreds of people, on average, be able to get outta their

homes and go to the grocery store, go to doctors, come to the senior centers.

I mean, we play a big role in that, don't we?

I'm sure VIA does in your community.

It's a big role that we play, but it's also a role that is so meaningful.

And I don't necessarily only mean that from a social service standpoint.

I mean that from a human standpoint.

I mean that-

Yeah.

I love that.

-economy standpoint too.

Because we're connecting people to their doctors.

We're connecting people to their grocery stores.

We're connecting people, you know, to hospitals and it becomes a real piece of

an individual's life, where they don't have to worry about how they get there.

They can worry about the things that they really need to worry about.

I think you've done a great job of talking about the current status there and the

role you're playing in the community.

Let's look into the future.

You said that, you know, under your leadership, you're hoping to see

some increases in ridership, and do you have any exciting projects

or initiatives you're working on that'll raise the bar for VIA?

Absolutely.

The mantra that we have here, Paul, is that we're in the

middle of some big investments.

These big investments will, for the first time, will have an ART Advanced

Rapid Transit or BRT, for those that, my professional colleagues that listen to-

Yeah.

-to this podcast.

For the first time, we're gonna establish our very first bus rapid transit

line, we call that the green line.

It's gonna go north, south in our community and go down a major

corridor, major thoroughfare.

Then we're gonna immediately right after that establish a second one,

which is a silver line that will go east west and they'll intersect each

other in our downtown business district.

But those big investments, for the first time here in San Antonio,

are gonna be some of the largest capital projects that this community

has seen other than highways.

Yeah.

But to see that VIA is the one that's is executing on this program

is an incredible position for us but that's a big investment.

Also, coming along with those advanced rapid transit systems, the BRT systems,

we also are gonna be doubling the number of zones that we have with our

VIA Link, our microtransit service.

Oh, very nice.

And so that also is gonna be a big investment.

And then of course we just launched and our board just approved two months ago a

better bus plan where we are re-imagining what our system should, you know, be

delivering and investing in that moment.

So all of these together are big investments that we're making.

Those big investments are gonna become big impact because these big investments

are really gonna raise the quality of the service that we have out in the community.

I keep, you know, telling folks every chance I get here in San

Antonio is the bus rapid transit line because we've only been a bus-only

system our entire life, right?

Right.

In our entire existence, this bus rapid transit system is as close as we're gonna

get to rail, and it's a rail-like service.

And this community is gonna look at our system and the way we deliver service in

a completely different light once we start delivering that high level of service.

And that's gonna be a moment also, you know, as you're talking about

the future is that broad look that our community gives us in terms of

what are we doing to keep ourselves in tune with technology, in tune with

what is indeed possible in the future.

Those are the type of investments that we're bringing, but they're all

gonna come down to, you know, big impacts that will continue to have

big positive impacts on our community.

You've had a pretty interesting career journey before becoming CEO.

You mentioned you're in your eighth year working for the agency.

Most of that time was a senior vice president for public engagement.

And then, but then, like you mentioned, you worked in the

private sector quite a while.

What leadership principles did you pull from that and how have they helped shape

you and what you're bringing to VIA?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, it was, it's a number of approaches that I find myself now in

this president and CEO spot that I can tell I've learned, this learned

behavior over the course of my career.

Something I learned early and often at the very beginning is empathy.

What is it like to be our customers?

Right?

That's what I mean by empathy.

Walk a mile in their shoes empathy.

Giving that great deal of focus as a leader, will help me design and

develop the types of improvements or culture that we want to be

able to deliver for the community.

The other part that empathy comes into play is how you lead a team.

And all of us have had different types of bosses over the course of our careers.

And I find myself really admiring those that had a great deal of

empathy and understanding that each one of us are motivated differently

and each one of us are humans, and we're all different from each other.

And to treat us that way too.

And I've seen that being brought with me and my type of approach on leadership.

You know, it's so easy sometimes in this corner office to, try to get

everything done, everything done at once.

I've heard this term many years ago, but I've kept this in the back of my mind.

It's called Boiling the Ocean.

I don't know if you've ever heard that term that you can do too

much and you would boil the ocean.

And if you boil the ocean, you may get a lot accomplished and you use a

lot of energy to do it, but you're not accomplishing what you should be doing.

You'll kill all the land, right?

All the wildlife, I mean all the fish.

So it's this balance that I see myself in a leadership position of having, of

keeping an immense amount of attention on the goals and objectives that we

want to accomplish, but having the sense enough to know that those also have

to be done by others, not just myself.

Because if we don't depend on others to deliver it, I'll be working

80 hour weeks and I won't last very long, working 80 hour weeks.

But it is those moments of leadership that I've learned over the years.

One more comment on things that I've learned.

I've also seen how products and/or services have changed an industry.

And I'll give you an example of that.

I was with the cable industry for 16 years.

I worked for Time Warner Cable in various degrees of responsibilities there within

that Fortune 50 company, that we became.

And one of the moments that I, it has always stuck with me is when

I joined that industry when we were just delivering video, cable.

Analog cables, matter of fact, to the community that we serve.

Then we launched this little thing called high speed data.

And high speed data and the internet and the delivery of that really

became that massive focal point for this industry, and it still remains.

And it very much is that moment that it changed the the industry,

it also changed the way consumers saw our industry as well.

You know, just in, in two minutes here, Paul will explain what I mean

by that is that we would do customer surveys as a cable company and we'd

do customer survey and the customers would say, "Ah, you could do better."

Right?

Because the cable industry hasn't had the best, you know, successes.

That's right.

Yeah.

In that aspect, right?

You can do better, you know, is basically the kind way of, I'm saying what

customers would tell us but then we'd ask them, "Hey, what do you think of the

company that delivers high speed data?"

Oh, I love that company.

That company is innovative.

That company is fun to work, you know, fun to, to interact with and fun to work with.

And, and I really appreciate what, they're doing.

Well, it's the same company.

Wow.

It's the same company that was delivering cable.

It's the same company that's delivering the high speed data.

So it's that moment.

So fast forward to where we are today, Paul is, I believe what we're on

the cusp of as an industry with this microtransit solution that we have.

Very similar to Uber and Lyft.

Is that high speed data moment that we have in this industry.

I don't believe that we have really figured out the true

potential of this microtransit solution and system that we have.

But the fact that we're all finding varying aspects of delivery and a

success with it, it reminds me a lot of what we were doing back in the

nineties with high speed data and seeing how that changed the industry.

So, and that's

And why was that?

My little long, but short story on that.

But it's something that I bring with me.

Yeah, love that.

Let's just for one more minute, tell me what did you all get out of that?

What was the lesson?

Just as something new people liked it better?

What was the lesson?

It was indeed that the consumer's gonna identify a value.

And they're gonna associate that value with your company, right?

We had too many years.

I think you wrote it away on that value-

Yes.

-on the cable side, on the video side, because we, at that

time, we didn't produce the content that we were delivering.

So there was no relationship with, let give you an example,

whether you liked the show on HBO.

Well, that that wasn't because of your cable company back in those days.

Now I think they're all owned, you know, by one or two.

But there was no value.

As soon as high speed data comes around, now there's value that

that company is delivering.

Okay.

And I can associate that value and I think that's a great a moment in

that industry that I am seeing here.

Granted, we still get valued on our fixed route, but the fact that we can

deliver this new type of value has put us in a different light with those 95%

of the community that doesn't take us.

We're now a consideration in those conversations that we never had before.

So, I see that as some of those similarities.

That's great.

Jon Gary Herrera, thank you so much for taking a few minutes with us today

and sharing with us your philosophies and your experience and all the great

things happening there in San Antonio, one of America's oldest cities.

But it's got some of the newest, coolest stuff going on, man.

Thanks Paul.

Appreciate the time you spent with me this afternoon.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Transit Unplugged, the world's

number one transit executive podcast.

I'm Julie Gates, executive producer of the podcast.

Many thanks to the team that makes this show happen.

Host and producer, Paul Comfort, producer Chris O'Keefe, editor

Patrick Emil, associate producer Cindy Raskin and consultants Dan Meisner

and Jonas Woos at Bumper Transit.

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