Welcome to Transit Unplugged.

I'm Paul Comfort and on this episode of the world's leading transit executive

podcast, we speak with Adam Barth.

Adam is CEO of the Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority in Modesto, California.

This is a newly formed transit agency where they took the county and

the city transit systems that were running concurrently and merged them.

At the time Adam was CEO of the City of Modesto's transit

system, and he eventually became the CEO of the merged system.

Running in the county there, and he came from Fairbanks, Alaska, and he

tells us about his history, how he started as a bus driver in the tourism

industry there, worked his way up to head up their transit system in

Fairbanks, and then moved back home to Modesto, where he took over the system.

What I really enjoyed about today's podcast is Adam's discussion, frankly,

of mistakes he's made in his career, and lessons he learned when merging,

the city and the county and making a lot of changes all at once, What they

learned from that, what you might learn from that, and how we can all learn from

mistakes, to grow for our own career.

On this episode of Transit Unplugged, let's join the

conversation with Adam Barth.

Adam Barth, thanks for being with us today on Transit Unplugged.

Thanks for having me, Paul.

We've been trying to get this together for a while,

so I'm glad we finally were able to do so here in the new year.

And, you've got a lot going on there.

I think, today's going to be a very interesting conversation.

First off, why don't you just kick us off and tell us about the system.

You're CEO of Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority in Modesto, California.

So tell us some about that and what you do there.

Okay, well, I'm the CEO here running a small system.

We have about 130 buses in the fleet, 23 routes that run around Modesto and around

the county as well, but also some commuter services that run over to the Bay Area.

we're in about 3 million trips a year, which is great.

We're seeing great, numbers on the system, since COVID, is ended now, we're

seeing actually more ridership on the system than pre COVID, which is great

to see, and I think it goes a lot to, on how great things we're doing here

in Modesto and throughout the county.

That's great.

I wouldn't call that a small system, by the way.

I'd call that a mid sized system.

Yeah, with over a hundred buses, I think you're a mid sized system.

and for those of us, as they say in Rio Linda or whatever they used to say, tell

us, situate Modesto for us geographically as where it's at in California.

Oh, sure.

so we're about 100 miles south of Sacramento and maybe about

the same east of San Francisco.

So right in the valley, central valley of California, central to agriculture and a

lot of great things here in the valley.

It's a great place to live.

That's awesome.

so how long have you been there and kind of walk us through

your background a little bit.

so I've been here in Modesto for, about seven years now.

I came from, actually from here in the Modesto area, but I started my

transportation career up in Alaska.

I was a bus driver, up there, not for the public transit side, but for the

tour and chart charter side of Alaska tourism, and it was a bus driver up

there for well, for a couple of years and gradually moved into public transportation

and when the opportunity came to move back to Modesto, I jumped at the chance

and, I'm running the system here, so going from a small system in Alaska

to a much, well, bigger system here.

Yeah, and you were in Fairbank, Alaska, right?

Fairbanks, Alaska, yes.

It's a very cold place to live, but it was a good place to, you know, learn

how to drive buses and to give tours.

But then I moved into the public transit side after about 10 years or so.

into the transit side, I had to learn how to, how different it was going from

the private side to the public side of transportation, which is, there's

some differences there, but, it was interesting to, to learn the differences

and how, and how to, you know, how to get more, how to get more information.

More people on the bus.

Yeah.

Well, as you know, I've been talking to Dave Johnson, who's the manager there now

in Fairbanks and about possibly going up there and doing an episode of our Transit

Unplugged TV show this summer when they open up a brand new facility there.

Tell us about, some of the key points and key people, that helped you along your

way from Fairbanks coming back to Modesto.

sure.

while I was part of the public, sorry, the private side of transportation

in, in Alaska, I remember there was one time where the VP of the cruise

line that I worked for, he, I was a brand new operations manager at the

time, and he was a key person that really led me to where I am today.

but a key thing that he told me, was that, hey, I'm going to make

mistakes, and that's okay, just try not to make them expensive mistakes.

And he went on then to tell me about how he made a really expensive mistake, and

how he, correct, corrected himself, and how he got better from that experience I

think I learned that same thing as well over time as I learned that I'm going to

make the, I'm going to make mistakes too.

And you learn from them and you make yourself a better person and

a better employee and be able to contribute more to your agency.

Let's talk about that for a minute.

I think that's an important lesson for people in the transit industry

or any industry that want to, kind of move up the ladder of success.

If you can have a mentor early on that maybe has a little bit of, grace

for you, because I think when we're in our 20s especially, we're all,

you know, rip roaring, ready to go, and we sometimes overlook things.

I know I did.

I remember a moment, early in my career when I was in business development, for

a company, and I You know, it was a very complicated situation for somebody like

in their late 20s to figure all this out.

But I remember not knowing something.

It just, I wasn't aware of it.

And it came back to bite me in the rear end later, because when it

came up for the bid to be done, I hadn't included some costs that

needed to be included in the bid.

And then we found out, we met with the customer and my boss at the time,

John Monson, who was a mentor to me.

He became, CEO of MV Transportation at the time.

We were with another company that no longer exists, but he put his

arm around me, we walked out and said, you know, walk me through it.

You know, I was very upset with myself for not catching this mistake, which

was in the tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't think I ever made that mistake again or anything like it, because I

was extra cautious, you know, Yeah, and so it sounds like to me, you had a boss

like that as well, someone who earlier in your career was telling you try not

to make it too expensive if you make a mistake and try to learn from it, right?

I think sometimes, the issues are that, some people who make

mistakes don't learn from them.

What do you think of that, Adam?

Have you seen that?

Yeah, I think, I think that's the case for sure, but I think,

you know, I think that's how, I think that's how you can progress too, is you

learn from the mistakes, you're going to learn from them, and that's what's

going to make you a great, person, not just in professional life, but in

anything you do, you're going to learn from it and your life is going to get

so much, so, so much better after that.

and, hopefully you learn from them.

Yep.

If you think you're right and you have a super high opinion of yourself and

you're kind of what some people might call cocky, you may say, when a mistake

happens, Oh, well, that's not my fault.

that, that was issues that were outside of my control.

Kind of like I just said, right?

Yeah.

Well, these are things that I wasn't aware of, but had I done enough research, Right.

I might have found those numbers.

And so I think too often people will try to push blame off of themselves because

they don't want to be at the center of the blame circle, so to speak, and

say, well, it was out of my control.

It was the environment.

It was another person.

It was another situation.

But, I think.

I'm really happy you call attention to that right off the bat, because I

think that's something, especially for young people, I always say, I just did

a talk in Canada at the CUDA conference.

I spoke to the young leaders, group there, and I pointed out, you know,

draw a circle around yourself, and that's where improvement needs to begin.

And so, if we continue to work on improving yourself, ourselves in

general, like my dad taught me, always work to improve yourself.

that's how you move ahead, right?

And that's what happened to you.

So keep telling us that story.

Okay, so I moved back to Modesto and was running the Modesto

Air Express bus system, which was run by the city of Modesto at the time.

And just 2 years ago now in 2020, 2021, officials in our area, so

elected officials, saw a logic of combining transit systems in our area.

So Modesto had run a system and the county had run a separate system, as it

happened, the staff from both systems worked on the same floor in the same

building, but we had different staff, we had a different brand, we had a

different technology on board the buses.

we were separate, although we were friends, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

so, officials saw the logic in combining the systems.

And so in 2021, the city of Modesto and the county combined forces and joint

and, created a, what's called a joint powers agency where the two, government

agencies formed a new government agency called the Stanislaus Regional Transit

Authority, to combine the system.

And so we're a new system today, that, that works well.

we combined technologies, we created a new brand, we ran into all of the buses,

and, combined the whole fleet into one, one, under one maintenance shop, and

now it's run by a one operator as well.

All of our system is run by a third party operator.

So, that, the impetus of that was to really create, A system that was easy to

ride and make it easier for people to use the bus here and here in the area, both

in Modesto and throughout the county.

And we've seen that with the ridership over the last 6 to 12 months, we've

seen ridership really explode and exceed pre COVID, which is awesome to see.

Yeah.

We did a, a big planning effort to look at all of our routes to figure out which

routes were working well and which weren't and did a massive restructuring of all

of our routes just this past March.

Ah, that seemed to help.

That was awesome.

It really made transit a whole lot easier to use here in our area, not, and not just

with the brand and the tech, not, and the technology and the, and one fare structure

and one fare, one, one fare media, but made it really easy to ride the buses

as well, where the routes actually went.

Gotcha.

And why is it called Stanislaus?

Is that the name of the county?

That is the name of the county.

Yes.

Right.

And prior to this, you were the head of the city one, right?

The city of Modesto?

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you ended up being the head of the overall system?

Right.

there was an interim CEO that, that, helped form the authority.

Okay.

And, he, retired after about six months or so.

And, and, I applied and obviously I've been part of the system now for so long.

The Modesto system was the bigger one of the two systems that were merged.

so I, had the experience over several years in the Modesto

area and being, a local guy too.

I was born and raised here in the Modesto area.

So it was nice to leave Alaska and kind of just come back,

come back home.

Yeah.

And who's your operator?

You said you outsourced to a third party.

transdev is our third party.

Okay.

Yep.

so you've made some decisions along the way, right?

So what they might say, the good, bad, and the ugly, since you're in California,

we'll use the lines from a movie, right?

A Clint Eastwood movie.

so tell me about some of the decisions you've made and, you know, we've

kind of broached this topic already, but what have you learned from them

and what would you do differently?

I think as part of the consolidation of the two transit systems,

that was an area that we could have done things a little bit differently.

It was a little bumpy at first.

So we set a date.

It was January 1st of 2022 when we were really going to combine the systems

under one operator, but it also involved new vehicles and new technology at

the same time for different reasons.

and I think.

To start a new operator with a consolidated system with new vehicles and

new technology all on the same day was a decision that we probably should have,

you know, maybe taken a different look at and, with it, it was bumpy at first,

for sure it's definitely since, smoothed out and we're operating fine today, but

I think that was one of the, it was a decision that we could have made, made

differently to try to ease in the changes.

Oh, too many things at one time, you mean?

too many things at one time, right?

And just do things incrementally, I think is the lesson learned from that.

Do things a little bit at a time, not everything all at once.

Right,

right.

And you're probably thinking you're all excited, right?

We're going to get all this change and then you have one

point of failure and it can ripple effect into other things, right?

Right, exactly.

Exactly.

If you know, you have new vehicles or maybe new technology, it takes time for

drivers or for dispatchers to learn that how it works and learn the kinks with

it and smooth out all those wrinkles.

It takes some time to make that happen.

And I think doing it, more, An incremental approach would be

done, would be a little bit better.

so a big challenge, making transit easier in your region.

And it sounds like you've done that.

I mean, kudos, I guess, is what I want to say to the leaders of

your county and city for seeing an opportunity for consolidation.

Have they seen a reduction in overall cost as a result of the consolidation?

I think we've seen a little bit in the 1st year.

We did some analysis.

I think we did see a reduction in cost for administrative staff that, you

know, we had staff that came in over from Modesto and some from the county.

Not everyone came over as part of the consolidation, but there were some,

some savings there in staffing as.

You know, you would think that, you know, two agencies, you're going to have

some overlap in what some people do.

And so you have some overlap and obviously wouldn't need everybody

to do those same things twice.

Any other changes you have planned that you'd like to talk

about or improvements to your system?

You know, I think bus rapid transit is our next big thing as well

that we want to do here in Modesto area.

We have an idea for the route it should go on and we want to go down and we

want to go down that road as I think we've seen, you know, time and again

in other places how you implement a BRT system and more people are on the

bus are on the buses, which is great.

BRT has so many good things about it that we hope it could emulate

on any bus route to get more buses out there because frequency is.

The more buses you have on the route, the easier it is to ride, and that's

where I'd like to get to, and so getting BRT in some areas I think

would be awesome for Modesto, and so that's the next big thing as we work

forward with the new facility as well.

I love that, Adam.

I'm a big fan of BRT as well.

I was in Latin America this year and saw in Brazil and other

places how they are using it.

in a big way, and you know, what they said, and what I've heard other people

say is, you know, it's great to try to bring in a new light rail line or

a new heavy rail line, but the cost is so high, and once you lay down the

route, there's no changing it, and BRT, you know, is an answer to that, right?

Because you lay it down, it's quicker, it's less costly, especially

in this era of fiscal cliffs that everybody's talking about, while

we still want to expand service.

For it seems to me to be kind of like a golden solution in many ways.

Yeah, no, I agree.

I agree.

I think it's the right thing to do is get more, is you get more people

on the bus and have a nice, nice, nice frequent bus route to get

people going as fast as they can.

Another kind of big, big ticket item that's happening now when

you talk about, you know, a lot of changes coming to the industry all at

once is the move, and I think California has taken the lead here in the U.

S.

on moving towards zero emission buses.

Talk to us about that some.

Yeah, so we actually have five zero emission buses in the fleet

today, and they're working fine.

the, we do have some range issues as you, as I think that's a common, issue that you

find with battery electric buses in the.

In the industry today, some range issues with those buses.

We, Modesto bought them in 2018.

So we've had them for 5 years or so now, which is fine, but we know

that we need to move to a full fleet, zero emission bus fleet.

And so that's going to take a little bit more space for us.

Our current shop is at capacity.

We're at capacity.

We don't have any more room for additional bus chargers or hydrogen equipment.

And so right now we're in the very preliminary stages of going and

getting a new, bigger facility.

So, to be able to accommodate growth, because one thing we want to expand

our system, we have room to expand.

We want to expand our route system.

So that means more buses, more drivers, more staff, obviously,

but we need to more space too for the zero emission infrastructure.

So whether it be hydrogen or battery electric, We need more space for that.

And so we're in the process now to get a new facility to

accommodate both of those items.

And so we're, we have some funds now to start the land acquisition

and design of that facility.

And California has some other funds to help us to move forward with next steps.

So with the next stages of construction, after we get that done, so it's a

great time to be here and here in Stanislaus County as we're looking as

we're looking forward for expansion and improvement of the public transit system.

And it's super exciting to be a part of.

Now, is the new facility going?

Are you gonna move everything over there or are you just gonna open a facility?

So you'll have two?

We'll move everything over.

so the admin, the administration staff is in an office ju just downtown.

So we're, we are removed from our downtown, transit center where the

main hub of activity is at, obviously.

And that's even re removed from where the shop is at.

So, getting us all under one roof will be great.

We'll have some more synergies with staff on both maintenance and

operations and bring everybody together.

To make us even better than we are today.

You mentioned hydrogen, just in passing, let's unpack that a

little bit where you're at on that.

As I mentioned, I was just in Edmonton, where they and Strathcona, which

is right next to it, they have the first two hydrogen powered buses

in Canada in regular route service.

Tell us about what your experience has been and where you're at on that

right now when it comes to hydrogen.

we're pretty sure that hydrogen is the way,

hydrogen is the way we want to go, with our zero mission fleet.

we don't have any fleet yet, but we know that we'd like to go down

that road for the same reason that you just mentioned the range.

as you can get three, 300 miles on a tank of hydrogen, right?

And we have some routes that are, you know, go out into the

county where they're going.

300 miles on a day.

Okay.

And so it's important for us to have that range as well.

Obviously we have other routes in Modesto that don't go, that don't need that type

of range, but, having a nice fleet that's consistent throughout the whole fleet

that's why we're going with hydrogen.

And, but we still are in the process of figuring out how to move forward

with the infrastructure for fueling.

There's no commercial sites here in the Modesto area that we could tap into.

So it'd be creating our own fueling.

In infrastructure at our new shop that we're going to build

and then start down that road of purchasing the hydrogen buses.

Well, you all have some great examples there, right?

Like down where Lauren Skiver used to head up in Sunline Transit, where she built

her own hydrogen plant and has this has a zero emission center of excellence.

And then you've got, you know, just south of L.

A.

right Foothills moving toward hydrogen fuel.

So you've got good, I guess, partners you could talk to about how to make it work.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

I know every transit system in the state is under that same

mandate to go to zero emission.

And so we are all in good company here and we're all going to learn from each

other on how to best move forward.

Yeah, we're actually going to do, I think as a time we're recording

this, we're planning to do it the week after your show is an episode of Transit

Unplugged, the podcast on bus shortages and what in the world is happening in our

industry right now where we have billions of dollars coming out of Washington to

purchase zero emission buses and two of the manufacturers just had major issues.

One pulled completely out of the market.

we just did a show at the end of the year with Paul Skoutelas the CEO

of APTA, where he talks about that.

And now APTA has a committee now focused just on that.

And then, of course, Proterra going bankrupt and them now being,

an acquisition sale from another company, but there's big concerns

about the backlog of buses.

and what are you hearing on the hydrogen side?

I know there's a hydrogen council.

We're going to have them back on for a 2nd show coming soon.

Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, it's a concern for sure.

I think with either way you go with the battery electric or hydrogen, I think,

you know, if you were to make an order today, they're a couple of years out.

And so you have some time to figure out the.

Yeah.

fueling piece because that's a key piece and that's something that I was,

I mean, intentional with as well that we don't want to order our buses until

we know how we're going to fuel them.

And, we, and you want to be sure you go, you go down the road, make sure you take

it slow and you do it the right way.

So you don't have buses here without any way to fuel them or

the fuel infrastructure without any buses to, you know, to fuel them.

So, so definitely you want to take it slow and do it the right way.

Well, Adam Barth thank you so much for being our guest today.

Any final thoughts you want to share with us on anything else?

You know one last thing if I could just a quick story about

the, about all the new routes that we, I implemented about, nine months ago.

I, the routes were implemented for about a month or so, and I'm like, I

really wanna go ride this one route.

'cause it was a big, it was a big change to it.

And so I went out there.

I didn't know the driver, I didn't introduce myself.

I just got on the bus to see how it was going.

I wanted to check the timing, see how many people were on the

bus and I was on the route and.

I was in the back and I heard some folks behind me talk about,

they didn't know who I was.

Hey, this route is so much better now because it goes bi directionally.

I can get to and from to and from my son's school really quickly.

I can get to the store.

I'm like, oh, and this is great.

I'm like, oh, we got this route right.

And it's so nice to hear those good stories about how we can get

it right sometimes and really make a difference in people's lives.

It's a great story, Adam, and it just speaks to the fact

that we really don't know what the customers think unless they tell us,

and we can't hear them unless we're with them, and we're not with them

unless we're riding the freaking bus!

That's right.

You've got to get on the bus if you're a leader in your transit system.

You can't manage from behind your desk or by an email screen, right?

You got that right, yep.

Yeah, 100 percent right there.

Yeah, and people look to, leaders of transit systems to

be consumers of that service, right?

They want to see them, I know my friend, who leads the

system here in Washington, D.

C., Randy Clarke, who came from Austin, Texas, and now

has been here for over a year.

I had him on the show, the podcast again recently, and he rides every day.

And so many transit leaders are saying, you know, that they are, giving up

their car or at least not using their car to get to work, and they're riding

whenever possible and they're a face.

So your job as a CEO of a transit system isn't just to be the chief executive

officer, it might also be, you know, to be the chief customer officer in

a sense, and to be out there with the customers, like Andy Biford taught us,

why he got his name of Train Daddy in New York, because people love seeing him,

he wore his badge, he wasn't embarrassed to be out there, you know, proudly

standing for his system and receiving the input directly from the passengers.

What do you think about that as, you know, as an important part

of your job as a chief executive?

Yeah, I think all CEOs and I think other members of the team should

all be on the buses to know what know what the product is and know what's out there

and use it yourself personally as well.

I, on occasion, do ride the bus into work as well.

not every day, but that definitely is there.

And definitely, I appreciate that access that I have to get in

to get into work and to see it.

But definitely, it's definitely the way to go.

And that CEO and everybody, I think, in the transit industry

needs to be right riding the system.

I would agree, you know, it's one of the things, this is my last

comment on it, but one of the things I implemented when I was in Baltimore,

the CEO was, we had a new employee orientation, you know, for a couple

weeks that employees would, any new employee that would join the agency,

whether they were in HR, finance, IT, procurement, legal, you know,

operations, maintenance, whatever, they would go through this week long

class, and then it was longer for some.

And I was shocked to see that it did not include a ride on the system.

And, And because so many people that work in large transit agencies, especially

even midsize agencies, I think can go for years and never ride the system.

And so I made changes.

I directed them to, add a full day on Friday at the end of the week, a fun day.

To go out and visit some of the garages, so we visited a bus garage, a light rail

garage, and the subway system garage, and we rode a bus to do it, and so they could

see what it's like, they could go see the facilities, and it was so heartwarming

to me to hear comments back from people that went through it and said, it was

such an enjoyable day, I might never have

Even gotten out of my administrative office, like you mentioned a minute ago,

your offices are in the city offices, downtown, not like at the operations,

a lot of places are like that, and they never get an opportunity because

you get, you know, overwhelmed, right?

You're up to your neck in alligators, so to speak, once you

get in the job and you're doing, and you never get out to see.

So at least once for heaven's sake, that's our message for today, right?

And more often, hopefully..

Yes, definitely.

I agree with you there, Paul.

Yep.

Adam Barth, CEO of Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority.

Sounds like you're doing great things and you've shared with us some great lessons

for people in the industry that we can continue to, even if we make mistakes,

to learn from them and grow from them.

and you know, take ownership for our mistakes and then, learn and grow

and put into place practices that, so that one isn't too expensive and

so you learn from it for the future.

We hope to, see you again at a conference upcoming, Adam.

Thank you, Paul.

Appreciate it.

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Hi, this is Tris Hussey editor of the transit unplugged podcast.

And thank you for listening to this week's episode with our special guest Adam Barth.

Now coming up next week on the show, we have a special, hot

topic panel on bus shortages.

We just can't get enough buses built fast enough to meet the

needs of the transit industry.

Paul talks with Ed Redfern and Joel Rubin of the bus coalition.

And Julia Castillo and Brooke Ramsay of HIRTA and we get an industry

perspective from Patrick Scully.

Hope you join us for this very special episode.

And we hope to have more of these hot topic panels throughout the year.

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At Modaxo, we're passionate about moving the world's people.

And at Transit Unplugged, we're passionate about telling those stories.

So until next week, ride safe and ride happy.