I'm Paul Comfort, and on this episode of Transit Unplugged, we

bring you into the eye of the storm.

Unlike any other podcast out there, we're taking you down to Florida.

Right after their two hurricanes back to back, Helene and Milton, and talking to

six public transportation CEOs, that's right, six of them across the state.

They had two back to back storms that really battered the state.

We wanted to take you inside the response.

How does a public transit system In the state of Florida or any state

respond to a major hurricane or a major natural disaster such as this.

Well, today you're going to find out right from the leaders of

the public transportation and the highway system in that area.

We begin with Brad Miller.

Brad is CEO of PSTA, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.

Right in Clearwater at St.

Petersburg, which was, at the epicenter of the storm.

The storm, as you may recall, Milton, the most recent one, was coming right up

and was aimed right for them in Tampa.

And then at the last minute, swerved slightly south.

He tells you how he rode out the storm in his house, how the storms

were roaring around him, how their public transit System responded.

The roof of Tropicana Field being lifted right off by the winds.

You'll hear it right from someone who lived right through

it and how they responded.

Amazing.

We'll also hear from Coree Cuff Lonergan, the CEO and General Manager of Broward

County Transit, on the other side of the state where the storm went through

and the impact that the tornadoes, over 150 tornadoes, that went through

the area of Florida afterwards, and the response that they had to those.

We also speak with Ivan Moldanado who is the new Executive Director of

PalmTran, and he talks about how they prepared for the storm in the EOC and the

coordination, that is so much required between public transit agencies the EEOC.

And the public government agencies that are around them, such as the counties and

the public works department, the sewer department, the road department, all

the things that have to be coordinated.

We also hear from Tiffany Homler Hawkins, who is the CEO of the transit system in

Orlando, Florida, where Disney and so many of those are called LYNX and she

talks about their response and how they don't charge for people when they're

riding out to, go to hurricane relief centers and storm centers and all the

different impacts and how her team, not one member of her team called off when

they were back in service because they understand the role of a transit system in

being, a first responder and really part of the essential services of a region.

We also speak with Dave Dech.

Dave Dech is the executive director of SFRTA, commonly known as TriRail,

which is the commuter regional rail.

Which comes up from Miami all the way through all these

counties that were affected.

He talks about how they work together with those agencies to provide great

service and the importance of keeping the railways clear so that CSX and others

can bring in supplies after a storm.

And then we speak with Greg Slater.

Greg Slater is a former colleague of mine.

He was Secretary of Transportation here in Maryland and was head of the State

Highway Administration when I was head of the Maryland Transit Administration.

Now he's down in Florida as CEO and Executive Director of the Tampa

Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

I thought it was important to have someone kind of wrap it up and explain

to us the role of the road network during a major disaster like this and

how they coordinate so closely with public transit agencies to ensure like

traffic lights and all the things that are required for buses to work in a region.

This is a coordinated effort and this is a look inside the storm at how public

transit agencies help a region prepare for endure and recover from a major disaster,

a natural disaster, such as these back to back hurricanes, Helene and Milton.

Stay tuned for some great information that you won't get anywhere else

except right here on Transit Unplugged.

Hey, great to have with us Brad Miller, my good friend, who is the CEO of PSTA,

Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, in the Tampa Bay area in Clearwater.

Thank you so much for being with us today, Brad.

Oh, I'm glad to be here, too.

Yeah, man, I bet you are, after all that.

So, what the heck happened, man?

Fill us in.

Oh, yeah, well, you know, I have been a CEO down here in St.

Petersburg, Florida, Clearwater area for, years now.

Lucky 13, I guess.

I'm lucky, I don't know.

Because this is the first time that we've had Not one, but two hurricanes, Hurricane

Helene and then now Hurricane Milton, come very close to the Tampa Bay and have major

impacts on the Tampa Bay Region, certainly the biggest impacts, since I've been

here and, and now historic with Hurricane Milton, historic impacts to the, the

Large Tampa Bay region, you know, which is like four, four plus million people.

This is probably the biggest impact they've had in their lifetime.

So, yeah.

That's crazy, man.

I know.

Back to back.

So, walk us through it a little bit.

Walk us through what happened and, and then we'll get into your response.

How transit really stepped in and helped kind of save the day.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

So, well first, you know, I'm not originally from Florida.

I'm from northern, from Pennsylvania and worked in Virginia.

I think where you and I met first a long time ago, and then, you know,

so when I got to Florida, I was just amazed at how, like, professional and

integrated, transit systems and the whole hurricane response is throughout Florida.

I mean, there are professionals that this is what they do all the time because

there's a lot of, a lot of, risk here.

And, uh, so, certainly we have it down pat on, you know, what our operational plans

are and everything like that, but just in the last two weeks, toward the, the last

week of September, Hurricane Helene came straight up the west coast of Florida

and actually kind of landed ground just a little bit east of Tallahassee, up in the

Panhandle area, but it was only about 100 miles offshore, and that was the That was

the biggest impact of what is storm surge, where the hurricane winds blow basically

the Gulf of Mexico saltwater onto land, uh, and, uh, it was like a record

number, especially along the beaches.

Like Clearwater Beach, which is a huge tourist area, all the way

down the beaches is basically inundated and a lot of damage.

A lot of damage.

Basically, oh my gosh, you can see the sand from the sandy white beach.

And then basically all just got lifted and plopped right on the road with it.

Wow.

It runs down the various islands and, you know, you know, I used to, I've seen, you

know, you see like up in Buffalo and stuff like cars totally submerged under snow.

Right.

It looked the same way, but there were cars under sand.

Wow.

Really, really, really bad.

and a lot of people did lose their transportation, lost their cars.

So they were looking to transit, to get them to, you know, to

FEMA had set up a whole bunch of, food sites and things like that.

And, so that was, that was a, Kind of a surprise.

I mean the, the rest of the hurricane kind of missed the Tampa Bay, but they, just

the way the, wind went, it pushed all that water into storm surge and a lot of low

lying areas around the Tampa Bay really got a major hit of storm surge, which,

and some people actually lost their lives, that couldn't get out of their house fast

enough, and so that was really devastating

. And then just, About six days later, we get Hurricane Milton, and this one that

we just got back in the office, today, from, that hit last Thursday, Wednesday

night into Thursday, was a wind and rain, storm, like there not, not, has

not been in, the Tampa Bay's history.

Luckily, well, I guess luckily, actually touched ground a little south of us

down in the, uh, Sarasota, Bradenton area of Florida, on the west coast of

Florida, and then it just went basically straight up the I 4 corridor, past, St.

Petersburg, Tampa, up to Orlando.

I think it was still even rated a hurricane as it went past

Orlando, and then out the other side on the Atlantic Ocean side.

But, it was the north side, we were on the north side, and that's where the worst

wind and rain was, for this hurricane.

It was, Cat 3, it got 100 mile an hour winds right, in

my neighborhood where I live.

Wow.

I was here.

Yeah.

My family had luckily evacuated and a lot of people did evacuate.

I stayed through it.

I was in my house.

It was, I was, had my headphones in and then I would take them out.

It was roaring for like six hours of just incredible wind.

The noise inside the house.

I mean, it was, but.

It's what we're all good, safe.

the, there wasn't really much storm surge with this just because it, the winds

were going in a different direction.

actually, it's kind of fascinating.

The water goes away from that.

Yeah, they said it kind of sucked the, sucked the water

out of the Tampa Bay or something?

Yeah, it sucks it out and it's kind of incredible.

That's weird.

You, you got like, I can walk Tampa, you know.

Yeah.

Oh, it's Moses

crossing the, the Dead Sea or whatever.

Yes,

but, this one was, a lot of, downed trees and of course

power, you know, so, 90 percent of the million people that live in

my county, uh, were without power.

So many hundreds of thousands are without power.

Tampa, same thing, about over half of Hillsborough County.

So, Down trees, down power lines, that's been the main thing.

Of course, that also, basically eliminates the traffic lights, because there's

no power, so it's very treacherous driving, you know, on the roadways,

so, a real, real major impact, just a one two, so, we're just all very

happy and blessed to, to be here.

Still be here we're doing just fine.

So, all right, so, so that's what happened.

That's a great, by the way, great description.

Thank you for that, you know, kind of a first person review of what happened.

All that rain and everything.

Did your car get like flooded out by all the rain coming up underneath of it?

Or could you drive it?

Or how did that affect your buses and and your facilities and all that?

Yeah, well, very luckily, no.

I, I'm totally fine.

And, I, I live in a, a little bit higher ground area.

Okay.

You know, the, for hurricanes That's smart.

For both, right, for both hurricane, both hurricane, Helene

and Milton, there was evacuations.

There's mandatory evacuations that the, counties, all go through,

depending on where the storm's coming.

And so, for Milton's last one, there was the biggest evacuation I've ever seen.

Mandatory evacuations, the whole, every county in Florida is all organized to

have like zones A, B, C, D, E, F, whatever , based on your height above sea level.

And, luckily I live in zone D.

pretty high, it's 27 feet above sea level, so I'm fine.

They evacuated, in my county, A, B, and C, mandatory.

So, over half the county evacuated.

And where did they go?

Just up the road north?

Well, yeah, if you look at, the traffic on I 75 up to Atlanta, up

I 95, this time since it was the West Coast of Florida, mostly I 75, just

totally jam packed all the way to Atlanta.

Yeah.

People from Florida fleeing the storm.

And, this, because it came just a couple, just two weeks after the last hurricane

and that was really devastating, I think.

I, I do think, over half the population completely evacuated.

They, they took it seriously.

They really took it seriously this time, which was

really good, you know, in a sense.

But, yeah, now, even today, the traffic is incredible on coming back, because

they're all finally coming back.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

today, so I've heard really kind of nightmare stories about folks coming back.

But the transit systems.

are really essential to every county in Florida's, response to these storms.

The, we all have a full blown emergency operations center, at least where I had

come from in the past, they had used, like, a room in City Hall or something for

something like this, but for emergencies, but here, there's the permanent

facilities that are just in there.

They have a permanent director and, you know, it's a very, sort of, uh, command

control kind of set up where we, we, we always have people there 24 7 during a

storm and, um, the requests come down to us and we provide the evacuations.

This one was so big and threatening to come right to us that they

actually relied on us just running our regular bus service, which goes

by, you know, the evacuation, centers.

that, that they set up are the schools.

They close down the schools, and then they set them up in high

schools, the evacuation centers.

And, supposedly, on this storm, a record, like, nine or ten thousand people

actually went into the, evacuation sites, the schools, and churches, and things.

And, you know, our bus, our bus network, serves, All those schools, pretty, pretty

effectively just with its regular routes.

So we, we ran our regular service until late on, uh, at their, their

request, Tuesday because that's, that's the, and it becomes free and, you

know, that's the best, most frequent way to get as many people access to

the evacuation centers as possible.

And like I said, Helene had taken out a lot of people's cars and our

transportation, so, that was even more necessary, so we did carry a lot of

people to the evacuation centers, and then, of course, we just, inundated

with specific requests, and maybe you heard from the other folks that you

talked to about the same kind of request where, low, low lying, nursing homes

and, medical facilities and things like that, of course, we have the

largest fleet of wheelchair accessible vehicles in, the county, you know,

with our paratransit vehicles and with our, our buses all having, wheelchair

accessibility, so, we're called to those sort of special needs to evacuate

all those folks that, you know, need a wheelchair accessible vehicle to

get out and, or a hospital, you know.

Oh, right.

And, and there's, there's dozens of those, those locations

in the evacuation zone that we, we carried, close to 10, 000 people away.

Wow, Brad.

Before the, before the storm hit and, And then certainly right after, even

today, we're doing a lot of special movements of buses , but again,

it is just so well integrated.

Now, the only way we can do that is I've just got a fantastic staff

who has us down to a tee and did such a fantastic job this time.

We have to make sure that our fleet and our facilities and all of our

employees are safe first, and then, then we can provide the service.

It's an essential service to the county, to the citizens.

We moved all of our buses to higher ground because the facility, of course, most bus

garages, I think in the United States, are built in flood zones, probably,

but we're in Zone B, so we evacuated our buses to higher ground, themselves.

We did that, Wednesday, right before the storm hit.

and then, left some buses, our older buses, just in case something bad happens,

we don't want one of our brand new buses to get messed up, to provide the, uh,

evacuation services as long as we can.

our policy is we will run, it's really for the safety of the riders, we will run

until, sustained storm force winds 45.

and that's what we did.

Okay.

And really we're, Appreciated, I know, but the county very much relied on public

transit to help them get the people safe.

You helped evacuate at least 10, 000 people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's amazing, Brad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think, and I know, I don't think the numbers were, you know, we were right,

we're right on the Gulf of Mexico and,

yeah,

probably got the, the highest, the most, impact to our county,

but Tampa just right behind us, they also, same thing, same exact things.

They, they evacuated certain zones.

the system on, on that side of the bay did the same thing, at their emergency

operations center providing evacuations.

Yeah.

to get people out of harm's way.

Right?

I heard the roof of Tropicana of field got ripped off and where

they were having first responders there and that was their shelter.

And then that got, wow.

That's like biblical proportions.

I know.

yeah.

It was, it was, it was incredible.

Just like, to see that and then, oh my gosh, the, the roof is

gone on that, facility, that's certainly a, a huge challenge.

Luckily there was nobody in there, nobody injured amazingly.

And then, And they had sent a warning out before this, but you know, downtown St.

Petersburg, one of our main areas that we serve, is just really booming

economically, and there's maybe, I don't know, seven, eight, maybe a

dozen, those big huge cranes, building, buildings, and they said, you know, be,

be wary of those cranes with hurricane force winds, and one toppled over,

and basically landed on top of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, building.

Oh, wow.

and kind of crushed the corner of it, and it almost, right,

right in the downtown core of St.

Petersburg where our BRT goes, it probably missed our BRT station.

Right in that part of that area, by about, 30 feet or so.

Oh my goodness.

And it still, is lying there on the, street.

Yeah.

Down below.

That was, that, that was also incredible.

Yeah.

So what's happening now?

Now that it's over, I hear that there's still a lot of people without

power, and, and what's your role in transit to help kind of recover?

Yeah.

Well, you know, it just continues on.

You're exactly right.

probably the biggest thing that we're dealing with now in our

county is the lack of power.

and so that certainly a nursing home or a hospital or something like that.

In an area that doesn't have power, can't go back yet, can't have their

folks go back there without power.

Now, a lot of, like the major hospitals and everything, have emergency backup,

generators and things like that.

So, we're talking mostly like smaller nursing homes or maybe, you know, senior

living facilities and stuff like that.

so we're, we're still providing, uh, As of today, we did something like 200

people, uh, get people back still today.

Supposedly, they're going to have all the power back by tomorrow,

and we can, maybe get back to some resemblance of normal, normalcy.

this time, you know, I think largely, due to the lack of power at gas stations,

there was a run on gas very long lines to get gas, at places, you know, our

paratransit system, which is heavily used, during the, hurricane, The cabs

and the Ubers, you know, that we use a lot of here, they were having trouble

getting gas, and so PSBA has big tanks, and we have a lot of unleaded fuel also.

We opened up our facility to basically fill up all the taxi

cabs to keep that service going, just in the last couple days.

We've been doing that too.

Wow.

Yeah, that's, that's, interesting how you don't think about that.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, the taxis, the Ubers, Lyfts those are very, those are critical to our, to

our paratransit, network, getting people, you know, everybody's power has been out.

So now they need to go to Publix or the grocery store more often because

their refrigerator doesn't work.

yeah.

Just everything, is just.

out of sorts right now.

it's going to take our community a while.

The, the destruction from the storm surge from the first hurricane along

our coastlines, and then, and then this.

This, the power and the, of the last, being out, it's, it's a real challenge,

but we're just grateful that, by and large, our, our employees are all

safe, and accounted for the incredible work getting, the, so many people to

safety, and really helping out, and I'm just, I'm, I'm grateful for them and,

and the great work that they've done.

That's something.

Well, thank you for joining us today, Brad, and kind of filling us in from a

first person perspective for those around the country and the world who listen here.

is there any kind of final, you know, you've done this a few times

now, any lessons learned from your perspective that you would share with

other people in preparing for, you know, a natural disaster of this type?

Oh yeah, thank you.

And I, we are always, learning, you know, what, what goes wrong, what, what we could

do better, what could be more efficient, through every storm, and we're trying to

make those adjustments, I would certainly say, you know, and I didn't know any of

this before I really came down here to Florida, and then I've just been sort of

indoctrinated in it, have a plan, have a, procedure in place on how you're going to

make decisions, on, you know, service, how you, we, we work very carefully with our

union, to include them in the discussions, now with the power of Zoom, like this,

we have, Zoom calls, replacing like in person meetings a lot because we're

all in our evacuation spots or at home.

and, communication is probably the number one, lesson I've learned

is key, from myself as the CEO and the leader of the organization.

And I'm interacting with the leaders of the other public organizations, the

cities, the first responders and things like that, on down to, to make sure

that we can really be there for the community when they, when they need us.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah, Greg Slater was telling me, that, you know, you guys were coordinating with

him because your vehicles are running on their roads and there's so much

interagency cooperation and coordination happening behind the scenes that the

public doesn't see, but it's critical and then, you know, the other folks who are on

later on today's episode, we'll be talking about, All the preparation and planning

and the tabletop exercises and all the things that go into this, you know, like

you said, these are real professionals that have been doing this for a long time.

And, it almost, it's not second nature, but you have to have a plan, you have

to coordinate and communicate, and then you have to be able to execute, right?

Oh, absolutely.

And, and to your point, it is great, the relationships and the, just,

everyone working together, in the Tampa Bay area, but then across the

state in the transit world, even.

Like, I, I have been in communication with, Tiffany Homler, in Orlando, Nat

Ford in Jacksonville, our State Transit Association, Lisa Bacow up in Tallahassee,

of course the Florida DOT, uh, the Expressway Authority, Yeah, everybody has

called me up and said, is there anything that they can do to help me, you know,

or coordinate with them, in any way?

It's been, it's been fantastic support for us.

Yeah.

Well, thanks for sharing with us today.

We wish you all the best in the recovery.

We know it's just really starting now that people can get back into the offices

and that your power comes back on.

Thank you for sharing it with us today, Brad.

Thank you.

Thank you,

Paul.

Great to have with us my good friend, Dave Dech who is

executive director of what's known as TriRail, but it's the south.

What is it again, Dave?

it's a mouthful.

It's the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority.

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautiful, man.

So, and today, you're, you're also on the board of

just finished the board meeting for the commuter rail coalition.

Right.

Commuter rail coalition.

Yeah.

That's a very big operation, big organization, isn't it?

And growing.

And

growing.

Yeah, I think we represent at this point about 98 percent of all

commuters that run on these trains are represented on this association.

Well, for those of you who watch our television show,

Transit Unplugged TV, you might recall Dave was one of the stars of

our episode in South Florida, Miami.

we rode his service, went to the Yellow Green Market with Coree Cuff

Lonergan, who was on today's episode.

and then, You showed us a station that you had built right in with,

with Miami Dade in the downtown area.

And you, I know you continue to coordinate very closely with

your transit partners, right?

Yeah, we've got a beautiful Miami Central Station

that, we share with Brightline.

Brightline built that station.

We have the platforms that we own in there, that connects over to Government

Center and connects you to the Metro Rail and then to the Metro Mover.

So, yeah, it's really really good to see all those pieces start to come

together as the way it should be.

I mean, it's all about connectivity.

That's right.

Yeah.

Especially in South Florida there.

So along those lines, actually, it's a great segue to what I wanted to

ask you about, which is preparation.

So we've talked, uh, with some of the CEOs about execution on the day

of service, and you run a rail line.

tell us what you run so that people are clear on that.

And then we'll dive into kind of preparation.

Yeah.

So we, we run commuter rail.

and we run through three counties.

our northernmost station is our Mangonia Park Station in Palm Beach

County, and we run through Palm Beach, Broward, and then Miami Dade County.

Right.

And, you kind of, you told me one time a good way for people who aren't

familiar with it, it, it geographically, you kind of parallel I 95, right?

Oh, yes, we, you know, we are, we, there's no

better way to get off 95 than to

ride it.

I love that.

So, let's, take our minds back a week or so when Hurricane Milton was

bearing down on Florida, the, the, the preparations that were required

for all transit agencies, which is what I'd like you to focus on, was

tremendous because this thing looked like it was going to be a monster.

I mean, I, I heard people saying it could be the worst, or one of

the very worst in history, and then, and then what happened, Dave?

Well, you know, we, we were watching it because as we're watching the

models and everything and, you know, we have a very prescribed, you know, where

we are in South Florida, we have a very prescribed hurricane preparedness plan.

we go over it every year, we make sure we have our supplies, we make sure

everybody's up on the plan, we make sure our generators are filled, all those, you

know, all those things we do every year.

So then it just becomes a matter of executing that plan

based on whatever variables.

The storm throws at you.

So while we were initially watching, it really looked like it was going to

go far enough north on the coast that we weren't going to have to do much.

And we were, we're fortunate that we have great partners in South Florida.

So we were, you know, we were having three times a day, three and four

times a day calls with the Florida East Coast Railroad and Brightline.

And they had their weather people on there with just these really great

in depth analyses of, of the weather.

So, When it took a turn south, we, we, we said, okay, now

we need to make a decision.

And our, our hurricane preparedness plan calls for if there's going

to be, wind speeds, the sustained wind speeds above 40 miles an hour,

we must start to secure gates.

So that's where really what we start to worry about are the

crossing arms and crossing gates.

because

they can become projectiles.

They can, so they become more of a hazard.

so once it became clear, like even the morning of.

they were starting to project, sustained wind gusts, not gusts, sustained wind

speeds of 55 to 60 miles an hour.

So that became a no brainer.

Yeah.

We've got a, you know, it was just in the Palm Beach County area.

Okay.

But we made the decision that we're, you know, starting with

the service on, Wednesday morning, I think it was, that we were going to

suspend service Wednesday, Thursday, where we would start securing gates.

So we How do you

do that?

What do you do?

Like wrap a chain around it or something?

So,

yeah, it's, it's Your chain or rope you can latch, anything

shorter than 25 feet will secure.

Anything longer than 25 feet will remove because they just did that.

So, and that's where it becomes a lengthy process.

So we removed, you know, we removed over a hundred gate arms, and then, you know,

secured the rest in Palm Beach County.

and then, you know, again, we made sure all of our generators were up.

We made sure we had a source for diesel fuel.

we made sure that we had, You know, light, light plants stationed throughout the

area in case we lost power at a station.

we put our signal people all in rest, because our signal

people are all hours of service.

They can only work so many hours in a day.

so then you start thinking ahead, okay, I've got to put these people down for

rest, so that when the storm hits, I have people available to go out and work.

So we were going through all those, those preparations.

And then, fortunately for us, you know, that, that the eye hit the, the eye

wall and the south end of the eye of the storm kind of opened up and released

a lot of the energy on the south end.

so we didn't get the winds that we anticipated.

I'd much rather be prepared and not get the wind than, you

know, not be prepared to get it.

So I still think we made the right decision to curtail our operations.

and we, we did sustain damage to, um, Our Mangonia Park station, we lost a

lot of the roofing, in the station, so we'll have to make some repairs there.

We had some light poles down, a lot of trees down.

Now, was that due to the hurricane, or was that due to tornadoes?

It was a little bit of both.

Okay.

the tornadoes were scary.

I mean, it's, you know, if you look at my house in particular,

I had no damage, you know, I had a flower pot that was blown over.

But if you go up a mile or two from my house or a couple miles where they

had the tornadoes and there's entire neighborhoods just completely devastated.

I'm sure you've probably seen some of the images on Instagram.

And that was, you know, that was just north of us.

You know, I have a friend of mine sending me pictures from his backyard

of a tornado in his backyard.

So, we were very fortunate.

that we, you know, we sustained very, what I think is very minimal damage

for what we were expecting, from the storm and we'll, you know, we were

back up and operating on, on Friday.

That's great.

And so, what I want to just kind of, focus on for our listeners is

the amount of preparations that go into getting ready for a storm.

I was interviewing Greg Slater, who is the head of the Tampa

Hillsboro Expressway Authority.

Greg was head of the State Highway Administration when I

was head of the Maryland Transit Administration together in Baltimore.

We went through a storm called, we called, Snowmageddon, where we, you know, the

roads and the transit, which is on the roads, we coordinated dramatically and

we ended up shutting down all service, everything, for like two days, which is

something you almost never do in transit.

Shut it all down, but we had to.

But he said it's so different.

Handling hurricanes because, you know, in snowstorms, you're usually you're

trying to keep everything open, keep the roads open so people can get

through, but in a hurricane, it's close everything down and stay home.

so it's a whole different mode.

It is.

It is.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

You know, my life up north, you know, you, you want to keep the

roads, keep driving on them.

That's right.

You got to keep them passable.

Yeah.

You know, so, you know, we went through, cause, you know, even though.

You know, we were going to shut down our operation.

You know, we have CSX that operates.

We have, so CSX on the Southern end of the railroad was still, still workable.

So we had dispatchers around the clock still, but you know, you think about

you arrange hotel rooms, you, you know, you, you've got, you, you get

your phone list so you can do wellness checks, you know, for people, you

know, when the storm goes through, you want to make sure your people,

all your teammates are okay, because it's not just affecting the railroad.

You know, if you, you know, we have a lot of people who live up North who, you

know, and, and so now we're worried about.

Are they okay?

Are their families okay?

Are their, you know, their houses okay?

but it is, it's, it's an exhaustive list of, of preparations.

some of it you don't think about, right?

So, I mean, you, you, you got to keep your locomotives running.

In these kind of storms, because you don't want the water to

come into those exhaust stacks.

It just, just,

you

gotta keep

the train running.

Exactly.

So then when you're like some of our places like Palm Beach, they,

you know, we, they don't really like us to keep locomotives running.

So now we're restaging our locomotives into the yard where we would normally

leave them up, up north, so that we could, we could, the ones that have

to stay running to stay running.

And then we have, like exhaust.

port covers that we go up and we lash around.

Oh, yeah.

and then, so you're doing that and you need to make sure that,

you know, your water filtration and your filtration sites are all going

to keep working no matter what.

They don't care if the storm's coming or not.

You know, your sewage and your raw water and everything

still needs to be processed.

and then you start looking at your, uh, you know, we ordered in, I think 200

tons of ballast and had that staged.

You know, along the thing, we make sure all of our tampers and our

regulators and our on track equipment and everything, we go out, start it

up, make sure it's running, because you just don't know, you know you're going

to need those things after the storm.

Yeah.

You

just, you know, and that's not, finding out after the storm that

it's not running is the wrong time.

Yeah.

Wow, that's something.

Yeah, so much that people don't think about.

And then, were you a part of the Emergency Operations Center?

Did you have staff over there in any of the counties you were at?

So we did, we did not have staff over there.

I, you know, I stayed in very close communication with Coree

and Ivan and, and, and Eulois down in Miami and our staffs all talk.

So our, our directors of security and safety talk to Broward, talk

to Palm Beach, Miami Dade, all the EOCs so that we can coordinate.

and then, you know, the biggest thing for us, Especially in a storm of this

magnitude that we were expecting is, you know, our role then can be more vital,

not really moving people around, but opening up that track, get out of the way.

So if CSX needs to bring in, you know, supplies

or

water or, you know, whatever it is, you know, it's a vital outlet

there to keep that railroad running.

So if things are down in South Florida, you've got CSX and the FPC

can kind of bring in all that, that.

That freight infrastructure is needed.

Oh, yeah, that's amazing.

I think about all the supplies.

Yeah.

Now, do you work with your contractor, TransDev, on doing all that?

Are they integral to all this?

Oh,

it's, yes, it is.

It is arm and arm with TransDev and Herzog and Allied Universal.

They were on all the weather calls and we had a call following that to

make sure we were all coordinated.

it really was, you hate to say you get good at it because we get to practice

this a couple of times a year, but, but we, you know, you do, you run into

that, you know, just kind of a routine of making sure that you're ready.

That's good.

Well, Dave, thanks for making time for us today.

I know you're on a busy schedule there, and I'm really happy that, you know, you

had, you sustained minimal damage, both personally and, and your operations,

and, we'll plan to be back down there in South Florida again later, in 2025

to do a follow up on all the great news you all have coming out of South

Florida, and congratulations on your ridership recovery there, at TriRail.

I think you're leading the nation in the way of You know, of reorienting what

might be traditional commuter service to now adapt to the more hybrid work

schedule by opening up the schedules and making them more of a regional rail.

Yeah, it's, you know, we're very pleased with our results and we're

just going to continue to drive, continue to, to increase our reliability and

make that customer experience better.

I mean, that's really what it all boils down

to.

Great to have Coree Cuff Lonergan with us today on the show.

She is CEO and General Manager of Broward County Transit.

Those who watch our TV show got to see her on our South Florida episode.

Kori, thank you so much for being here today.

Coree Cuff Lonergan: Thank you, Paul, for having me and hello to the audience.

So glad to be here today and want to welcome you back to South

Florida as soon as possible, Paul.

Oh, good.

I'd

love to be down there now that it's getting

cold up here in Maryland.

Hey, Coree you guys, just had, just, you know, today's show is about the

impact that public transit has in responding to, natural disasters, such

as the back to back hurricanes that you just suffered there in Florida.

Tell us about that and, and where you all are at today.

Coree Cuff Lonergan: Yeah, so it's a really good question, Paul, and

thank you again for allowing us the opportunity to talk about it.

Yes, we did have, two back to back hurricanes, here, in Florida.

Fortunately for us, in both cases, we weren't immediately impacted by them.

We didn't sustain a direct hit.

However, with Milton, we did, have some, bands that came through, that, that,

The, we got some very strong gusts, but we didn't get sustained winds.

for us, we, look at sustained winds of over 39 miles an hour.

And if they get to that point, then we start to, close down our

service and we don't operate.

So we didn't have that situation.

So we were so fortunate.

but I do want to send, My well wishes out to our colleagues on

the West Coast, and in Central Florida that did take direct hits.

they're doing amazing jobs recovering there and I and my

thoughts are with them for sure.

but for us, we were able, fortunately, to keep our service running the entire time.

we did have one, only one detour, and that was because of flooding in one of

the local cities here called Hollywood.

for those of them familiar, Hollywood Beach.

well, our Route 6, had to be detoured for about two or three

days as, because of flooding.

other than that, we ran our normal paratransit service, our normal,

fixed bus route service, and, we were able during that time to carry

a ridership of about 100, 000.

Wow, that's something.

even though the hurricane didn't hit you as bad, I understand

that there were some tornadoes.

Did you get any of those in your, in your county?

Coree Cuff Lonergan: we did.

We did get some tornadoes touched down here in Broward, very briefly.

they did some, damage.

fortunately, from a transit perspective, we weren't, impacted by that.

and I saw a picture of you online, at your EOC.

I mean, that was, that was activated, right?

And you all had some plans.

You all prepare for these, right?

I mean, a lot of folks don't realize, having been a county

administrator myself, there's so many practice sessions that people have.

Have you been involved in any of those?

Coree Cuff Lonergan: Yes, in fact, our planning for the hurricane season starts

back in the beginning of the summer, actually, here in Broward, and we do

have multiple drills, tabletop drills, where we test how our responses are

going to be under various scenarios.

So it's taken very seriously here.

in Broward, and so we do have people that are dedicated to, watching the

weather, and, and, establishing, what the, protocol for response is going to

be based on weather reports, and that obviously triggers certain reactions, from

a county perspective on how we respond.

But it's taken very seriously here.

as you know, we're kind of the hurricane capital of the

country down here in Florida.

not something that we're proud of, but there, that's a fact.

and so because of that, you know, hurricane season is very

important to us and always top of mind and the preparations

are very, rigid and, important.

Thankfully, the impact there in your county wasn't as

bad, Well, thank you for joining us today, Corey, for this brief update.

We'll, we'll come back and film an episode of our TV show there in

Broward and, maybe in a few months, we can also do another podcast update.

You've got so much going on

Great to have with us my good friend Ivan Maldonado, who is executive

director of PalmTran, the transit agency in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Ivan, thanks for joining us on today's podcast.

Thank you, Paul.

I appreciate this, interview.

Yeah, man.

Ivan and I were pals when he was director of, transportation at

HART Hillsboro Transit in Tampa.

then after that, he went over for a few years to Omaha,

and now is back in Florida.

For the last couple months, many people will remember Clinton Forbes, who

was a great leader in our industry, passed away tragically, too soon.

I'm really happy you're back there, I think they've got a great, strong

leader in you to help kind of pick up where Clinton left off.

Yes, and I knew Clinton very well, met

him when I was at Star Metro in Tallahassee, and he worked at JTA.

Oh, right.

That's

right.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you guys know each other a long time.

So, how long have you been in this job, Ivan?

As a executive director of PalmTran.

just a little over two months.

Okay.

So as soon as you get in the job, what happens?

But you have Hurricane Helene come in and then a couple of weeks later, Milton.

I mean, boom, boom.

What a way to get started, huh?

Yes.

It's a way to get you back acclimated into Florida.

Yeah.

I mean, you had your fill of those storms.

I know when you were in Tampa, but tell me about the impact.

I've got a good friend who lives there in West Palm and he was saying that,

you his neighborhood was fine, but two neighborhoods away, tornadoes came

and just ripped the whole place up.

So it was kind of wild, huh?

Correct.

We were obviously hoping for the best, anticipating that we probably

needed to be prepared for the worst.

And what got us was the tornadoes and actually devastated a couple

of towns in Palm Beach County.

Actually, where I live right now, which is Palm Beach Gardens, was an

area that was affected by tornadoes.

Oh, man.

Oh, man.

Wow.

Tell me about that.

What was it like?

Were you there when it, when it touched down?

No, I was actually at the emergency operations center, so it

did not affect me directly in my home.

I was not affected by it, but I know that it was a tragic situation.

And what's amazing about that, because it brings back memory, when I was

in Omaha, we had a major, major, tornado that actually encompassed

almost a three mile, range.

I didn't realize that tornadoes could get that big.

Yeah, I got to Omaha.

So, the results of that tornado was devastating.

I've never seen anything like it, until I got to Omaha.

So yeah, they can be very devastating.

Yeah.

So this hurricane comes across.

The initial track had it hitting right between Clearwater and Tampa, then

it moved south, and it moved south quite a bit, maybe 40 or 50 miles,

and then crossed the whole state.

You're on the other side of the state, so tell us about what happened, where you

were, and the role of your transit agency, what was going on during that time.

So, I'm very thankful for the, Palm Beach County

and everyone's involvement here.

We were obviously tracking the storm for a couple of days before

it

came in.

The county administrator, the county commissioners, the different department

heads, emergency management, they were on point, tracking the storm.

we were at the EOC multiple days, making sure we had all the preparations

in place anticipating this storm.

So, we were very thankful, for our area and, and as I'm saying this right now,

I have reached out to some of the other transit systems like HART and PSTA, that

were affected, a lot more than we were.

Manatee County, for example.

So, the storm actually proceeded somewhat northeast, so we weren't

necessarily affected by it severely.

We had a lot of shrubs and things down, and, but we were able to, to resume

services, practically the very next day.

we, we, started notifying customers that services might be interrupted,

but what, What was, interesting about this whole plan, we wanted to make sure

that we got people safely to shelter.

So, so the day before the storm, we wanted to make sure that they knew

what options they had available for to get to the different shelters.

So we ensure that our services continue to operate as long as it was needed

before we pull services back inside.

We started to get pretty strong winds.

So we were initially we're going to close services by 12.

But the county administrator made the decision to continue to operate services

as needed to get people to the regular shelters and the special needs services.

So, we got information out there that we'll continue to make

sure that we'll get them there.

If we needed to get supervisor vehicles out there, we would

do whatever was necessary.

information was very thorough.

we, we had our call center, all modes of, communications available to

them so they could call if we needed to, coordinate special services.

we were able to get people safely to the, to the shelters and then we

were able to, pull services backup.

Everyone did a fantastic job, the supervisors, the operator in good

spirits, always, obviously concerned about their safety, but also concerned

about the safety of our customers, and, and the day of the storm, obviously by

that time we had everyone, in, in, in place where they needed to, to, to be

at, but we were grateful to hear that we would not be affected and we were able

to get folks back home safely as soon as possible with no issues whatsoever.

The communications were great.

We worked with the different departments of the county and we

were able to get people safely.

So, tell us a little bit about that coordination.

I think that's something that people may not realize is how closely a

transit agency in a natural disaster like this coordinates with the

Department of Public Works, the county administrator, like you said, as you

know, I used to be one, so I remember, doing that, coordinating with everyone.

Talk about that and where that all occurs in the EOC and how valuable that

is for everyone's in the same room.

Yeah.

Well, it's definitely, it's extremely valuable.

you have every representative from all the different, community stakeholders

in the community, you had, the Sheriff's Department, Emergency Management, you

have, representative of Fire, Rescue, the different, Departments of the City, Public

Works, Engineering, Water Utilities.

So there's a lot of coordination and most people don't realize that it's happening.

But before we can actually bring people back home safely, you have County

Engineering that has to go out there and look at the roads to make sure that they

are completely free of debris so we can safely take them to their destination.

We have supervisors out there.

monitoring the roadways.

We have communications with the, the different, community service providers

out there, especially if they're managing the shelters, to know that

we're able to bring them back on.

We just don't simply show up at the, at the shelters and, and

get people, to the destination.

Something that the county did that, I'm proud of the coordination with the

different agencies to make sure that the homeless community were not just left

out in the community, so we took buses out there to the different sites, and

we identified locations throughout the county that we could pick up the homeless

and make sure that communication was thorough, and we were able to transport

them safely to the regular shelters.

It was just a wonderful coordination, and I'm used to that level coordination,

I think all the transit systems in Florida do a fantastic job to make

sure that people are properly served.

but, but it was a great opportunity to see firsthand, Palm Beach County

and the different stakeholders doing what they do best and that is to

take care of the All of these are the kinds of people that we serve.

We wish you the best, my friend.

I'm happy that you made it through, even though there was some bad tornado damage.

The, the hurricane itself doesn't sound like the, the water damage

was that bad and wish you the very best as you continue to, kind of

get settled there and move forward.

And hopefully we'll get a chance to see you in person before the end of the year.

Thank you,

sir.

Great to have with us Tiffany Homler Hawkins, who is the CEO of

LYNX, which is the public transit system that covers the Orlando area.

Thanks for being with us today, Tiffany.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Thanks for having us.

So, on today's episode of Transit Unplugged, we're really

talking about the value of public transportation during a natural

disaster, and you all just had two of them back to back in Florida.

Amazing.

Tell us about that and the impact it had in the Orlando area.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Well, it's, so, it, there are two

certain things in Florida.

It is going to be hot and humid in the summer, and at some point you

are going to be doing some type of hurricane prepper response.

And, you know, we were fortunate here in, Central Florida, Orange Seminole

and Osceola County, Helene, we had some winds, and we did not shut down

service for Helene, Milton, which was catastrophic, both, both storms and,

you know, the whole southeast of the U.

S.

for Helene.

Milton, we shut down for less than 24 hours.

And so, you know, this is the things that we prepped for and,

at least for our team and because hurricanes are definitely a given.

And so we have a meeting starting in May.

Hurricane season is June 1 through November 30th.

And, so vacation times are limited because unlike snow days, in the

north for transit systems, we know we're going to have hurricane days.

But, you know, for us, we, our standard policy and has been for over 20 years

is we pull the buses when the winds are sustained at 35 miles an hour.

And, so it's the timing of those winds.

all of our, partners, emergency operations centers, we have the HURABAC models.

We have the same models and so it's a timing issue.

it takes us about three hours to get all the buses, off the routes, refueled

and staged so that they're secure.

And, you know, we start our 72 hour prep to get our facilities, secured

and work with our major employers.

You know, we have one of the, largest single site employers in Disney.

Yeah, Disney,

yeah.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: 85, 000 employees, universal.

And do a lot of them ride your bus system to work?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: A lot of our passengers are hospitality workers.

Yeah.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: And so, you know, we can get, we get them out and

we don't want to leave them stranded.

So we work with the parks for the timing of closures.

we also have a lot of, hospital workers that they are on their

ride out crews, during an event.

So.

We, we work with them to find out what their timing, is as

well to go to Alpha Bravo shifts.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, right.

So, so the impact, Helene, sounded like it didn't hit you too bad, but how,

what did Milton do in the Orlando area?

Did you get tornadoes, like some of the folks in Palm

Beach did, that kind of stuff?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: No, we, we had a lot of wind, we had wind gusts of, 87

miles an hour at Orlando International.

I think one of the sustained clocked winds was about 65 miles an hour.

Okay.

We did have a lot of rain.

the ground was already saturated, so it doesn't have anywhere to go.

Some of our areas are still dealing with flooding and rising, waters

on some of our rivers, in the northern part of our service area.

and down trees.

we did not have the tornadoes like they did down in Palm Beach

and southeast Florida, but it was definitely a wind and rain event for us.

Speaking of flooding, I saw a picture, I don't know

if you can comment on it or not, but I don't know if it's true.

It seemed like it may be a fake one.

I saw a picture of Disney World under, like, you know, with water all over.

Is that, was that a fake picture?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: From what, from all accounts, it

is a very much a fake picture.

Okay, yeah, yeah, because it didn't seem like you had

that much water there in Orlando.

so tell me about, the day of the storm when you, when you had to shut down.

What happened?

What did you all do?

you know, what was the role of public transit in helping to recover?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: so, in shutting down, you know, we timed it.

we wanted our buses to start coming in about 3 p.

m.

Okay.

So, our dispatch worked with calling in the outer routes to kind of Was that on

Wednesday?

The day the storm was or Tuesday?

That was on,

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: that was on, Wednesday, yeah.

Okay, yes, that's what I thought.

Okay, that's the day it was kind of hitting the West Coast.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: It was hitting the West Coast.

We were getting the feeder bands.

Okay.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: so we made the decision about 3

o'clock to start pulling service.

again, the, the major parks were closing down at 1 and 2 p.

m.

Okay.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: And they do work with their, their staff to, for those that

ride the bus, to let them leave first.

Okay.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: So, get the buses in, get them secured,

and then it's a waiting game.

And once we can monitor the winds and they start dying down, we work, with

the Public Works for all three counties.

We go out and do roadway assessments.

To make sure that the buses can get down the road, obviously there's

going to be light signals out, we had electrical outages, power outages,

throughout all three counties.

we're, we're pretty restored by Friday, but on Thursday, about 1.

30, we did the, all call for folks to report.

We have a, alert system, robocalls, an employee hotline.

to keep everybody informed.

And I, I will say that's one thing about the employees at LYNX is they

are all on board, they understand our role in the community and lot

of times during events, holidays, take it, take it out of the natural

disaster, you have a lot of call offs.

We didn't have any for Helene and Milton.

Wow.

So everybody steps up and, again, it's, it's our response.

It's how, once the buses are rolling and traffic lights are back, there's

a sense of normalcy that comes with, okay, I may have had damage.

Hurricane fatigue is real, but it gets back to, okay, the sun came up the next

day and, you know, we're responding and we're getting back to what we do.

so it really speaks to the role of public transportation

as an essential service, right?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Absolutely.

and it sounds like your employees get that, too.

They understand their role in it.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: They, they understand the role.

They understand the assignment.

And, you know, during COVID, we were all talking about, you know, our, the bus

operators and bus operations is essential.

They're, they're first responders.

That's right.

And,

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: you know, we only, we went to half service

for about six weeks during COVID.

And then we were back at full service.

Now ridership was not back full.

and you know, we're about 85, 90 percent back.

But, you know, it's the, it's the demographics of our

riders who need us the most.

That's great.

first of all, I just want to say, I love your transit system.

You know, we were down there last year and I got to ride it and see

your, one of your central hubs.

For those of you who'd like to see LYNX a little bit closer up, we did

do a TV show there, Transit Unplugged TV, where we featured Tiffany and

her team and her transit system.

Just give us a quick update since then for those who kind of Keep pace with us.

What's the latest generally, you know, not talking about the, the, the

hurricanes, but what's happening with your transit system generally now?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: So, Orange County is, putting about six million

dollars, more, a year into service.

we'll have more service in and around, Metro Orlando.

Link Central Station is going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary in

November, and the skyline of Orlando 20 years ago is a lot different than

it is today, and so we are doing a refresh at the terminal and bus bays

and looking forward to celebrating, the 20th anniversary and the end

of hurricane season in November.

Yeah, when is that?

When is the end of hurricane season?

Is there a specific day?

I'm

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: officially it's November 30th, but we have been

known to have a few in December.

Wow.

Well, hopefully you don't have any more this year.

I mean, you've had more than your share.

Tiffany, your leadership there, I think, is just, it shows how, Some of

the other folks were saying this too.

Brad was saying how professional the response is in Florida to a hurricane.

It's not like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

Everybody knows exactly what they're going to do.

You guys have drills, you plan and then you just execute and

your team sounds like they get it.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Yeah, it's the execution and we have our own EOC and

it helps us coordinate with the three counties when those requests come in for

shelter service, it, we do not charge a fare if you're going to a shelter.

And so,

it's,

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: it's the messaging and, the IT team, the

communications team, operations, they've all been long tenured employees.

Like, none of them have been there less than 10 years that sit at that table and

help make those decisions and, and make sure that we're firing on all cylinders.

That's great.

Well, thanks for giving us an update today, Tiffany.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Well, thanks for having us.

Great to have with us on the line today.

Greg Slater, who is CEO and Executive Director of the Tampa

Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

Greg, thanks for joining us.

Absolutely.

Happy to, Paul.

Greg and I, we're old colleagues.

We used to work together at State DOT.

He was the head of state highways.

I was the head of transit.

And then after I left, he became secretary of the whole state

transportation department, man.

Way to go.

it's a fun ride.

And so a couple years ago, maybe almost three years

ago, you went down to Florida.

I did.

I did.

It was an opportunity that kind of came to me in Florida.

Some of the transportation agencies, including the transit

agencies, are special districts.

Okay.

and throughout the state, there's a handful of special districts of the

state who, you know, we're solely supported by toll revenue and we do

a variety of transportation projects.

We have a greenway, we have some local roadways, some boulevards, but

it's all funded off of the revenue that comes from the toll facility.

Interesting.

So, you guys, I mean, the theme of today's show is basically, you know,

resilience, how public transportation and the highway network play such a

critical role, kind of in societal safety, when it comes to these big

hurricanes you got down there in Florida.

Tell us about what happened, these two back to back hurricanes,

and how you all responded.

Well, you know, you look at that two major hurricanes,

the first one, a hundred miles away from us, still had tremendous

impacts in terms of the water surge.

You learn very quickly about which side of the hurricane you want to be on when

it's coming across the Gulf, depending on whether you're going to get water pushed

into you or water pulled away from you in terms of the rotation of the storm.

But in both cases, you know, the preparation is still the same.

So you come in, you've got these four or five days, even 10 days out,

you're watching these storms develop.

You got like an invest system now that's kind of flirting around whether it's

going to make it to the Gulf or not.

Oh, yeah.

What you do is you start to track those and then a couple of days out, okay,

do I have enough contractual resources?

Are all of my drainage inlets clear of debris?

what do they look like in terms of whether we're going to get impacts

from water or whether it's resilient?

You know, but then coming out of those two storms.

Couldn't have been very different for us, you know, so it was, you know, so when we

came out of Helene, the first time, the first storm had a lot of water issues,

a lot of flooding, you know, a lot of, of drainage systems that just handled

much more than they were designed to do.

So washouts and those types of things that we're repairing.

Coming out of Milton, because we're on the other side of the storm, we didn't,

we had rainfall, you know, tremendous amounts of rainfall, but it was all wind.

We've got signs that are twisted.

We've got power lights that are down.

We still got significant portion of our system that's still

running on backup generator.

We still don't have power in the system.

So, you know, it's about resiliency.

And when you look at us, And the people that we serve, the network is the network.

So, you know, we, other than our streetcar system here in Tampa, the

system is really a bus based system.

So you've got a lot of transit facilities and transit services that are running

not only on our system, but the FDOT system and the local system, Pinellas

and Hillsborough County, as well as St.

Petersburg and the City of Tampa.

So we've got to work together as an all hands on deck to

make sure the system functions.

So that we can not only evacuate the way we need to evacuate, get people

to safe places like shelters, but then recover in a way where you are running

fuel supplies up and down the corridor.

We had tremendous fuel shortages because the port got shut down.

So, tell us about the evacuation and people using your roads.

I mean, tell us a little bit about your road network that you oversee and

then, you know, how did it perform?

For

Yeah, we performed pretty well.

So, you know, what happens under a state of emergency is the governor will

actually suspend the collection of tolls.

Okay.

During the state of emergency, so there's no charge to use the system.

Our system, for the most part, is elevated, so it's pretty

resilient from a water perspective.

but we're not so high elevated that we're not resilient from a wind perspective.

But as we connect to the other systems, so the three bridges, really, across

the water between Tampa and St.

Petersburg.

All three of them are owned by the Florida Department of Transportation,

so they coordinate with us and say, hey, this one's going to be shut down

soon, or this one's going to be shut down soon, and then what we do is, for

instance, one of them on the southern side that goes over into downtown St.

Petersburg headed towards Tropicana Field, you know, so that one was going

to be shut down, so what we needed to do is get out there and shut off the access

The elevator part of the expressway that goes to it so people don't get trapped

on it and are able to turn around.

The challenge for us is a lot of the system underneath of us was being

flooded at the same time, so you've got to kind of work it together.

How do you even get there?

Yeah, that's right.

Wow, that's something, Greg.

And you were mentioning, like, when you and I were in Maryland

together, we had a big snowstorm.

and I remember we, you and I had to coordinate to respond to that, but you

said it's kind of different than, tell us about that, how it's different.

It's absolutely different.

I remember, I think we were calling it Snowmageddon at some point.

That's right.

It was like three blizzards in like a six day span or something.

But, you know, when you work a snowstorm, and I worked many many in the course

of my 25 years there, Your goal is to really, although people stay in during

those snowstorms, many don't, so the goal is to keep the system moving

while the storm is being out there.

You're issuing warnings and saying, please don't go out, please don't go

out, but, but the idea was to keep it mobile so, you know, hospital

workers can get to the hospital, so the supply chain can keep moving.

With a, with a hurricane, once you get to 30, 40 miles an hour, you're

pulling even your crews off the system.

And saying, hey, we're in a mandatory evacuation zone,

you're kind of on your own.

Yeah.

and then first light, you go back out and

start working on the recovery.

But the goal is to not keep the system moving through a hurricane,

because it's not safe to do that.

And so, although we have bridges closed and those types of things, there's

nobody out there to actually physically stop you from going across that bridge

if you decide to go out, but if you run into an issue, you kind of, on your

own, it becomes an emergency management type of an issue, but it really is a

very, very different type of approach to managing a hurricane versus a snowstorm.

It's like, alright, let's take the pause, let's take a break, and And then let's

figure out how we can get out there first light to work on the recovery

and assess the damage and inspect all your bridges and those types of things.

You wouldn't have to do that in a snowstorm.

That's right.

I guess last question would be, Greg, talk about the coordination you had with

the public transit agencies down there.

Because obviously they're driving on your roads.

They are.

And there's a lot of coordination that happens between us and them, as well

as FDOT and the city and the counties.

Because they're all kind of separate and the system is like a A patchwork of

who owns what, but the transit systems are running on either our system or

an FDOT system or a county system, so through an emergency operations center,

a lot of that coordination happens.

although transit service was running to get people to shelters and those

types of things through the storm, it's about how do you ramp it back

up when you get power restoration?

How do you ramp it back up to get people back to their kind of daily lives, but

also to keep that supply chain going?

So it really is an all hands on deck communication exercise, as much as it

is an operations exercise, saying, You know, somebody like HART will come out

and say, hey, we want to start this service back up, or PSTA saying, we're

going to start this service back up.

We got to make sure the roads open, and we got to make sure we have the

system in place to be able to run your routes, because we had, we still have a

tremendous amount of people without power.

We still have a tremendous amount of our system that has, you know, a foot

plus of standing water as the creeks are rising and those types of things.

So those routes, as you know, Paul.

You can't redesign those routes on the fly, you know, they work when

they work, and so you've got to make sure that that route is open it's

not as much us coordinating with them, but it is them coordinating

with us and saying, hey, Do I have a whole route here that I can restore?

Or is there standing water three feet tall on a hunk of it?

Yeah.

Wow, Greg.

Well, man, we wish you the very best and congratulations on the work you did do.

I was able to see even in the media how well you guys responded to this

wild storm, I mean, the roof of Tropicana Stadium being ripped off,

the hundred tornadoes or so that came through the area and you guys, you

know, were able to minimize the impact to the great majority of the area.

Congratulations and best wishes.

As you continue to recover.

Thank you,

Paul.

Thank you for being with us for this very special

edition of Transit Unplugged.

From the eye of the storm, talking about emergency preparedness in the wake of

hurricanes, Helene and Milton in Florida.

I'd like to thank our.

Our guests, Brad Miller.

Dave Dech Coree Cuff Lonergan.

Ivan Maldonado, Tiffany Homler Hawkins and Greg Slater.

We really appreciate them taking this time to speak with us.

Right.

Right now, still in the midst of a disaster.

Hi, I'm Tris Hussey editor of the Transit Unplugged podcast.

Now can we up next week on the show, we stay in Florida in Miami, specifically.

And we Schneider St.

Pru, who is one of the recipients of mass transits, 40 under 40 awards this year.

But Schneider also has an amazing.

Amazing career trajectory.

He started bus operator.

Greater over a dozen years ago and he's worked his way up to be general.

Superintendent of boss operations for the department of

transportation and public works.

Works for Miami Dade county.

his career success to hard work.

Dedication education.

And transit unplugged.

Tune in to hear his entire story and his advice.

Nice for those of you who also want to climb the career ladder.

is brought to you by Modaxo.

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