I'm Paul Comfort, and this is Transit Unplugged North America's top public

transportation podcast, where every week we talk to a different CEO

or transit executive and find out what's happening behind the scenes

of their transit agency or company.

Today's episode centers on a North American city known for

sitting right on a major waterway.

You may have heard of it.

It's spelled M-I-S-S-I-S-S-A-U-G-A.

Yeah, that's right.

Not IPPI.

We're not talking Mississippi.

We're talking Mississauga, Ontario and Canada, just west of Toronto.

Mississauga's a great city.

It's actually though relatively new by North American standard.

It's only about 50 years old, but in that time it's grown into the

seventh largest city in Canada.

And when a city population grows like that, you have to move them.

Right?

That's why my way Mississauga's transit system has continued to

grow right along with the city.

And our guest today is Maureen Kazen Heath.

She leads my way, Mississauga transit system, and she's taking on the

challenge of guiding a 500 bus system.

Supporting over 1700 employees and doing all the things necessary to keep

that city moving smoothly and reliably.

My way is expanding service, preparing for new rapid transit projects, and

making major investments to meet demand.

Now let's jump into this conversation that our recorded live in person with her

in Ontario just before we went on stage for a transit unplugged live CEO event.

And if you like what you hear today, be sure to like and subscribe.

Transit Unplugged, wherever you listen to podcasts so you can be

sure that you get the information you need to grow your career and be

a fascinating transit evangelist.

Now let's talk to Maureen.

excited to be in Canada today with the, uh, with two great CEOs.

We're gonna start with Maureen Kazen Heath.

She's the director of Transit for the city of Mississauga, which

is outside of Toronto, and their transit system is called My Way.

Maureen, thanks for being with U.S.

My pleasure.

This is my first podcast.

I hope I do you justice.

Awesome.

Yeah, I, I, I'm sure you will.

first off, some contacts we're here at the, uh, VTI Canada.

User Summit, the first one ever, and you're co-hosting it.

Tell me, uh, what's that all about?

We're really excited to be a co-host.

Uh, when VTIs contacted U.S. and they were looking for a Canadian location to

have their first ever user conference, we stepped up and volunteered.

selfishly, it's a great way for me to be able to send a lot of staff without

incurring a lot of travel budget.

and also working in the greater Toronto, golden Horseshoe area.

There's a good concentration, a healthy concentration of trans

agencies within this geographical span.

Yeah.

So we knew that that would likely give them a good draw for potential customers

to come and spend some time learning about the product and seeing the new,

Modules and just the evolution of what Vontas is able to offer U.S. as an agency.

So that's how we ended up here today.

You know, I drove up yesterday.

I, I'm in Maryland and I flew up to, uh, Buffalo and drove over, which was fun.

I wanted to see a buddy of mine, that runs, uh, buses in Buffalo.

And they had football game day service, which was fun.

You know, I got to go out and meet their drivers and their, supervisors.

They had like 14 buses there at Buffalo Bill Stadium, Michael Dillon Powell.

good dude.

Anyway.

I love coming over that bridge and going to see, Niagara

Falls from the Canadian side.

You know, I've driven by that, but I've never actually like walked up to it.

So I took like an hour and just took it all in.

I think it looks better from the Canadian side.

You can actually see the horseshoe falls.

Honestly, Canada has a better view of the falls.

Yeah.

Not gonna lie.

And we'll take that moment to brag as a, as a nation.

Yeah.

glad you had a chance.

To experience it.

Niagara is truly a beautiful area, not just because of the falls, but

the Niagara region has wineries and farm to table restaurants, and.

All kinds of craft breweries.

It's quite a tourist destination and in my opinion, one of the prettiest

parts of the province of Ontario.

Yeah.

Driving up one of the streets, like I felt like I was in Disneyland.

All these like, you know, it was wild there.

What is it?

Canals?

What is that street there?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Oh, um, it's in Niagara Falls.

Clifton Hills.

That's it.

Clifton Hills.

Clifton Hill.

If you go there, people who are listening, you should definitely check that out.

Anyway.

let's, set the context for Ontario.

So Canada has what, 11 provinces.

Yes.

And so provinces are like states in America, so to speak, right?

Yes.

So you got a pretty big one here, and the big area is Toronto, and you're

just like outside of Toronto, right?

Mississauga?

Yep.

Mississauga is about, 30 minutes by go train from the downtown core of Toronto.

Okay.

And, uh, tell me about Mississauga.

How many people?

It's a city, right?

It's a standalone city.

It's a standalone

city.

Um, the city of Mississauga has a. About 775,000 residents at this point in time.

That's as big as

Baltimore City, by the way.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a big city.

It's, it's not a small city.

Yeah, that's

for sure.

and we are connected to Toronto by way of Toba Co. Brampton.

Toronto down to Oakville and Milton, some of the sort of bedroom communities.

So there's quite a congregation of communities around the city of Toronto.

It has done a significant amount of development.

When you look at Mississauga, one of the things you'll notice about our skyline is

the number of high residential density.

Towers that we have in our core.

So really easy to deliver great transit service because we've got so many

residential units, concentrated in an area around our shopping district and soon to

come, you know, a new convention center and changes to the living arts area.

Like there's downtown Mississauga right now is really undergoing a

significant transformation, and we're also excited that we will have

the future Hazel McCallion line.

Uh, which will be an LRT line.

It's coming in the near future.

Not gonna give a date quite yet 'cause we're not quite ready.

but certainly the city of Mississauga is working away to

be ready for LRT operations and

who's bringing that in?

So Metro Links, which is the provincial agency, they are the asset owner and

my way will be the benefactor of the build of that piece of construction.

There's a new CEO there, right?

The guy had been there for a long time, recently left at Metrolinx?

Yes.

Phil Ster left.

Yes sir. And there is a new CEO at Metrolinx.

Okay.

And there's a new guy at TTC too, right?

There is, uh, Mandeep.

Yes.

Laley.

Yeah, new CEO at ttc.

He used to be in, uh, New York.

I knew him when he was in New York a little bit.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna try to go over there in the new year and interview him.

So you all are kind of connected.

Do you like connect up with, uh, Toronto?

Do your buses like meet up or whatever?

Yes, there is

service integration in between some TTC and uh, Brampton Transit and my way.

Okay.

We have a little bit of a service area where we sort of share stops in different

areas to help regional connectivity.

Obviously, when you look at the geography from Niagara,

from the border that you cross.

All the way up to sort of north on the 400 Vaughn, et cetera.

There's about 17 transit agencies Wow.

In what we call the GTHA area.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So there's regional connectivity in this area is really, really

important to U.S. and it's a critical part of the customer experience.

Speaking of customer experience, do you have like shared fair media or do

you just tap into their credit cards?

We, or what do you do?

We,

yeah.

We use a system in Ontario called Presto.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's what the GTHA properties use.

Presto is a Metrolinx product and we have our end users.

Use they tap on.

Yeah.

We also recently introduced open payments so people can use their

bank cards and their credit cards.

Yeah, I love

that.

So you know what users do too, let me tell you.

Yeah.

We've seen a huge migration away from cash.

Cash was already dwindling in interest on our buses over time.

Yeah.

But as soon as open payment came out, it's really been a game changer.

Yeah.

I remember back when I was CEO of MTA, I went to London for something,

speak at a conference or something, and there's a guy named Shashi Verma.

Who was the chief technology officer at, transport for London.

And uh, they had only had it for six months.

Yep.

He like invented it.

were the first ones in the world to do this tap and go.

I think they called it contactless payment at the time.

Yep.

which is still kind of a nomenclature for it.

Yep.

But he said, Paul, six months.

40% of the people riding the tube have already gone to it.

Yeah.

And we went down, my daughter was with me, and we went down

and watched and he said, watch.

And they were just, you know, it was brand new then taking the wallet

out or just ta and now it's phone.

Right now you can do it with your phone.

Yeah.

And, and those things are, are really convenient.

But I know we share a connection to some U.S. transit systems.

I'm a huge of New York City and the MTA, and you'll pry my metro

card out of my called dead hands.

But that's just nostalgia.

Just nostalgia.

All right, so now we've set the stage.

So now.

Serve, U.S. the platter.

Tell U.S. about your agency, the buses.

I mean, you guys are a pretty big agency.

It's pretty cool.

We are.

We are the third largest municipal transit agency in the province of Ontario.

We are sitting at 500 buses.

We operate out of two facilities.

We are online to stand up at.

Third facility that's in kind of the early design work phase for U.S.

our fleet is mostly hybrid diesel.

We've got a hydrogen bus pilot project coming our way.

Oh, love hydrogen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In about two years time, we're, standing on the precipice of ordering

those buses and then we are also doing a battery electric project.

In similar timeframe, 10 buses there.

So we're, we're moving towards zero emissions busing.

Uh, so that's the fleet.

there are 1700 plus people that work at my way.

About 1100 of them are drivers.

about 400 in the maintenance staff.

And then admin teams like your on road controllers, route supervisors, operations

supervisor and admin staff that work on.

All the it and the planning and scheduling, you know, the usual stuff.

But it's a large system, certainly the largest agency that I've ever worked at.

and it's a great, great system.

I've been there just four months at this point and settling in really nicely.

Everybody's been very welcoming to me and, uh, we've got great things ahead.

Really exciting projects coming down the road.

That's good.

Well, let's talk about something first, I just wanna acknowledge, I knew the

lady who had your job before you eve.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She was great.

She went to the airport now, right?

She did, yeah.

tell me about what you're doing.

You say you got some, so right now you're, diesel hybrid.

Yep.

You like your whole fleet

is, yes.

Wow.

So what does that mean?

Like it's partly electric, partly diesel, like the standard hybrid bus.

Yeah, it's a standard diesel hybrid bus.

Okay.

And, uh, you know, they're working really great.

We were able to adopt onto that technology fairly early.

Yeah, I love that.

And, the more we bring into the fleet, we're not at a

hundred percent conversion yet.

Okay.

But we're well on our way.

Um, so we're seeing a reduction in our diesel spend.

We haven't seen any challenges at all in, um, functionality of the

buses compared to the old, battle ax diesel buses of your Yeah.

And, you know, the team has become very proficient working on them.

And, and we know as we move into hydrogen buses and electrification,

a lot of, um, change in the work done by our technicians.

Oh yeah.

So a lot of the early work is really prepping the workforce to

be ready for a new, new engine.

Yeah.

And a new way to maintain vehicles.

That's interesting.

I have a bunch of topics I wanna ask you.

First, let's talk about ridership.

So let me just set the stage for where I'm at on ridership personally.

Sure.

And so I talk to CEOs every week around the world and, um, in America.

the new administration, there's a new F FTA, a administrator, mark

Molen era who oversees Trans America.

We're kind of shifting, I think the importance of ridership, in, I don't

even wanna say post pandemic anymore.

I'm tired of talking about the pandemic, but you know what I'm talking about.

Yep.

So pandemic was a gut punch to all of U.S. You know, we all

dropped 50% of our ridership.

A lot of agencies haven't even gotten back to that.

So the question is, do we even want to use that as a, as standard anymore?

Because the way we work is different.

you know, our software company, our offices are in Mississauga, right?

For, for one of our software, nobody goes in anymore.

Yeah.

so how can you compare when the whole context has changed?

So what's your thoughts on that?

I think most of U.S. in the industry know that sort of that binary count

of ridership is a throwback to a day and age of your and that we

need to modernize the way we think about success of a transit agency.

I agree.

So instead of just kind of.

Points on, on your tap card or coins in a farebox.

We need to start shifting away and start looking at boardings and link

trips and what our passengers are really doing when they're on our system.

So many of U.S. have gone to fair capping loyalty based programs

or two hour transfer windows.

We're really not counting ridership the way they would've back three decades ago.

Anyways.

That's right.

Um, we've given away a lot of what would've been counted as

a rider, so we are actually diminishing our own success factor.

So I think when you look at that.

And you start shifting to what does a modern transit system need

to do and need to be measured on?

It really is the construct of what's the value you are providing to your community.

Boom.

I agree.

Yep.

Yeah, a

hundred percent.

Yeah.

We've done some surveys in America about, 85% of people don't ride transit

generally, but they support transit.

Right.

And the reason they support it is because of three reasons.

We've done the surveys.

They are number one.

Access to jobs.

Yep.

They support it because they know it's providing access.

Number two, it helps the elderly and people with disabilities, they know that

these people might be homebound if they couldn't get access to the services.

And third, for lower income people who maybe can't afford

their own transportation.

So they get it and they're willing to subsidize it.

Right.

So why not emphasize those as KPIs that are, that are important, right?

Yeah, I think those are definitely KPIs.

I know in the systems, what I've seen is a real shift to measuring access to transit.

How many people live within, you know, 400?

Oh yeah.

Uh, 400 meters to a bus stop, right?

How many people are within 800 meters to rapid transit or express route?

Yeah, how many people are within, you know, one kilometer, two jobs within one

kilometer to a park or a community center?

Like where are things in Pems to where your people live?

and that is certainly something, you know, over the lifespan in my career.

When I first started in transit in the late 1990s.

I never heard those words.

Nobody cared.

Yeah.

that's just not how we measured.

That's right.

It was coins in the Farebox only.

Yeah.

Whereas now most of our, our, modern planners and our modern system

designers are looking at it from a completely different set of metrics.

and I, I would argue the right metrics, like I think we're finally getting it

right when we're looking at where can we get you, how quickly can we get you

there, and what do you have access to?

Travel time-wise, I can't compete with the car.

That's just a fact.

that's okay.

I can get you there in a reasonable amount of time.

And my pitch to the non riders is pretty simple.

You're a car owner.

More people on my buses, more space on the road for you.

I love it.

Yep.

That's great, Maureen.

Yep.

That's really good.

So how are you structured there?

You're part of the city government.

Yep.

So we're part of the municipal government at And so, you've got your city

manager and they report to municipal council, our elected officials.

and then there's a commissioner of transportation and works.

So you know, roads, engineering infrastructure, LRT project, the

Rapid Transit Project Office, and then the transit, we all

fall under that commissioner.

And then I'm the transit director.

Okay.

And so you've got 500 buses and what else?

Tell me again what you have for your actual services that you operate.

500 buses uhhuh, 70 routes.

some of them are expressed, some of them are local core routes.

And then we have some you

doing on demand stuff like paratransit, what we call in America, you know, uh,

paratransit is delivered by the region in Mississauga's area.

Okay, so Peel region, which is Brampton and Mississauga,

it's delivered by the region.

So no para in Mississauga.

But you do have

it.

It's just provided by someone else.

It's provided by someone else, correct.

And then looking as we build out our system, looking at on demand for areas

where, you know, maybe a 40 footer just isn't the best business case.

Right.

Alright.

So we talked about ridership and how we ought to be shifting, how we look at that.

It's not now the main or the only KPI that matters.

Yep.

Does your upline agree with you, like the city council and all like that?

Are they buying into this philosophy of we need to shift

the way we present our success?

Yeah, it's always a journey with elected officials.

Yeah.

and I think that it is on U.S.

as the transit agency.

I agree with you to really help shape that narrative.

Yeah.

We go in every year at budget time and we ask for a lot of money.

you know, we go in every year we're asking for big, big money capital.

We're looking to buy $55 million worth of replacement buses next year.

Wow.

So you're, you're talking big bucks from the cap side.

Big bucks from the operating side.

There's 1700 FTE I'm sitting at about.

19% of the overall number of employees for the city of Mississauga.

So my budget numbers, they jump off the page.

Yeah.

When you, when you're looking at all things being equal.

So your municipal council and your senior leadership team really need to understand

what you're doing and where you're at and where you're trying to go, and why?

Because if they don't understand the how and the why, they are

gonna have a really difficult time.

Supporting your business cases.

Yeah.

And your budget requests, because again, we're competing for budget

dollars with fire, with emergency services, with parks and recs, with

all of the big city departments.

Yeah.

So if you want your piece of the pie and you want to be able to deliver a

top-notch service to your residents, your elected officials and the

senior leaders have to understand.

Where you're started, where you're going, and why it's important to get there.

That's good.

That's why I believe one of the key skill sets for A CEO these days is the

ability to communicate effectively.

Yep.

It's like, I think it's the most important because, you're kind like a politician.

You gotta win the votes, you know, you gotta sell your vision of what you

wanna do, and you gotta win the votes, and you gotta have people on your side.

Yeah, I, I agree with that.

Yeah.

I think certainly I've been blessed to have strong finance people around

me who can do the, technical math.

I've got an excellent ops manager and fleet manager who can get the buses on

the road service, the roads, whatever.

I've always said, my job is to stand on the council floor and convince

people to give U.S. large sums of money in order to better the product that

we're delivering to our community.

Thanks for listening to the Transit Unplugged Podcast.

We are so glad you're here.

If you're enjoying this show, we know you'll love our other transit industry

programs on Transit Unplugged tv.

Paul Comfort explores the food culture and transit systems around the globe.

You get to see everything.

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Unplugged News minute where you can get the latest industry

headlines in less than 60 seconds.

You can find out more at transitunplugged.com Now back to

Paul Comfort for this edition of the award-winning Transit Unplugged podcast.

Speaking of money, let's talk about the farebox.

You've mentioned it a couple times.

That's the way, so, people in the industry know a farebox recovery ratio

is a percentage of money you collect from the farebox as it relates to your

operating costs, usually, in America.

You know, I hate to keep comparing that, but that's where I'm from.

You know, I remember when I got the job at MTA 10 years ago in Baltimore.

There was a law on the books in our state that said we had to

have a 50% farebox recovery ratio.

Wow.

50.

And we were breaking the law every day when I took the job.

So that soon got changed by the state legislature, 25%.

And then we still weren't hitting that on bus service.

We were hitting it on computer trains.

We ran computer trains.

Then they dropped it completely, and I think it's down to 15% now.

as a farebox recovery ratio.

What's your, what's your story up here on that?

Woohoo.

Um, I would love to only have to hit 15%.

I could, I could do that honestly with the get, get back what I closed up.

Wow.

What is it, uh, in Canada particularly, I'll say in Ontario, the sort of tried

and true is 50% fair bucks recovery?

50%. 50% is the goal.

there are transit agencies that exceed that and there are others that don't.

I would say, you know, post pandemic, I know you don't

wanna talk about it anymore.

Yeah, that's Sure.

Yeah.

But we're.

Still in Mississauga, we're still a little lower than the 50%,

but we're certainly over the 45.

So we kind of sit in that pocket.

Oh, dude, that's amazing.

Yeah.

We sit in that pocket and I, I don't think that that's a bad space to be in.

And what's the

cost to ride your bus?

Uh, $4 and 50 cents is the cash fair.

But then like one way.

Yes.

You get on, you pay four 50 or you tap your card, tap your card, most likely.

Yeah.

But then

you get a transfer and you get, you know, two hour transfer.

Yeah.

So you can do whatever you can do on board in a two hour.

Oh, okay.

Window.

Yeah.

We offer monthly passes.

We offer, you know, discounts, discounts, discounts for low income students, low

incomes, seniors ride our buses for free.

So there's a suite.

Oh, seniors ride free.

They do.

That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

65 and up ride for free.

Okay.

So there's a suite of fair options that are offered, and we try to make

sure that there's a, a fair product offering that benefits every single

demographic on board our buses.

So what do you think the goal ought to be?

Is it, is it like a law or if the 50% thing, or just a standard?

It's, it's not a law.

Okay.

Sort of a, it's a standard, it's not a super official standard, but it's

usually the benchmark that most of U.S. will, will hold ourselves to.

Yeah.

I think 50%, like I said, there's some agencies that meet it with ease.

Yeah.

Um, and exceed it.

And that's great for them.

I think it, again, depends on what your base price of your fares are.

It's hard to compare.

Yeah.

Um, and when you're looking at a place like the ttc, which is arguably.

significantly larger than U.S.

Are they the largest in Canada?

Yeah.

I would say certainly in Ontario,

them and TransLink are probably the two big ones.

Yeah.

I mean,

certainly TTCs the largest in Ontario.

Yeah.

And you could stack me and a few of my neighbors up and

we still wouldn't come close.

Okay.

so we sort of hold them almost in their own bucket.

They're not a direct comparator to any of U.S.

Yeah.

Yep.

So that's good.

Interesting.

So that, so you think it's about right.

I mean, I think that it, it is good when you think of the

cost of delivering our service.

I think it's a fair trade off for the level of service we provide the community.

Interesting.

you mentioned you're moving into zero emission buses, you're starting the

hydrogen and you're, you're maybe getting some electric and you've had hybrid.

Have you had any adoption challenges?

I remember a couple years ago, you all had a very bad winter all across Canada,

and I remember I went to Edmonton, I went all across the country and

talked to CEOs and they're all like.

Dude, Paul.

Battery buses aren't cutting it for U.S. Uh, it's too cold up here.

We're getting a hundred miles or whatever kilometers up here out of a

full charge, and it's just not working for U.S. We gotta look at other things.

CNG, hydrogen, whatever.

Alberta's big.

So what are you guys doing there?

How's, how's your adoption going?

So we don't have them in service yet.

Okay.

So it's kind of hard to say what it will be like.

But what I can say is the OEMs that service the Canadian market have

heard and learned from the early experiences with some of the different

transit properties across the country.

and they know that the weather is.

An issue for U.S. and they know that the climate is up and down.

Amount of snowfall can vary widely from one year to another.

But at the end of the day, I know the manufacturers have been working really,

really hard to make a battery with longer range, and that is more protected

against some of the wild climate changes.

Yeah, I, I think that's why you'll always see a bit of a balance in a fleet.

I don't know that you'll ever see a large agency go all in one fuel type only.

Yeah.

I think you kind of have to have a mix.

to kind of protect yourself and cover your bases and play the odds a little bit.

So you've been here, four or five months.

what's your game plan like, what are you hoping to accomplish over, do

you have like a vision of what you wanna do over the next few years or?

That's looked to the future.

Yeah, so I've been around here for four months.

I've been in the transit industry for 25 years.

Yeah.

But I've been at my way for four months, and so I've really spent

the time getting to know the staff, getting to know the city, getting

to figure out what the city's vision is for transit in the future.

And what I know is with the city building projects like the LRT, like a downtown

Mobility hub, like improvements to our existing conventional bus network.

We are uniquely poised to continue to deliver a better

regionally connected system.

And I look even at the basics, like let's get the on time

service delivery up to standards.

It's great to have the lofty plans, but you gotta make sure that your base service

on the road is a good quality product.

So we're gonna spend some time looking down the road at the future.

But we're also gonna spend some time focusing on the frontline operations

and making sure we've got everything's in ship shape before we try to

bite off fancy, big new projects.

Right.

That's, I mean, when you look at sports, that's what they do, right?

Yep.

Coach comes in and says, all right, back to the basics, fundamentals,

then we can work the fancy stuff,

build the team.

Yep.

Yeah, for sure.

That's great.

So you said you've been in transit for 25 years.

Tell me about your background.

Uh, so I started my career in public transit at the London

Transit Commission Okay.

In 1999 as the customer service manager.

I needed a job and they were hiring.

I had no idea.

And I, when I walked through the doors of that building on that July day in

1999, that I found my life's work.

Oh, wow.

No clue.

Yeah.

Went in, worked with the team there, really enjoyed it.

Moved over to operations after about a year and a half.

someone retired and they said, well, we think you could do this.

And that was a unique choice.

I was a very young woman at the time.

I was in my early thirties.

I had never driven a bus.

I really had no labor background to speak of just the, you

know, year and a half I'd had.

Um, so they took a chance on me and I spent the next nine years

working as the ops manager there.

Learned the business, learned how to work with the union, negotiate contracts,

accident, collision, investigation, all of the good operational stuff.

Learned it from the ground up.

Had some great colleagues who were very generous with their expertise.

Stepped out of public transit for 13 years to become the CAO of, uh, school

busing consortium in southwestern Ontario.

So it was the city of London, Elgin County.

Middlesex County, Oxford County ran about 1100 routes every day.

That was 60,000 transported students.

It was, uh, special needs students and regular yellow

bus service with contractors.

So.

Really learned their governance, built an organization from the ground up,

worked with the Ministry of Education and the local elected officials.

but I always knew I would go back to transit.

It was just a matter for me of when or where.

And I became fortunate when the directorship opened up at the

Hamilton Street Railway at HSR.

So I took that position on, spent four years there, loved it.

Great team in Hamilton.

but when the chance came to take the third largest.

Agency in the province.

Yeah.

That I could not turn down.

And that's how I've landed in Mississauga.

That's great.

So that's my background and career.

Awesome.

And sitting right across from you is your successor, right?

You got

it.

Yeah.

She sure is.

So we're gonna interview her next for the next podcast.

Yeah.

This has been great.

Anything else you wanna talk about before we wrap it up?

Any other thoughts or contemplations after 25 years in the industry

and four months in your new gig?

I really think that public transit makes a huge difference

in the communities that we serve.

And I have seen firsthand that impact at every level.

And I think that's the beautiful thing about what we do all day for

a living, is really be able to be a community builder in the first instance.

and you know, that said, I still love watching the bus yard come to life

in the early hours of the morning.

I love hanging out in the driver's room.

And, playing dominoes or shooting the breeze with the, with frontline staff.

And that's a part of me as a leader that I never want to lose, is the

connection to the people that turn the wrenches, the people that turn the wheel.

because they are the first, they're the alpha omega of our systems.

Full stop.

Yeah.

I can't do what I do without them doing what they do.

So that's great.

I forgot to ask you about like, personal stuff, like, uh, yeah, yeah.

So let's do that.

Before we wrap up, tell me anything you wanna tell me about your

personal life, your hobbies, your pets, all that kind of stuff.

Whatever you wanna tell me.

I will say I am the proud mother of two adult children.

We have a 23-year-old daughter who's doing a master's degree and a 20-year-old

son who's in his, uh, third year of a business administration program.

And he's studying supply chain and logistics, which he confidently

told me when he was 18, had nothing to do with transit.

Um, and then he has confidently told me at 20 he was wrong and mom was in fact.

Correct.

Okay, there you go.

So that, that was kind of a cool close shape shift.

and I think I would like to say that my cash fair is $4 and 25 cents.

Okay.

Four 50 is next.

Steers by,

uh, we're

making news today.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay.

Any

pets or anything?

Uh, recently lost our 13-year-old golden retriever.

Oh, Finnegan.

That's terrible.

He was the, he was just, he was a special boy.

Uh, not the world's brightest dog, but certainly the world's most loving dog.

Uh, and we have an 18-year-old cat, 18-year-old cat.

Yeah.

And she is.

Frankly, she loves my husband the most.

Let's just leave.

She's his, she's his cat.

She loves him and she tolerates me.

Okay.

And last question.

Music.

What kind of music do you listen to?

Oh man.

I'm old enough to listen to almost anything on the radio.

Yeah,

I love all kinds of music.

You can put fifties music on and I'll sing along quite confidently.

Uh, all the way up to kind of modern pop.

a huge jazz fan.

but really.

Country.

Yeah, classic country, nineties country has some good stuff.

When's the last, what's the last concert you went to?

Taylor Swift.

What is it?

Taylor Swift.

Oh, Taylor,

you went to Toronto Swift.

Oh sure.

Oh, that's good.

I would pay any amount of money to go.

Did you ride transit

to it?

I did actually.

Did you?

Yeah.

You betcha.

We drove to Burlington and took the go train into Toronto and went and

saw the concert and it was amazing.

That's

great.

Well, that's a great way to end it.

Thank you so much for being with U.S. today.

You're very welcome.

It's been great to getting to know you and I wish you all

the success as you continue to.

Move into this area of managing one of the biggest transit systems in Canada.

Thank you very much.

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

number one transit executive podcast.

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

Many thanks to the team that makes this show happen.

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

Patrick Emile associate producer Cyndi Raskin and consultants Dan Meisner

and Jonas Woos at Bumper Transit.

Transit Unplugged is being brought to you by Modaxo.

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