I'm Paul Comfort, and this is the eighth anniversary

of our Transit Unplugged podcast.

Welcome to the world's leading podcast that is focused on top

public transportation executives.

Great to have you with us.

You know, it all started for me.

Over 30 years ago, when I first began my career, I'd always been

interested in communications.

As a matter of fact, when I was in college, I worked at the

campus radio station and was the news director, and a DJ.

During that time, I also had a part time job at a local radio

station near where I lived.

And I ended up working there for 16 years.

I was a weekend DJ, sometimes at nights as well.

We played, uh, middle of the road music, and then I started a show called Comfort's

Corner, which was like a local talk show.

Sometimes it was done online where I would record an interview, but most of

the time it was recorded at a local gas and appliance store in the downtown,

County seat of the county where I lived, right in the front window, where I would

invite people, whether they were a county commissioner or the adjutant general of

the Maryland National Guard, and all kinds of officials, gubernatorial candidates

and congressmen, and, it was fun.

I loved it.

I did that.

I also worked early on in communications.

for local newspapers where I was a columnist and also,

wrote articles for them.

Basically, I'd always try to integrate my love of communications

into what I was doing day to day.

So I was doing this part time while I was working as the transportation coordinator

for Queen Anne's County and then on to my next jobs in the private sector.

So much so that when I became a county administrator for two counties in

Maryland, in both counties, I used the Cable Access Fund to Open up cable access

channels, government channels, where you could watch public access shows.

When I was at the MTA as CEO, we opened up America's first and only FM radio

station operated by a transit system.

It was, and is, WTTZ FM 93.

5 with smooth jazz all day long.

And then five times an hour transit and traffic updates.

There was a guy named Mark on our staff that had a much better late

night FM DJ voice than I did.

he was brilliant, man.

And then when I got here to Trapeze and now Vontas and they asked me that I want

to start a podcast, I was like, sure.

And they said, what do you want it to be?

I said, I know exactly what I want it to be.

I just left being CEO of the MTA in Baltimore, the 11th largest

transit system in America.

And I wanted to interview CEOs.

I wanted to give them a chance in their own voice to talk about

what they wanted to talk about.

You see, cause I knew from experience that most of the time when CEOs

get an opportunity to speak publicly or in the media, they're

going to It's very prescribed.

They can only say certain things because usually they're responding to

a crisis, whether it's a bus crash or a derailment or some other type of incident.

And they've got their, you know, PR person right there with them and

they have to stay right on script.

I wanted to give them a chance to talk about the things they were excited about,

open up about, you know, their lives and careers so that other people could learn.

possible career paths or talk about the current challenges.

Maybe, you know, whether it's zero mission buses or autonomous vehicles

or cybersecurity, whatever the current challenges they were doing, their big

projects, give them a chance just to talk.

And so that's what we did.

And here we are now, eight years later, well into our run now with,

You know, lots of, lots of programs under our belt currently, as we have

been for the last eight years, pretty much put out a show every week.

It's now on Wednesdays it comes out.

We've had, over 320 published episodes with hundreds and

hundreds of thousands of downloads.

We're heard in a hundred countries with, the majority of our audience

in North America, but strong listenership in Canada, the

United Kingdom, and in Australia.

where I'm headed shortly, to, for a two week trip to visit with our

Australian partners over there and record podcasts and shows there.

Our podcast has been recognized as a top 60 government podcast and

was winner of the American Public Transportation Association's AdWheel

Award for best educational effort.

APTA's AdWheel.

We were very proud of that a few years ago.

And we've aired compelling interviews with, you know, nearly 400 transit

industry executives, and we continue to do it, and of course the show has expanded.

It first started by doing live events, live CEO roundtables at my own company's

conferences, and then at the booths of our companies and other companies, At

trade shows like the one we just did in APTA that you're going to hear today.

we've also moved into television.

after the pandemic, I felt like, you know, we wanted to travel.

People wanted to see what was going on in the world.

So we started our own travel show, food, fun, and culture at cities

around the world, from Barcelona to Sacramento and, every city in between,

we show you the food, fun, and culture, and we show you behind the scenes of

their public transportation system, like you won't see anywhere else.

And.

We show you how to use that transit system to get around the city, to get to all

those fun places I just told you about.

And that show is going gangbusters, man.

We've won several awards this year.

We're now at over 2 million views on YouTube with our shows.

I mean, people are watching them.

They love this stuff.

They love seeing the fun side of public transportation.

We love bringing it to them.

And for those of you who really want to dig in more, we've also opened up a new

show, just a couple months ago, called, Transit Unplugged Behind the Scenes,

Transit Unplugged TV Behind the Scenes, where you get the full interviews, you get

to see them, which airs the week after.

The main show drops on the second Thursday of each month.

We've also started a News Minute, which is very popular now.

It's, every Monday, you can get dropped in your email box or in your LinkedIn.

A great News Minute by one of America's former top FM DJs herself,

Julie Gates, who's on our team.

And she brings you kind of the fun side of transit and big news that it's happening.

That show has been picked up now by the Transportation

Channel, as has our TV show.

And also, even by places like MSN, we're becoming recognized as a

authority, a source for news information regarding the transit industry.

Our editor, Tris Hussey, also puts out a weekly newsletter, which you should get.

If you don't get it, I encourage you to subscribe to it.

It's free and it tells you everything going on in Transit Unplugged world.

And of course, I've been writing books now for seven years, a book

a year, and I'm working on the next one, with my book agent, for

coming out next year on leadership.

Yep.

Even beyond the transit industry, but these books also include many of

the guests we've had on these shows.

That's what Transit Unplugged has become.

It's become a whole franchise and there's lots more new things to come.

as you may be aware, we are, we're doing, a whole new look for the show, rebranding

for the show and for eight season because eight is the number of new beginnings.

On to this week's episode, it is our Live CEO Roundtable recorded and

brought to you today here on Transit Unplugged, it's our 8th anniversary show.

It includes Andy Lord, who is the CEO of the world's

largest transportation network.

He is the Commissioner for Transport for London.

Dottie Watkins, who is the CEO of CapMetro in Austin, who has the nation's

largest capital program going on with a 7 billion program approved by the voters.

Dwight Farrell, who heads up.

Detroit's transit system, the Suburban Mobility Authority for regional

transportation in the suburbs there, Sean Donahue, my friend from North

County Transit District in San Diego, and Adam Leishman, a newer friend who's

from Hong Kong, who talks about what it's like to run transit in probably

the world's most transit friendly city, where over 90 percent of the people ride.

Today, you'll also learn about the success of London's Elizabeth Line,

their upcoming Piccadilly Line with Andy Lord You'll get Information on

Austin's Project Connect and their unique microtransit services, Detroit Smarter

Mobility Initiative, and the role of leadership, mentorship, and authentic

decision making from all of our guests, from AI technology to the transformative

impact of public transport on our cities.

This podcast is a perfect summary of what we bring you

every week on Transit Unplugged.

If you don't follow us, Subscribe.

I encourage you to do so.

You will be, hopefully, like my friend Schneider St.

Preux who was one of the top 40 under 40 public transit leaders in America

this year, who was just on the show a couple episodes ago, who told me

a year ago, and also repeated it on our podcast, Paul, I've listened to

every one of your podcast episodes.

Wow, huh?

What a compliment.

And he said, This show I credit largely with the advancement of my career.

I went from a bus driver up the ranks to now general superintendent of the

entire bus service for Miami Dade Transit and he said he credits what he learned

from the guests on the show largely for his advancement in his career.

This show is powerful.

This show today is likewise.

Enjoy.

Welcome everyone to the Transit Unplugged Live CEO Roundtable here at

the Vontas booth at APTA Transform.

Great to have you here.

Come on over.

We're going to spend a few minutes talking to some of the world's

leading public transit CEOs.

here at the Vontas booth.

Thank you for sponsoring us, Vontas.

Let's kick it off with Andy Lord, the Commissioner of Transport for London.

Andy, thank you for coming.

You made it all the way across the pond.

Andy has got so much going on.

If you haven't listened to his podcast episode, Transit Unplugged, we kind of

break it all down over half an hour.

But tell us about one or two of the big things you've got going on there at TFL.

Yeah, thanks, Paul.

So, obviously we're now, three years after the Elizabeth Line, opened.

fastest growing railway in Europe.

Huge success.

So now we're working on, upgrading some of the other tube lines, so the

big project we're doing on the tube is the upgrade of the Piccadilly line,

which is the primary east west, link from Heathrow through the centre of

the city and out to, the north east.

new fleet of rolling stock, built by Siemens, first train arriving

in London imminently for testing.

It's a three, just under a three billion pound programme of work that'll increase

capacity on the line by about 12 to 15%.

new walk through, first ever air conditioned trains on the

Deep Tube, in London, going to service towards the end of, 2025.

So that's the, the major project on the Tube.

we also have the Docklands Light Railway, our driverless, light rail

system in the east of the city.

we have the new rolling stock for that, also under test, built by CAF in Spain.

Again, transformative from the customer.

experience perspective, but also from a capacity perspective.

So, two really major programs on the rail side that we're focusing on.

and then the other big thing that's occupying my mind, is how we

convince our new government in the UK, to give us some more money, so

that we can continue to invest and maintain the services that we do.

So, get a long term, sustainable capital funding deal for London.

Tell us real quickly about the model there, of how you're structured.

You're actually a department of the city government.

You report to the mayor of London?

That's correct.

We're a public sector organisation, wholly owned subsidiary of

the Greater London Assembly.

we have a independent board appointed by the Mayor.

I'm accountable to the board and the Mayor who's chair of the board.

the Mayor has complete control over TFL, in terms of decision making.

and he actually, by legislation has the ability to set the fares himself.

so, so I run a nine and a half billion pound cost based, I do what I can to

influence his decision making on the fares, but ultimately the mayor is the

one who sets the fares, so we're very proud of having an affordable system.

we have the lowest bus fares in the UK, and, we generate the operating surplus

so we invest in it going forward.

All our meetings are fully scrutinized, held in public.

and, I have the pleasure of attending various public committee

meetings to, explain what we're doing and why we're doing it.

I'm sure all the time.

When we come, we're going to go down the line, but, when we come back, I'm going to

ask, Andy Lord, how in the world do they get everybody to ride transit in London?

Because everybody rides, and we need that here in America.

You know, less than, on average, across America, only 5 percent of the people

ride public transit on a regular basis.

What's your number there?

Do you know?

Well, we're 90 percent ridership compared to pre pandemic levels.

11 million passengers a day.

London has a 9 million population.

Not everybody is coming into the office every day.

So I want more people to ride.

But the biggest thing we did is we refused to cut services during the pandemic.

Which enabled us to have high frequency turn up and go services.

And what we have is a tube system that is designed to connect people

from the mainline stations and bring them to the place of work.

We have a bus system that is designed to operate in the outer reaches of the city.

it's the most affordable element, particularly for, people of low

income, and it's the primary means of traveling, and, and we have an ambitious

target of 80 percent of everybody in London, either walking, cycling,

or using public transport by 2041.

80%.

Wow.

That's amazing.

All right, Dottie.

So, Dottie started her career as a bus operator.

As a matter of fact, when I was down there with her, we were riding a bus, and we

went out to Barton Springs, and when we got off the bus, she said, oh by the way,

I started driving with him when I started.

Quite a story, Dottie.

All

right, good afternoon.

I'm Dottie Watkins, President and CEO at CapMetro in Austin, Texas, and as

Paul mentioned, we've got a lot of fun things going on down in Austin.

Most exciting is Project Connect, which is our vision for transit expansion

over the next decade or so, but next spring we'll be launching two new BRT

lines as a first step in that expansion.

We've been very blessed to get Small Starts grants for two new

lines to go through the eastern portion of our service area.

Um, and we're really excited to start that.

Along with that, we're starting a new microtransit zone.

Our microtransit service that we call PICKUP, um, has been very powerful, um,

tool in helping us serve neighborhoods and communities that are otherwise really kind

of hard to get transit connections to.

So we're really excited about that.

Let me ask you a follow up to that.

So in Austin, when Randy was there, you all passed the 7 billion referendum.

Has politics changed?

Are things changing?

Are you still on course?

What's happening?

We're still on course.

I wouldn't say politics have changed.

We are still in the state of Texas, which is one of Austin's unique, challenges

and opportunities because, our, we tend to be a much more progressive city

than the rest of the state around us, although all of the cities in Texas

are getting more and more progressive.

Texas is an enormous place.

we are on course.

We're actually looking in the next couple of months with our partners to

be looking at a draft environmental impact statement for our light rail

line, which is the biggest chunk of money in that 7 billion investment.

but things are moving forward.

We're really excited about how that's going.

We still have tons of local support, which is great.

I think the pandemic was the We made the difficult decision to go

for the vote during the pandemic.

We had actually been preparing for a November 2020 election long before we

thought we knew that we were going to have a global pandemic, but we knew that the

problems of our community weren't going to go away just because we were all sitting

at home for some unknown amount of time.

And so we went ahead and went for it, and that was great.

it would have been great if we'd managed to not have inflation

coming out of it and all the other problems that all of us are facing,

post pandemic, but, we're on track.

No pun intended.

That's awesome.

On track, yeah.

I was just in Austin last week.

I'm one of your tracks.

You guys still have a great service there.

It's just, and it's growing.

It's just gonna be phenomenal.

It's really one of the most exciting agencies in the country

for what's happening there.

So, Dwight, tell us about when some big projects going on there in Detroit

and how you're recovering the city.

The biggest project that we have that's

going on is Smarter Mobility.

travel patterns were already changing, even before the pandemic.

The pandemic just took it to a whole different level.

one of the things that we're addressing in Metro Detroit

is, is a lot of you know it's a manufacturing city, or at least it was.

And so now trying to make that adjustment to serve manufacturing shifts to now more

service jobs coming into the organization like Amazon and other places like that.

Then we have to be able to provide more frequent service.

The other thing is that we are also taking into consideration the silver tsunami

that's coming as it relates to more and more baby boomers who are retiring.

And you've ever had the misfortune to ever have to take your parents

keys like I have, It's awful because that loss of independence.

And so we're looking at smarter mobility as a way to be able to provide that kind

of service across the region that allows people to maintain their independence.

And quite frankly, we have a number of people who are in

the millennial and Generation Z generation who don't want a car.

And so being able to provide that service to give them those options.

we've done some research in that space, and it's not that people couldn't

afford a car, they'd just rather do something else with the money for a car.

So there's a lady that works, works at, in, in, at SMART with us.

She and her husband could afford two cars, but she says she doesn't want

to give up her golf club membership.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I can see that.

And so that's what we are looking at in terms of the smarter

mobility, how we can do it cheaper.

How we can have the service actually fit the need, as opposed to, well, why do

you have all these empty buses out here?

And the other thing we're looking at, too, is moving away

from what I call the Southwest Airlines model to the Delta model.

And by that I mean Southwest Airlines has one plane, 737.

They may be different lengths, but there's just one plane.

Delta has planes of different sizes, so they can go to different places.

And so that's the other part about our, we're going to be diversifying our

fleet as well as, you know, making the transition to low emission, zero emission,

but also making sure that we have a fleet that better reflects the ridership.

So that's gonna, that's something else that we're doing.

And so that's it for right now.

It's more than enough to say grace over.

There you go.

You probably can tell Dwight, has a lot of experience.

He and I have worked together in this business for over 35 years.

Transcribed Together in various places and, uh, uh, Detroit is well

served by having someone, a seasoned leader like, like him at the helm.

All right, Sean, what do you got going on there?

What's the biggest thing happening?

Yeah, first of all, I want to say how amazing it is to have

multi generational, leadership here.

I'm also third generation public transit.

I'm contractually obligated to give a shout out to my grandfather, who's

in the APTA Hall of Fame, and my dad, who just retired as a transit

CEO about three years ago, in Ohio.

So, love being up here with, you know, the multi generational aspect of transit.

I think it speaks volumes of the industry.

You know, we got a lot of unique things going on, and I'm, I'm

gonna, I'm gonna state the obvious.

We've got a lot of capital projects happening in our world.

But something that we're also dealing with is workforce development.

One of the things that's really an impact, especially in Southern

California, is the cost of living.

And so when we have conversations with our frontline employees, or even up

to the director, manager, director level, we, we really have to be

thoughtful about where people live.

We have a great deal of our workforce that's an hour from our facilities, an

hour and a half from our facilities.

and that's just for them to be able to have that livability factor, so how are

we as an agency really trying to transform our employee experience, what we want

that to look like, making sure that our operators have the right shifts so they

can take care of their families, not working six, six and a half days a week.

and then on the Capital Project side, I mean, we're, we're a huge county.

Like, San Diego County, just in terms of square miles, is big enough to be

like the 48th largest state in the U.

S.

And that's a big deal, because MTS does an absolutely phenomenal job

of, of, the city of San Diego itself, and really a lot of East County.

I know, I thought I saw Brian Riley over here, he's our Chief Operating Officer.

amazing.

but we sort of handle the rest, all of North County, you know, 73, 76, 78, I 5

Corridor, we've, you know, our commuter rail service took a little bit of a hit

during the pandemic because we didn't see that commuter service, down into

San Diego, but we saw, what we saw was a, almost a doubling of ridership on

the week, and so we really moved a lot of our service area, our service around

to sort of manage, midday, later in the evening, weekend service, we sort of,

much to what everybody else said, we sort of layered on top of that, really our

NCTD Plus service, which is our, sort of microtransit, and it sort of overlays over

our fixed route, and some of the other spaces, and I think the idea behind that

for us was, are there opportunities, like Dwight said, to change the condition of

the type of bus that's in that, In that scenario, and that's a big deal for us.

We're providing the same level of service, possibly even a little better.

our planning team is absolutely phenomenal.

They do a great job of, really sort of imagining what North County

could be and what it looks like.

So just, real happy with their work and we got a lot of great stuff going on.

That's great.

Adam, tell us in Hong Kong, one of the interesting things you may

not be aware of, but in Hong Kong, there's no real public subsidy.

For the bus or the rail, they make their own money.

How do you do that, man?

You have a lot of people catching buses.

A dollar ahead, come on!

I mean, we don't have, we didn't have a

subsidy for buses in Hong Kong.

Traditionally, we never have.

and, and 90 percent of the public use public transport for their trips.

So 90 percent

of trips.

90%!

Which is, I think it ranks number one in the world.

It's quite amazing, but I think that's only possible when you

have a holistic view on how to build and develop your city.

And, as an Australian, I think a lot of the cities that, we have very similar to

the US, where we have a thing called urban sprawl, and it makes it very difficult

to run commercial, transport operations.

Then I had the privilege of living in London for a few years, and it reset my

thinking, and I decided not to have a car.

I'm one of those people, actually, do I?

I, I enjoy living in a city where I don't need to have a car, and I've

done that in London and Hong Kong.

I haven't had a car for, for eight years.

But I think we need to rethink how we do cities.

I think urban sprawl is our enemy.

Cars and roads are our enemy, in a sense, if you want to use colourful language.

And we need to get urban planning departments working

alongside transport departments.

And the transport infrastructure needs to be the backbone of the community.

And then we need to build density around those stations, and that's the only way

you can make public transport commercial.

And I look at a model like in King's Cross, if anyone's been there in

London, and, and Dwight, you were talking about, reinvigorating a city.

make public transport the backbone of that.

And, and you look at King's Cross in London, it was like the worst

area you could go in London.

If you wanted to buy drugs, you went to King's Cross.

They put major stations in that go to France, Go all across the UK, and the

bus stops there, you can get anywhere in London, and now it's like the

hottest place to live in, in, in London.

It's a fantastic case study, and I think we need to be thinking more than

just you know, buses or trains, we need to think about how we make them the

backbone of the community and change the perception of what public transport is.

What we bring to a city is very unique.

If you list me all the problems cities face in the world, where 55

percent of the world's population live, public transport helps with

just about every single one of those.

That's right.

So I think we need to get better at being advocates for taking money out

let's say roads and putting it into public transport, transitioning people

into public transport because actually people will choose to live that way

if we give them the right opportunity.

Way to go.

That's great Adam.

Alright Andy, what do you want to talk about next?

Tell us something cool going on in London, man.

I'll pick up on Adam's point.

there's been a big debate in the UK.

You'll be aware of, some of you will be aware of a program called HS2,

which is the next high speed rail link, and the previous government

decided to chop off the northern section, and also say it wasn't going

to come into Euston in, in London.

And the, the problem is that everybody focused on the journey time benefit of

building this super fast railway and how it was going to reduce the journey

time between London and Birmingham.

Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK, you know, hugely

important, but it was all about how it was going to improve the journey

time for people from Birmingham to London, not the other way around.

And it wasn't talking about, most importantly, about the economic growth

and the wider benefits of how it would free up capacity on the existing rail

line, benefit towns and cities and areas there, whilst also creating

economic growth and regeneration.

So we have spent a huge amount of time in TfL over the last year, 18 months.

Talking to the government, talking to the supply chain, talking to

business stakeholders, exactly Adam's point around transport infrastructure

is the driver of economic growth.

It's the driver of jobs, it's the driver of skills and development, and

it's a driver for how you certainly, grow the country, economy more widely.

And we've been really successful at that.

So, for example, we had no idea before the pandemic how many

jobs were directly, accountable, attributable to TfL outside of London?

So we did, independent review.

We are directly responsible for over a hundred thousand jobs outside

London and the southeast of England.

So that's jobs in the north of England, in the north and east,

the midlands, the southwest.

That drives economic benefit to those areas.

The second thing that we focused on is we are the second

largest landowner in London.

don't After the Crown Estate, which is the Royal Family.

so how do we maximize that?

We have a lot of very old infrastructure, a lot of operational infrastructure

that we'd like to upgrade and replace, a lot of very old train sheds, that we

can rationalize and then we can reduce the land footprint and then build on it.

So we now have our own property company called Places for London.

We will be building by the end of this, decade, 20, 000 new homes on our land.

half of which will be affordable.

All right, one more round of questions down the line here.

Many of you may not know, but Andy got his start in aviation

and was at British Airways for 20 years before he came into transit.

Talk to us about that transition, Andy, and what did you bring from your aviation

experience into public transport?

Well, you better ask my team that, I guess.

Look, there's many similarities.

Safety is hugely safety critical.

Safety is first priority for all of us.

huge people leadership, massive, complexity from an engineering

and technical perspective, and of course, customer service.

they're, they're the key elements.

from a BA perspective, I was running their global operation.

TfL is now a London operation.

So, the geography is different, but the decision making is similar.

The time frames are different.

but I think the two big things I would say that, that one I've brought in and

one that we need to learn from aviation.

One is We, we have got to be far more customer centric

in terms of how we operate.

We've got to think much more proactively around how we give customers choice,

particularly when there's disruption.

we've got to be able to communicate more proactively to our customers.

we kind of, have a disruption and forget about them.

Because they can, you know, unlike aviation, they can, they can find

their own way home, generally.

so we need to be much more putting the customer at the heart of our

decision making, which is something we're really focused on in, in TFL.

The second thing that I'm pushing really hard for is,

we should learn from aviation.

They are, you know, they, they learn from, you know, tragic events, but

they are incredibly proactive in terms of how they develop new technology,

and they are far quicker at putting it into practice and then, consistently

adopting it across the globe.

so if you look at safety in aviation, it is phenomenal.

and we need to be much more proactive as an industry, working

together, which is one of the reasons why I'm here, to see how we can

share and learn from each other.

But we all do everything slightly differently, and it adds cost,

it adds complexity, and it adds a hell of a lot of time and money,

to us actually making a difference.

And we need to learn from aviation and how they can do that, and

how we can learn from them.

That's excellent.

Dottie, talk to us about what new technologies you see coming in future

and how are you going to utilize them?

Maybe AI?

Yeah, some of the stuff that, we are kind of nibbling around the

edges at right now, really just trying to identify the use case and looking

for some grants, if anybody from the USDOT is listening, to help us do that.

one of them is using AI and just advanced camera analytics.

We have a significant number of cameras in our system.

We have cameras at many of our BRT stations.

We have cameras all over all of our buses.

we partner with this, with our local city to be able to view the

traffic cameras that we see there.

one of the use cases that, that we think would actually be very

beneficial to us, a big piece of what we operate is a commuter rail line.

so we operate commuter rail on freight rail tracks.

We actually also operate the freight rail.

but there are portions of that commuter rail line that go through ranchland.

I mean, they go from suburban communities through ranchland to the

next suburban community, then into town.

For And, in Austin, we have issues with people who are experiencing homelessness

making encampments along the right of way.

and an encampment along the right of way is dangerous for a lot of reasons.

the pedestrians on the right of way is the biggest one, but also, we continue to

have significant drought and fire risk, so when you're camping, that's also an issue.

And so, we're hoping to be able to use the cameras that are already on

our vehicles, We that are going up and down that line all day, every day, to

look at what was there the last time a vehicle came through, 30 minutes

later, what's there, 30 minutes later, what's there, and tell us when we see

the evidence of human activity and we have an encampment that we need to go

talk to the folks and help them find a different place to build their encampment.

Currently, we do that with a very labor intensive process.

We send a group of community intervention specialists, we have social workers

on staff that we will send out.

once a month on the weekend, and they'll ride the line in a high rail

with one of our rail staff, and they'll go see what they can see, right?

and that works, but it's a very labor intensive process, and we

don't always, can't always see the things, because we don't know, oh

wait, that this has been disturbed, there's actually people over here.

And so, we're hoping to be able to do more and more things, with

the many cameras that we have.

I think there's a lot, a lot that can be done to just be more efficient

and effective at what we do.

That's awesome.

Thank you.

Dwight, I want to ask you a little different question to close up.

You've been in executive management in many different jobs in many different

cities, and I'd like you, in our podcast, you shared some interesting thoughts for

mid level managers who want to move up.

Lessons from your career.

Give us one or two of the lessons for people who work in public

transportation today to help them.

find a good mentor.

that can help you and be honest with you.

And don't be afraid to fail.

If you're afraid to fail, you're already screwed.

You're not going to make a difference if

you're afraid to fail, right?

Correct.

You'll be a cheerleader, not a change agent.

My first promotion, I went from bus operator to assistant manager.

That hasn't been done before or since then, because I was

willing to take the risk.

And so you've got to be willing to get and be willing to take a risk.

I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it is.

And so anytime, if you ask any of these people here, the gentleman from London,

he went from aviation to transit.

That's a risk.

So, yeah, so I think, I think,

biggest transit system in the world.

Yeah, no, no risk in that at all.

But I think that those are the two things, you know, and the mentor

who will tell you the truth.

And I do have one more thing to add.

Introspection.

The one person that we lie to the most of is ourselves.

So you really have to be honest about you with yourself.

Because when you look at the failures that you've had in your lifetime,

what's the one common denominator?

You.

Failures and you learn from them.

Be honest about yourself.

You know, this is my role in this.

It's easy to point the finger and blame your boss for whatever, but what did you

do to cause your boss to take the action?

That's good.

Sean, I'm gonna ask you to keep that going for just a minute if you don't mind.

I think, what a lot of folks don't realize that when you move into the

senior chair, all the easy decisions have already been made before they get to you.

The decisions that have a template for them.

A plus B equals C.

The ones that come to the CEO job are the ones without a

template that require judgment.

Judgment that's been forged in the fires of a thousand decisions

that you've made along the way.

And like Dwight just said, you've integrated the lessons from them.

Oh, that didn't work.

I better do something different next time.

Give us your thoughts on that, and as a leader, how do you handle that?

Yeah, I would say first, like Andy, I came from

aviation also, right after 9 11.

and I was in a position where I was starting to see a lot of information

that came post 9 11, and I said, man, I, I gotta get out of this.

Like, this is too much, and sort of worked my way into public transit at

that point, but I think, I think the one thing that we talk about a little bit

as CEOs, we talk a lot about the CEO's Council as sort of, it's one of the

most amazing jobs you could ever have.

It is also one of the loneliest jobs you can ever have.

Because it is your responsibility to make sure that every single person

under your care knows that you got it.

Doesn't mean you're always right.

It just means they gotta know that you got it.

And, and sometimes, that's really taxing.

Things are gonna come your way.

Like, when the pandemic hit for us, I, I was with our board, our deputy CEO,

and another individual in Washington, D.

C., the day they enacted the Stafford Act and closed the doors to the Capitol.

And so we're trying to get our board out of D.

C., and I remember the three of us were kind of sitting around

at Baltimore Airport, the only place we could get a flight.

And we're kind of like, what the heck are we going to do?

And I just remember, at that point in time, it was like, it was up to sort

of the three of us to build a plan.

And I remember my deputy CEO saying, hey, I really want to help you,

but, you know, this is your call, boss, you've got to figure this out.

And, and I remember kind of never feeling more lonely in my life than

thinking I'm about to make a thousand wrong decisions over the next 30 days,

because, right, I thought 30, 60 days, hey, yeah, I was wrong right there.

But I think you got to own it.

You got to be authentic about what you're doing.

You got to let the workforce know that who you are is who

you're going to be as a leader.

When you need to be strong, you got to be strong.

When you need to make the call, you got to make the call.

Managing board relationships is interesting, too, because you got to make

sure that even if you don't agree with what they want, you have to find a way

to keep them involved to make sure that their thoughts and opinions are heard,

and that's sort of an interesting space that employees don't necessarily see or

have to deal with, and then communicate those expectations to your employees.

I love being a leader.

It's one of my favorite things in the world.

but one of these days I'm going back to operations just so I can get back

on the street, but, yeah, I love it.

But, you know, you got to make sure you got the people around

you that give you good counsel.

I've been super fortunate in my career to have some of the best, senior

staff and director level employees to walk next to me anytime I needed

somebody to walk next to me, and I've always been thankful for that.

and I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for those individuals, and like Dwight

said, for some of the mentors I had.

there's one right over there, Bill Sprawl.

you know, like, I could walk through this hall right now and talk to a hundred

people that impacted my career, if not more, and I'm so thankful for that.

and I know each one of us could do the same thing.

Yeah,

And Shawn has just been named head of APTA's mid size bus

council, so congratulations on that.

Adam, you've operated public transportation, I think, on

four continents, and, you've operated five continents.

Give us some final thoughts and lessons learned along the way.

I think what was just said previously is really wonderful

and it does get lonely as a CEO.

and you do have to take a lot of risks and your job is literally

solving problems non stop.

and in an industry that's quite thankless in many ways, it's like

the blood system in the body.

You know, like, everyone expects it to work.

No one really thanks your blood system for working, but when it stops working,

when there's a clot or a problem, You know, there's a major problem.

And so often you're dealing with crisis management issues.

you know, I guess I've been really blessed in many ways, but also inspired

having experienced London, Singapore, Hong Kong, like you said before,

three of arguably the top cities in the world when it comes to buses.

And seeing how a public transport system can transform a city.

And, you know, that really inspired me.

When I said before I went to London and then the Singapore experience,

it really inspired me to dedicate my life to this industry because

we can make such a difference.

And, all of you here are, I assume, in this industry.

Thank you.

Thank you for being in this industry.

It is one of the most important industries in existence.

The impact we can have in cities, the impact we can have In transforming

lives, improving a lot of the problems we collectively face as a society.

I, I don't think we say that enough.

And I think we need to congratulate the people that

are doing well in the industry.

These guys here doing all a fantastic job and all of you.

And, and I think we need to, to bring that spirit of encouragement and working

together to really make a transformation.

I get really sad when I hear about, you know, A major project that's collapsed

like what Andy was talking about before.

So much time, energy, resource gone into it.

Transformational for the country.

You know, and, and often we've had so many hurdles to get over and

we make it so hard for ourself.

We need to make it easy and a priority to invest in public transport.

So that's the message I leave for you.

And thank, thank you for everyone that contributes to our industry.

Thank you.

Let's give our panelists a round of applause.

And remember, at the heart of what we do is compassion for our passengers.

As all of them have said, we make a difference in their lives.

When we do it right, we Things go smooth.

We don't often get thanked.

When we do it wrong, we can ruin their day or even their life.

So let's go out there and give it our A game every day.

Thank you, Modaxo and Vontas for sponsoring.

Thank you, our panelists.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of transit.

Unplugged.

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

And I'd like to thank our guests, Andy Lord.

Adam Leishman Dottie Watkins.

Dwight Ferrell.

And Shawn Donaghy for their time to participate on this

CEO panel at APTA transform.

And coming up next week, we have something really cool and

interesting to share with you.

Stephen Tu of LA Metro is responsible for Station Experience.

And you'll learn how Stephen has been able to enhance the safety

and cleanliness of the stations.

And the perception of safety.

So it increases.

Creases ridership.

It gets more people enjoying LA Metro.

Transit unplugged is brought to you by Modaxo.

At Modaxo we're passionate about moving the world's people and at

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

So until next week ride safe and ride happy.