Great to have my good friend Tom Drozt on the show with us today.

Tom, thanks for being a part of the program.

Hey, good afternoon, Paul, and thanks for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Tom, you are, you are on my LinkedIn profile.

You're the, you're the preeminent, comment when you commented

about us working together.

Tell people about our background together.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Paul, I first met you back in Baltimore when there was that big

changeover from Democrats and Republicans, and Hogan came in, and we got a new CEO,

and what I remember the most, I mean, outside of the Jonas Snowstorm, we can

get into that, but was that, hey, you know what, we're going to make some

changes around here, this is a public agency, and we're going to do things a

little bit different, and you know what, anybody who has a position of authority

needs to start making some decisions and we need to start making some change.

We're going to make it now.

That's what I felt.

I could feel the difference.

Yeah, that's great.

That's right.

That's the way I am.

And Tom, I'm so happy for you now as CEO of Ben Franklin Transit.

They're the storied transit system in Washington State, southern Washington.

your background, you've had, my, let's, let's circle around this memory.

My recollection of you, Tom, is that, you were committed to excellence at the MTA.

I mean, you were living still, I think, out West somewhere and, you know, going

home once a, once a month, maybe for a long weekend and being my director

of bus operations, we had one of the largest bus operations in America.

It's 750 buses.

We actually rebooted the entire network and you and I went

through some big storms together.

and, you were, you know, Mr. 24/7, always there.

And I always told you, I don't know if you remember this, but I

always said, Tom, you're bigger, you've, your mind is a CEO mind.

You think bigger than just day to day operations.

You think the whole thing.

And so, you've been around the country in several bus

operations, running them directly.

So I'm so happy you finally got to the CEO seat.

Yeah, no thanks Paul.

And you know what?

I actually do remember that . And so we were in the Washington, facility,

or they call it the Washington Yard.

Yeah.

And we were walking down the corridor when we were having that, discussion.

And I know it was just, it was a little bit after you got there and everything.

And I, and I could tell that you took everything in real fast and, I mean, you,

you, I mean, you hit a lot of the staff.

Got the information and then you were able to go ahead and diagnose it and,

you know, give your comments back.

And, and that's when I knew, that's when I knew that we were going

to make some big changes and, you know, for Baltimore MTA and such.

And we did, you know, I mean, it's the proof's in the pudding and also that,

you know, you know, in your career, Paul, there's just different things that happen,

you know, just, you know, out of the blue that are turning points in your career

and just kind of open up your mind as such, and definitely for me, that was one

of them, without a doubt, and that was probably the start of really taking that

transit private model and intertwining it with the, you know, public agency,

you know, government model of transit.

Yeah.

And then, after I left, what did you do?

Tell us about your career path and how you ended up there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, so, so after, after I left Baltimore, I went back

to, I took a job in San Joaquin.

I wanted to get back to the West Coast, for, you know, lessen the

travel And I went to San Joaquin to be the Chief Operating Officer.

It was definitely a smaller agency And I was only there for a short time, before,

you know, I learned that, my, my wife developed cancer And so, in order to,

you know, once we found out, I ended up leaving my job in San Joaquin and

stayed home in Phoenix and took care of my family matters and, and so forth.

And, and after that, what happened was, when I was ready to get back in

the saddle I ended up taking a job with First Transit as the Assistant

General Manager there in Tempe, Arizona.

My home is Phoenix, Arizona.

And, and again, pretty decent sized agency, 600 bus

operators, you know, 350 buses

And, you know, just, you know, trying to work the magic there and, you

know, conquer all the challenges that any transit agency has.

And, uh, from there First Transit had a contract in, in L. A. that, we were

kind of struggling at, and they asked me to go out to LA and see if we can't,

you know, get some, you know, just take that contract and, you know, bring

it alive and get it back, you know, rolling and, you know, on the right foot

So I was out there for about a year.

We did end up losing the contract to MV.

but what MV did was they said, Hey, Tom, can you stay on and be the

General Manager here and, and so forth.

And, and I, and I did.

And I was, out at the Carson location, working for MV, one

of the LA Metro properties.

We ended up turning the division around.

Related to finances and KPIs, our performance went from, you know,

it was rough to we're hitting, you know, eight of nine KPIs every

month and did really well there.

And then after, after my Carson stint, I got it to the point where

it was all turnkey and everything.

And I always had this dream of, 55 and out, you know, right?

Hey, let's, let's retire.

So at that point, I was actually 56, you know, when that happened, I said,

you know, I think I'm going to retire.

And family's okay and everything and kind of went back home and, kind

of, just kind of did all the house stuff and everything like that.

My wife's still working and, what happened there about a year went by,

you know, I get the best yard and the neighborhood and all one thing I

didn't think through was that at that age, Everybody's still going to work.

So I was kind of home alone, and so it kind of got a little boring all

my, all my friends, they're still working So, you know, so there was a

little disconnect for myself there.

And, but, but it gave me a chance to just reevaluate myself, my life, where am I

going, what should I do with my career?

Of course, I've always kept up with all the transit publications So I kind of

read what's going on and everything.

And out of the blue, a recruiter called me and said, Hey, I got this one client and

they're looking for somebody, you know, to, head up their operations division.

And you have a lot of skills and experience related to it.

Would you be interested?

And of course I said, I'll always be interested in listening and, you know,

and so I did and everything like that.

And she didn't quite tell me who it was.

And she said they were kind of far along in the process

and the recruitment process.

And, but she, she thought that would be a really good fit.

she went back to the client, which happened to be MARTA.

And

In Atlanta, the transit system in Atlanta.

Yep, exactly.

she, she went back to them and said, hey, I got this one guy,

Tom Drozt think he'd really fit well with you all and everything.

And, and so they, they agreed to, uh, you know, give me a,

give me, give me an interview

And so, so we did and went there and, went through that process.

And next thing you know, it's, I'm in Atlanta, right?

And Atlanta is a huge, huge animal.

I felt like I was back in Baltimore but, but there was definitely a difference.

I felt Atlanta had, great bones and, uh, just need the right different

players, but had a lot of things going on

And so I hung out in Atlanta for a little bit, before, you know,

this opportunity had Ben Franklin came up to be the, the CEO.

So at MARTA, I was a deputy, deputy chief of bus operations there.

Okay.

And so

I remember we had

multiple conversations.

You were filling me in and it was a big operation.

And, I think you were making some real progress there.

Yep, yep, we certainly, I mean, a lot of projects going on.

A lot of movement, without a doubt, and, uh, I think even if I, I read today,

they hit a couple of milestones with

Yeah, congratulations to Collie and the team there.

Yeah.

Absolutely, and, and they got their, their Rapid is gonna be,

starting up here shortly and we were working on those plans.

you know, just like everywhere, you know, manpower's somewhat of an issue, so that,

takes a little bit of a draw on, you know, when you, when you're trying to

progress but, yeah, so when I saw the Ben Franklin opportunity, you know, I just saw

as, you know, another opportunity to go ahead and, you know, jump up a step and

run an entire organization my, by myself on the, on the, on the government side.

Yeah, I've

done it on the private side.

And so I jumped at the opportunity and here I'm at in Washington.

And how long have you been there in this job?

So I've been here seven months now.

Okay.

That's a great story, Tom.

I mean, it's a great story of a yeoman's kind of career.

And a lot of people in the, in our industry have a similar career of yours,

where you have to move around in order to get these jobs, the bigger jobs.

You can't always just stay in the same location, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

If you're eager and you want to move up and you also want to experience transit,

as I'll say, as a whole, and you want to say as a whole, you know, on the

private side of the agency side, from small operation to larger operation and

everything in between, I have to say, there are things here, now that I'm at

Ben Franklin, that I'm learning that one would think that, you would know

already because, Tom you've been in transit 26 years and you've been, you

know, kind of around the country, but transit here is a little bit different.

Yeah,

it's that old saying, right?

If you've seen one transit system, you've seen one transit system

because they're all so different.

thanks for sharing with us.

I love, I love a great story like that of a career.

Tell us some about your agency now, you know, kind of give

us, scope it out for us.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Ben Franklin is made up of approximately 420 employees.

We have, three modes of transit.

We have our fixed route, and our fleet size there is about 75, vehicles.

We have our paratransit, and that fleet size is at 81 vehicles.

And then we have our rideshare slash vanpool.

And that fleet size is 200 vehicles.

So, actually, rideshare is our largest mode.

Oh, yeah,

of transportation.

We also have a microtransit, which we contract out, to help out with

our first and last mile, challenges our budget is, close to 100 million

dollars between operating and capital.

Our, uh, ridership, overall ridership is, uh, just north of, uh, annually

it's north of, uh, 3 million a year.

And I, and I have to say that the, The lay of the land here in Tri Cities is you can

get anywhere in a vehicle in 20 minutes.

So in transit that's our biggest enemy.

That's right.

and why I say that Paul is because, well, because our competition is the cars.

Right?

We want riders, but if we can't get you there, if it's taking, you know, what's an

hour and 20 minutes to get you there on a route, but you can do it in 20 minutes in

a car, you're going to opt for the car.

So that's one of our biggest challenges here at Ben Franklin Transit.

And you're located, just over the Oregon border, kind of in the central

part of Washington State, right?

Yep, absolutely.

We're approximately 31 miles north of the Oregon border and

we're three hours east of Seattle.

Okay.

And what's your governing structure there?

Do you work for a city government, do you have your own

board, or how does that work?

So we're our own authority.

Yeah, I report out to a board of nine and that would consist of, you

know, the different commissioners in Franklin County and Benton County

and then the City of Pasco, City of Kennewick, and, City of Richland.

A couple of those areas have, uh, two, two members as opposed to one.

Okay, so you've got multiple jurisdictions which are funding the agency.

Yeah.

And how's, how's ridership, is it, you know, versus, I don't even want to say

the word pre pandemic, but you know, how's ridership doing and how's finances doing?

Yeah.

You know what, let me start off with finances.

We just had an initiative, 21 17, a month ago or so, maybe it's been two

months now, that they were trying to repeal one of the taxes but the

voters overwhelmingly voted it down, so we didn't lose any funding there.

Overall, from a funding standpoint, we're in pretty decent shape.

I'll leave it at that.

There's no hard challenges And from the ridership standpoint, I'll speak of,

you know, COVID, post pandemic, right?

And we've been on the growth pattern every single month, well,

every single year, then every single month of that year as well.

last year we, you know, hit the scales of that 3 million, and

this year we're looking to hit 3.

3, million.

Our population overall in the Tri Cities is 300, 000 individuals.

That's great.

So, yeah.

So, every month we're doing about, we're just doing about 300,000 a month

in, in, in, in ridership, you know, to give some kind of perspective.

And you operate all those services except for the microtransit

with your own employees?

Ye

s, absolutely.

Okay,

yeah.

I love your vision, Tom.

You know, when I was at MTA, I came up with the four cornerstones of safe,

efficient, reliable, with world class customer service, and your vision

is to build a transit system that's reliable, accessible, and future focused.

Tell us about that.

when we talk about the reliability, we're talking about two things here.

two immediate things, right?

The bus hall is showing up on time.

And the bus, you know, the schedule that you put out, you match it, and that's

the reliability piece, and that right there alone, right, is going to help us

kind of, go ahead and, I'll call it, you know, defeat our enemy of the vehicles

I keep bringing that up because that is truly the challenge that we have, and so

we're looking at all of our routes to go ahead, and any of those routes that are in

that hour, an hour and 10 minute window.

how do we reduce that to about 40 to 45 minutes,

The headways?

Absolutely, you know, so, so that's huge in itself.

And then the future I'll tell you, Paul, most of my career has been on

the warm weather area and it definitely was a little chilly in Baltimore.

Don't get me wrong.

I do remember that.

Yeah.

But our, our, our, our different amenities here, I'm focusing on our bus stops.

We need four season bus stops here.

You know, these people, here in Tri Cities, you know, they're

very used to taking the bus and, you know, the bus stop is there.

We don't have any heat lamps and we have certain, certain shelters, You

know, aimed at certain ways just for the wind we need to put more

heat lamps in our, bus shelters.

I'm looking to really improve the passenger amenities here because that's

where it really starts for the passenger.

Yeah, including for the bus.

So if you can make it, if you can put in amenities that, can go

ahead and, you know, I'll say make it comfortable and comfortable in

every way for the passenger, that's their first impression of transit.

Once they get on the bus.

You know, everybody's on their phone and get their 12 minutes on the bus, get to

their place, and it all happens, you know.

That's good.

I love that.

you know what else I love, Tom, is I've always loved your

leadership philosophy and approach.

Tell us about that some.

I mean, you're, you're, when I remember us working together, for those

few years, you were collaborative, transparent, you were forward thinking.

Tell us about your approach to leadership.

Yeah, so what I've learned over all the years of watching everybody watching, you

know, good leaders, watching, challenged, leaders to me the first thing that comes

to mind is the, the listening, you know, understanding the needs of employees,

your riders, your stakeholders, before making any decision, I mean, absent

of listening, you know, you're just flying by the seat of your pants making

decisions that might not, you know, be in sync, with the area that you're in.

And then another thing that it took me a little while to learn was, you know,

empowering, empowering my team, lot of times I felt like, you know, I had to be

the one to do it, you know, in order for it to get done and done the right way.

but, you know, as a leader, you know, trusting your employees,

to take the ownership, and to drive the solutions is key.

If you try to do it alone, you're going to bottleneck, right?

And slow down the entire, entire process.

And then also, you know, being data driven, but being people focused as well.

I love that.

Yep, in combination is what you need, you know, using those metrics as only

as a guide, you know, but without losing sight, you know, of your, of your

passenger and not always your passenger, but your internal customers as well,

you know, so that's very important as well, so, and then as we, as we all know,

the only thing constant in transit is change, right, so adapting to change,

whatever it may be, and whether it's the technology, whether it's a pandemic,

whatever You know, whether it's, you know, you know, the different resources

and assets that you have, being able to go ahead and take each one of those

things and how to, how do you create a scenario, you know, to, you know, to your

advantage, just overall in your system.

So, you know, so ultimately, leadership is about, right, building a strong,

motivated team, you know, that shares that same commitment to service excellence.

Great philosophy.

I think putting people first, and I know you guys are very focused on community

engagement and workforce development, and you've, you're really focused on

expanding transit access, leveraging technology and strengthening partnerships.

But I wanna focus for a few minutes on your current initiatives and projects.

you're working, you mentioned you're doing some bus stop upgrades.

Tell us about, some of the other current key initiatives that you're

working on with improving service enhancing infrastructure, getting

things ready for the future there.

Yes, without a doubt.

So, we have a Director of Facilities, and as mentioned to Shane, I

said, Shane, we need to put a brick in the ground this year.

And what I'm referring to is a new Facilities Building for

our Facilities Department.

We have a phenomenal Facilities team, just like a lot of other agencies,

and it's not just, you know, the, the, the administration building and

the ops building, but it's all the transit centers, you know, it's all

the, It's all the bus stops and being a four season, transit, agency, those

individuals are, are key, you know, just to, you know, keeping everything

up to snuff and things like that.

So we're looking to build a new, facilities for them right now.

They co share with Maintenance.

Okay.

Trying to get that off.

as you mentioned, our bus stop upgrades, which are huge.

August of 2025, we will be getting our first express routes, you know,

and so what's so important about that, of course, is while we'll still have

the Route One, and the Route one is one of our heavier ridership, routes.

it does take, you know, an hour and 15 minutes to go from end to end.

So we'll have a one x. You know, with limited stops from end to end, so those

individuals, you know, have that choice, to go ahead and jump on Express and, we

can compete with the local traffic and get to your, get to your destination.

I don't want to even say in 40 minutes, because 40 minutes is end to end, but

now you might be able to get, if you're the third stop in, you might actually

get to your destination in 30 minutes, you know, and, and that's where the

real value is getting that time back.

to the passenger, so they can go on about their business as opposed

to spending that time on the bus.

So that's going to be huge for us.

We'll have a big kickoff with that express route.

The organizational restructuring, you know, just Taking the organization as a

whole and looking at, overall, seeing if we have all the right pieces in place, we

put together our PMO office, our project management office, and it consists of

three project managers, as we have a lot of different projects going on here.

I told this team here, we have all this money.

If we don't spend the money, somebody else will, and I know that folks that give us

the grants they don't want the money back.

Everybody allocated and giving it out so we need to do our part, and not only

that, if we're not, you know, using that resource, then we're not enhancing

our transit system for our community.

So that's huge in itself.

So we created that PMO office.

Our fleet modernization, we're introducing, four electric,

buses and exploring the hydrogen fuel tech, technology.

so it seems like hydrogen is, at least in this area here, is coming more alive.

Yeah.

Especially with the weather and the things that are going on with battery electric.

We don't want to, we don't want to have one fleet, one fuel source.

We want it to diversified.

You know, so we're probably going to end up with, you know, we'll, the clean.

Clean burning diesel, some electric, and tap into the

hydrogen aspect of it as well.

And being that our fleets are, like I said, a ride share of 200, we definitely

do something with that fleet to go ahead and that might become half hydrogen,

half electric, where I know a lot of the other agencies or bigger agencies, you

know, the big fleet is bus, you know, in our case, it's, It's the ride share.

And then also our fare structure.

So that'll be another one of our initiatives that we

have going on this year.

Our fares are very reasonable.

It's 1.

50 with a transfer, so probably, that's probably unheard of in some places.

what we're, and what we're trying to do there.

Still got a lot of work with it.

We're trying to, do away with the transfer.

So we'll say, Hey, how about a $2, all day, you know?

And, it's kind of, if you're spending a dollar 50 to go one way, you're probably

spending a dollar 50 to come back.

So it's $3, how about $2?

And you can ride as many times as you want all day, you know?

Wow.

So I'm looking at some adoption there, you know?

Yeah.

That's great, Tom.

Very good.

Well, it sounds like you all have a lot going on.

I, I want to close this out with some of your personal

reflections and closing thoughts.

I guess, what has been your proudest moment so far as,

you're just under a year?

What's been your proudest moment as CEO?

I'd have to say it's the dedication and passion, Paul, of our team,

as we work to transform public transit in the Tri Cities.

The team here, being that a lot of folks come from this area, a lot

of our employees are, have been with Ben Franklin Transit one and

even two decades, there is a lot of passion, for the work that they do.

And so whether it's rolling out a critical infrastructure upgrade,

launching, you know, our first, express route, or expanding, access to cleaner

and more efficient, transportation, uh, options, I take great pride in the

progress that what we're doing, we're, we're making a difference together.

And in the end, the human capital is our big asset for any transit agency

and making a difference overall.

I agree with that.

And then maybe you could just give us some final thoughts

about the future of transit.

you know, you've mentioned the only change, the only constant is change,

and we have to adapt and progress, but, what are your thoughts now as

transportation enters this, 2025 year, the end of the first quarter

century and headed into the next?

You know, so, so my thought is we really have to take a look at our industry as a

whole, from the, from the human capital side of it, and us folks that, you know,

have two decades and three decades, in our industry, Start preparing our

younger generation, with the experience and knowledge we've gained over the

years and handing it down to them so that our industry doesn't go deficient,

in the human capital side of it.

That's, that's what I see.

Pickings are slim sometimes, and maybe we don't do a good enough job, us

as leaders in transit, to find those individuals and really, you know, invest

and mentor them so that we can, you know, strengthen our bench overall.

that's, that's what I see.

We could have talked about technology and the buses and all these flying

ships and everything like that, but, but at the end of the day, on any of

those things, You still need the people.

So the people to me are the most important asset overall, and we need

to continually invest, in our folks.

That's probably why you and I always click very well, because I

have the same philosophy, you know?

It's, it's not really about the buses, or the technology, the trains,

it's about the people, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And whether you're providing it, or they're your passengers, we're

in the people business, And, you know, back in the Ralph Kramden

days and all that and everything, point A to point B. Right, right.

But even today, you watch some of those old shows, there's the

people aspect to, that as well.

And maybe a little bit different than today, but it was definitely a

little bit more neighborly back then.

And, you know, in a place like Tri Cities here, we definitely

can capture that element.

Because we are kind of a small town

Well, thanks for sharing some of your journey with us, Tom, and,

and, your experiences there at Ben Franklin Transit in Washington State.

We wish you the very best as you continue to modernize and serve the people.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you for having me on.

Appreciate it.

Good luck to everybody.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Transit Unplugged

with our guest, Tom Drozt, CEO of Ben Franklin Transit in Washington State.

Now coming up next week, we have someone whose episode was one of our most popular

last year, Stephen Gardner, CEO of Amtrak.

Paul sat down with Stephen in his office at Amtrak to learn what Stephen

has planned to upgrade, improve, and expand America's national rail carrier.

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