ThinkTransit brings together hundreds of transit industry experts across North America and provides agencies the opportunity to learn, connect, and discuss the future of transit. The massive wealth of knowledge at ThinkTransit creates an industry-wide ripple effect; What you learn at ThinkTransit can be taken back to your agency and applied to make real, impactful changes.

 

Blog and Podcast Manager, Tris Hussey, and Social Media Marketing Specialist, Randi Reshef, have teamed up to bring you a behind-the-scenes interview series, "Destination: ThinkTransit." "Destination: ThinkTransit" covers your need-to-know questions featuring ThinkTransit keynote speakers, Trapeze Group and Vontas employees, and key players that help bring the conference to life each year.

 

For our final interview, Paul Comfort, SVP and CCO of Trapeze Group and Vontas, and host of Transit Unplugged interviewed Terry White, General Manager of King County Metro. They discussed Terry’s personal connection to public transit, the ripple effect and public transit’s role on the community, and how technology fits into delivering transit to riders in King County. The episode aired on Transit Unplugged on March 3, 2022, and you can listen to the full episode below. Let’s jump right in!

 

TW: It’s a long story but I'll make it a little bit brief. I grew up on public transit in Seattle. I grew up in a housing project with a single parent mother who had a disability, and her disability did not allow her to operate a motor vehicle. So subsequently, the bus was all I really knew growing up. I did not know what we did not have.

 

As far back as I can recall, I remember her having a stack of timetables, and she'd be trying to put together the path we were going to navigate for the day. My mother was very intent on ensuring that I had the same culture and opportunities that everyone else had, so she would seek them out and she would figure out how to put together that schedule for us to go. Eventually, she came to me and said, “you're now at an age where I need you to figure out how to do this thing on your own, because I've got to go to work, and I need you to go to a school outside your district.”

 

She assured me that I should go sit up front, make eye contact with operators, that they'll take care of me, and that the system will work for me. And it worked. I am a lifelong rider and lover of transit. You would call me a choice rider now, but my choice is to still ride. Even in the pandemic, I continued to use all the mobility options that we have available to us here in the region to get to and from my place of work, which is the central business district of Seattle.

 

Operators used to allow me to work their signage and they would let me keep my 20 cents. So, I feel like I've been employed for even longer than the 35 years that I've been at King County. I knew then that I wanted in on that opportunity from mobility. It was doing something for me. I was going to school outside the district that I grew up in to get a better education, which afforded me the opportunity to eventually go to college. At 10 I knew, I got to figure out how to get one of these buses, and I got to figure out how to operate it. And that was the intent for all that came after. Ironically, I've had 14 positions at King County Metro, and one of them is not a bus operator.

 

In the end though, I love it. Mobility is a human right and a necessity, and the inclusion of the folks who we are moving, who need us the most, and having their voices in those rooms are reasons why I chose that career path. I continue to advocate for it to this day and will continue to do so.

 

TW: The irony of me wanting to be a bus driver is that at 10 years old, that was the dream I could have. That was what I saw and knew. I couldn't even dream of what transit could do or what mobility does for a person. We at King County say we want to create a welcoming community where everybody has an opportunity to thrive. Well, you don't get your opportunity to thrive without being able to move, so that's the whole mindset where I come from, all of us are in a place and we're trying to go to a place, and the importance of the ability to move, to get to wherever it is you're trying to go, is literally critical to that path and to thriving.

 

Most folks don't grow up in an area where they go to school and work and pay their bills and it's all around the corner from them. Literally, you need the opportunity to get from place to place to have opportunities. I think of transit as the gateway. It is the place where, if you can get to the thing you're thinking about, whether that's education, whether that's the job you currently have, or the job you're going to apply for, whether it's the medical appointment, or the groceries you need to obtain to take care of your family. All those things are vital to thriving.

 

One of the earlier jobs that I had at Metro was as an on-call telephone operator. In that position, you get to hear personally from a customer when we were able to provide them with a successful journey or when we couldn’t. Just hearing the delight in someone's voice coming across that line, when they were going to be able to move late at night or on a weekend when they were thinking that the possibility was not going to come to fruition for them, I think is huge.

 

TW: I’ve got to say there are two reasons why I'm excited about coming and joining you all. The first is I'm a lifelong Dallas Cowboy fan, but the second is “the ripple effect” and the cause-effect of what transit and mobility do for all of us. I've lived it.

Oprah Winfrey used to say everyone has a story if you're willing to take the time to listen to it. Sometimes we have to move bodies from place to place. We don't always have the time to stop and say, why are you moving? Or why is it you need transit? But I guarantee you that they all have stories. And when we make a difference, we make a difference that has a big effect. That's what the ripple effect is to me.

 

I began to learn that transit helped me to get to the short-term job that I had, which helped me to get to the long-term education that I got, which then allowed me to return and begin to change the economic stature of my family. Now look at that and multiply that out for all the folks out there.

 

We say, “opportunity to thrive.” The ripple effect that comes through mobility is just life changing. And when you do get to stop and occasionally hear the story from anyone who rides, you start to get the whole, “if not for this, I don't get to have, and my kids don't get to have, and my kids' kids don't get to have.” My grandmother was raised by her grandparents who were freed slaves. When you look at the time frame for what mobility opportunity can do for you and how powerful it can be for all of us, it’s incredible.

When you build for those who have been silenced and marginalized, the ripple effect is even larger in the sense that when they rise, we all do. And we all do benefit from that. I think it's exciting to see the possibility of what a small change in thought or system structure can do. The outcome from that can be generational and it can be immediately changing in terms of hope. That goes from the minute ripple of, “Hey, the bus actually goes where I needed to go” to “I get to do a thing, take a job, go to a school. And the life of those who I take love and take care of are going to forever be changed for the better.”

 

TW: I think the pandemic has pulled the covers back on several things, including technology. We're in a tech rich area in King County, but we weren't always the most flexible and quickest at adopting and moving forward. I think we're having to be more forward thinking. We can't afford to be in a situation where a pandemic-type event catches us unaware again.

 

We need to be thinking about the here and now, but also the future of how folks move and how we leverage that. How do we leverage what we didn't know before, how do we use our data to get ourselves up to speed? How do we use technology to help our employees work easier, more efficiently? And how do we then transfer that to our customers?

 

You also have to deal with the mid and future, and we have to do it better and prepare ourselves for those journeys. Maybe it starts with the thought of running your coaches endlessly without putting them in layover spaces and coordinating better with your first and last mile components so that it is more seamless than it ever was before; that is going to require you to use technology. There are a whole lot of areas where tech begins to address the questions that folks have right now about mobility and what's holding back or our ability to make it easier to use.

 

How do we tie all those things together? And how do we continue to push ourselves? As you mentioned, across the nation we struggle with this mindset. We've mastered the thing we know and perhaps we're slightly fearful of the future. I like to talk to our folks and say, isn't the flat screen television a lot better than that big box that you used to have? We're not going to give you a thing that makes it harder for you to do your work. We are trying to literally invest in making it easier for all folks. Win-win is good for the employee, good for the rider, good for the organization, and a great place for us all to come and work.  

 

 

TW: The two garages are our big push to go to a 20 35 and get to clean efficient electric energy, one hundred percent across our fleet. We're also doing some work with our non-revenue fleets and our smaller fleets. As a part of our growth and change and evolution, we want to engage better than we have. We think we're doing a great job, but we want to make sure that those voices that I mentioned earlier are in our rooms and having those discussions with us.

 

There are concepts that we're always trying to work through. How do we use technology in rural areas versus urban areas where the need is slightly different? Transit on demand might be the thing that we figure out how to do with smaller vehicles, that still tie into the fixed services better. How do we create the dance? People don't care what part of the mode they're in. They want the modes to work well for them so that they don't have a breakdown anywhere in the system. How do we build that out with our partners, so that these modes communicate better and more efficiently so no one does get left?

 

Along this journey, there are certain concepts. One of mine that I'm very fond of is this mindset that we keep the buses moving and we take our operators and give them their guaranteed breaks and lunches. We create spaces that are really valuing them, where they can rest, turn the lights off, eat, turn on a gaming control, whatever it is they would love to have in this space that shows them honor. And then another operator leaves that space, gets on the coach, and keeps it moving.

 

Another thought is that we're trying to figure out how to remove paying cash, which slows the system down. There are a lot of folks out there who are beginning to look at how you do that. We can't leave folks behind. Where I come from, we talk about unbanked communities. How do you make it work for them? If you can make it work for them, it will work for everyone else. And guess what, folks who have low and no income, BIPOC communities, they want technology as well. We should be not shying away from it; we should be leaning in to try and figure out how to unstick that piece. I think the benefit for all is that frequent, reliable, not having to think about when the next thing is coming around the corner, works to all of our benefits. The more we prove that for those who have the greatest needs, the more that choice riders will say, “oh you know, that thing seems to be working a little better than if I tried to navigate it myself.”

 

TW: Thank you for having me today, Paul. I'm absolutely looking forward to joining you from the great State of Texas. 

 

ThinkTransit is in less than three weeks! If you haven't registered, you can do so here. Check out the agenda for details on our keynote speakers, product-based sessions, and hands-on sessions. Don't forget about the Executive Summit, the Awards of Excellence, and Transit Unplugged Live. We can't wait to see you there -- Let's #ThinkTransit. 

Media Contact
Randi Reshef, Social Media Marketing Specialist
socia.media@trapezegroup.com