The Value of Personal Experience to Help Create a ‘Great Day in Transit’

LESLEY KANDARAS
General Manager
Metro Transit
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

When I became Metro Transit’s general manager last July, I committed to riding every route we operate within my first year on the job.

The journey had a fitting beginning and end: I started on a bus rapid transit line that upgraded the route I used decades ago as a carless college student and ended with a ride on the light rail line I regularly ride due to its proximity to my home.

In the months between, I’ve been on dozens of routes for the first time, including many express and suburban routes. I’ve traveled in the dark of night and at the break of dawn, on weekdays and on weekends.

Through these travels, I met several operators for the first time and sat alongside countless riders who graciously shared their stories and ideas for how we can improve their transit experience [read more about this here and here].

Reflecting on these trips, three things stand out the most:

1. Transit is a lifeline for many in our community. Many people shared with me why transit matters to them. Some can’t drive, some don’t want to drive, some ride to save money, and some ride to reduce their carbon footprint. Many Metro Transit riders don’t have access to a vehicle and rely on our services to meet basic needs. The decisions we make about where and when to offer service can truly be life-altering.

• Our riders sincerely appreciate transit workers. One of the most common themes I heard was how much riders appreciate their operators and other frontline workers who help keep our system clean and safe.

• We have a lot of room for improvement. While riders value the services we provide, they also told me they want more options. And while they appreciate our efforts to address behaviors that make riding transit feel uncomfortable or unsafe, most notably by increasing our official presence on transit, they also expect us to do more.

I recognize these aren’t revelatory observations. When we engage riders, we regularly hear that people want a transit system that gets them where they need to go in a timely manner and is consistently safe, clean, and reliable. These themes also emerged in listening sessions we held in late 2023 and the first part of 2024 when developing Metro Transit Forward, our new strategic framework to guide our work during this pivotal time.

Still, I viscerally develop a deeper understanding of what transit means to our riders and our employees when I experience firsthand the frustration of a missed connection, the difficulty of boarding at a bus stop piled high with plowed snow, the disgust of riding a train as someone smokes onboard.

Obviously, personal experience riding transit is not a sufficient way to gather information about our performance. At Metro Transit, we methodically use multiple data to inform decisions. However, regularly riding our system place data and Key Performance Indicators in richer context by building understanding and empathy. This is why one of my early acts as general manager was to require senior leaders to ride at least four times a month. These rides are tracked and considered as part of annual performance reviews.

Though not a requirement, each month for the past year, we’ve invited all employees to spend time on transit as part of what we call “Great Day in Transit,” when staff ride vehicles or spend a few hours at busy boarding areas interacting with riders and reporting issues they encounter.

Over the last year, we’ve also started the practice of holding quarterly Employee Town Halls, recognizing our employees have valuable expertise about our system and are our ambassadors to the riders and the communities we serve. These quarterly internal town halls are one way we ensure our employees receive timely information and have regular opportunities to share their innovative ideas to improve our service directly with me and other leaders.

Collectively, these efforts are a reminder to everyone at Metro Transit that all our work ultimately centers on people.

This people-first mentality has been put front-and-center in our new mission statement included in Metro Transit Forward, which is: We connect people, strengthen communities, and improve lives by delivering high-quality public transportation.

By experiencing our system, we not only strengthen our connection to this vision and mission but get to see it in action.