Mass Transit - 17

Mobility Redefined
Delivering on Potential

"We're seeing an evolutionary
change in how data impact operations, feeds into planning and
gets implemented in the space of
a weekend or a week."
Lane adds that the transit
community recognizes this
as a time to rethink current
ways of doing things and
redo them in a better way.
"That too is going to
require great data," said
Lane.

Telling Transit's
Story

A key piece to the industry's recovery can be found
in how its efforts are communicated to employees, riders,
community members and other
stakeholders.
Recovery begins with the belief that it is safe to ride, according
to Morgan Lyons, owner of Lyons
Strategic, a media relations and
communications firm.
"There is a recognition that
transit is an essential service and
the first thing on everyone's mind
is focusing on safety," said Lyons.
"We have to make sure people feel
safe to get on board."
He explains this notion of
safety begins with employees who
must feel safe at work to deliver
service that workers and customers will accept.
"This is not going to be a flipa-switch recovery. This is something that is going to evolve over
time," said Lyons.
He recommends transit professionals perform three tasks as
they tailor their messages during
the recovery phase.
"The first is to take a breath and
clear your head. Take a moment
and reassess transit's role within
the community. The second thing
is to listen to your agency, your
customers and your stakeholders.
This helps stress test your plan,"
said Lyons. "The third is to act and
act with a bias towards openness.
We can't hunker down and not
communicate. We need to act."

Lyons says those actions, at
least in the immediate recovery
period, should reflect the safety
efforts being implemented by an
agency from sharing images of
vehicles being cleaned to having
ambassadors at facilities reminding customers to practice social
distancing to the installation of
markers or other visuals inside
vehicles promoting social distancing procedures.
Shifting to communication
strategies involving elected officials, who may hold the keys
to further or improved funding
resources for transit, Lyons notes
the industry provided many examples illustrating how essential
transit is to a community from
the delivery of meals to support
local school students to the repurposing of paratransit vehicles for
supply deliveries.
"This provides an opportunity
to remind our elected officials that
there is a cost to this essential service; transit is not complimentary.
It is not the orange slice or the
piece of parsley on the breakfast
plate. It requires an investment,"
said Lyons.

"This is

not going to be
a flip-a-switch
recovery. This is
something that
is going to
evolve over
time."

-MORGAN
LYONS

The required investment, more
specifically, the lack of support for
that investment, can be a hazard
to the industry's recovery.
Walker warns of the potential of diminished support
for investment once influential people stop using
transit themselves, which
could push agencies to
make cuts that would
undermine their essential mission and make it
impossible to serve once
demand returns.
"The biggest risk to transit is the failure of relatively
fortunate, influential people
to understand that everybody
is dependent on transit and transit needs to succeed; whether you
ride it is not relevant," said Walker.
For Kumar, the opportunities
and risks go back to transit's essential mission.
"We still have the social ramifications of transit; we have given
birth to the term essential and our
drivers, our mechanics, our utility
workers, our supervisors, they are
essential and they've always done
an essential job. The key here is
that we can't just have business
models that are for some of us,"
explained Kumar. "The digital divide still exists, and I'm concerned
about whatever the future mobility
divide looks like that is created by
this. These are real opportunities
for us to test and deploy new,
more dynamic, more responsive
services. We have to do it within the confines of public transit's
mandate, which is to be equitable
and accessible by all."
Alexander sees a future where
the industry is not only different,
but larger and more accessible.
"I think it's going to be larger
and there will be more jobs in this
industry. I think more people will
have access to public transportation that never had it before," said
Alexander. "The industry will be
different, but it's not going to be
less important."

JUNE 2020 | MassTransitmag.com | Mass Transit |

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