November 2021 - 30

Amy
HughesNevill
Marketing
Manager
Citibus | RATP Dev
Contract Operator
Marketing Director Amy HughesNevill
does it all for Citibus out of Lubbock,
Texas, including sales, data research, promotions,
graphic design, advertising, public
relations, social media, web design and
more. Hughes-Nevill joined Citibus at what is
described as a low morale point for employees.
Hughes-Nevill, who joined the transit
system after being laid off herself, set her
sights on boosting morale. She recognized
when employees weren't engaged, customers
felt the outcome. She listened to
employees, heard their frustrations, mourned
with them through their losses and developed
a plan to get everyone back on track.
That plan included re-branding the company
values: Do your P.A.R.T. (Professionalism,
Accountability, Respect and Trust), reinventing
the communication within the organization,
creating a Culture Committee with peers
from every department and creating a customer
service training program to refocus
the entire staff's perspective from moving
people to human-centric services beyond
transportation. More than 150 employees
were trained in customer service relevant to
their specific roles over three months. The
result was an increase in ridership, an increase
in the agency's customer service ranking;
employee retention increased; and job applications
converted to new hires increased.
Relative to her job-specific role, Hughes-Nevill
applied her skillset towards the promotional
development and implementation of Citibus's
new On-Demand Services. To supplement
the reduced capacity on the fixed-route services,
an on-demand curb-to-curb service was
implemented in conjunction with Medicaid
and Medicare transports. Around June 2020,
ridership plummeted due to COVID-19. Once
Hughes-Nevill joined the team, she found
unique ways to promote the use of the service,
and in two months' time, ridership reached
levels higher than pre-pandemic numbers.
Her promotion focused on the demographic
of people who didn't typically use public
transportation and how they could utilize the
service in conjunction with their own vehicles.
Fast Fact: Hughes-Nevill is a student
pilot and is halfway through the required flight
hours to get her license.
MassTransitmag.com/21246379
Apply extreme ownership to
everything in your life. When
you stop blaming others
for your situation, you start
to own the variables which
determine the outcome. "
Ian
Griffiths
Policy Director
Seamless Bay Area
Ian Griffiths, a transportation planner
and urban designer, worked for transit agencies
and consulting firms in Canada and the
U.S., where he led ground-breaking work in
station design, wayfinding and mapping. After
nearly a decade of this, Griffiths co-founded
a non-profit advocacy organization, Seamless
Bay Area (Seamless). The San Francisco Bay
Area has 27 different operators, each with its
own schedules and fares. With Griffiths at the
helm, Seamless advocates for a more integrated
and rider-focused transit system by taking
a more coordinated regional approach. While
initially launched as a side project, Griffiths left
his full-time position at BART in April 2019 to
focus on Seamless full-time.
While there, Griffiths has led the development
of the Seamless Transit Principles. More
than 50 organizations have endorsed the
principles and more than 17 public agencies
have passed resolutions in support. Griffiths
also developed Seamless' Vision Map, which
shows how transit would appear to the rider
if it were planned as one integrated system
and how such a system would expand access
to jobs and housing. He also developed an
interactive fare calculator tool that compares
integrated fares with current fares, showing
how integrated fares would save most riders
money. This proposal was included in the
region's long-range transportation plan.
30 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | NOVEMBER 2021
I have found my experience
working in a different region
where things are done differently
has made me uniquely qualified
to speak up about how the
Bay Area can improve when
it comes to public transit. "
Griffiths also earned Seamless a seat at
the table for Metropolitan Transportation
Commission's Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery
Task Force. Since May 2020, Griffiths has been
advocating for reforms that advance more
coordinated network management and rider-first
policies like fare and service integration.
Griffiths also published research on transit
integration. In 2020, he helped scope and
served as a research advisor for a Mineta
Transportation Institute-funded research
project. The research has shaped conversations
about transit governance in the Bay
Area, Southern California and beyond.
Fast Fact: Griffiths' advocacy efforts
influenced MTC creating the recovery task
force, which derived its focus from legislation
sponsored by Seamless and California State
Assemblymember David Chiu.
MassTransitmag.com/21246397
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November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2021
