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(upbeat music) (bell dings) - Good afternoon, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 25th.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, I'm the chief executive here and also a proud member.

I'm very glad to welcome all of you here today.

And I wanna begin by acknowledging that it's a little incongruous and dissonant to be talking about public transit the week that a war has broken out in Ukraine.

It's very much on our minds, many of us, I know.

And in fact, it's the topic of our next forum, not next Friday, but next Wednesday, a free event, Wednesday evening.

There's information about that event on our website at cityclub.org.

But right now we're here to talk about public transit.

It's the Leonard Ronis Transportation and Planning Forum annual event here at the City Club.

And today it is aptly featuring the general manager of the Greater Cleveland RTA, India Birdsong.

Public transit plays an essential role in our communities.

It ensures all residents have the freedom to get where they need to go to their places of employment, to medical appointments, to the grocery store, to schools.

But our public transit system is more than just buses and trains and tracks.

It's a functioning public transit system, is a key part of our economy.

It's a key ingredient to any recipe for equitable economic development and equitable economic opportunity and access.

And a high quality transit system makes Cleveland competitive city to attract new businesses and even high profile events like last weekend's NBA All-Star Game.

India Birdsong joins us today to talk about what it means to truly connect the community.

Ms. Birdsong is the first woman to serve as general manager and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, a post first held by Leonard Ronis, who we celebrate with our forum today.

Ms. Birdsong is no stranger to cities in public transit.

She grew up on the near west side of Chicago before attending high school, just outside of Boston.

She went on to Temple University in Philadelphia and returned home to pursue a master's degree in urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

She served as chief operating officer at Nashville's regional transportation authority and spent nine years at the Chicago Transit Authority.

And last July, Ms. Birdsong joined the City Club on stage during our public square series.

She spoke then about Next Gen RTA, a new strategy that increased frequency of bus service, reduced wait times, and decreased bus transfers.

And now the RTA is looking at innovative changes to the transit police department, to fare collection, and more.

Just announced yesterday, RTA, I'm sure we'll hear a little bit more about this as well, RTA will receive $20.3 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, providing an historic opportunity to strengthen RTA's transportation network and associated infrastructure.

Yes.

(audience applauding) So let's find out what's next for our public transit system.

If you have a question at any point during the program, you can tweet it @TheCityClub or you can text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

We'll work them in the second half of the program.

And of course you can also, if you're here in the audience, ask your questions yourself, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming to the stage India Birdsong.

(audience applauding) - Well, how do I follow that?

Good afternoon, everyone.

- [All] Good afternoon.

- Thank you so much for allowing me to share a meal or a couple bites with you this afternoon.

I was saying, I said, do you want anything to eat?

I said, now come on now, I'm not gonna eat much.

I'm gonna talk my head off today and take advantage of being with you all here.

As mentioned, I currently serve as the general manager and CEO for the Greater Cleveland RTA.

Before I begin, I would like to give a shout out to my team, which have come here in mass.

So I appreciate them as well as a few of our board members as well.

So if you guys could raise your hand that way, we also can answer questions.

(audience applauding) Thank you.

As I mentioned to the team on a daily basis, we succeed as a team and we fail as a team.

It's very important that we continue to have that mantra replaying in our heads every day so that we can look out every day and say, we did that, or we failed at that and we need to get better.

As you might understand, we have a lot of different opportunities to be able to show the public that we're good stewards of your public dollars and good stewards of your life and limb as we continue to move your grandmothers, your cousins, your best friends, your children throughout Greater Cleveland.

It's not only the buses and trains that we move.

It was said earlier in the introduction, that we're not merely a bus and train company.

We actually are an economic driver for Greater Cleveland.

And that's really what I wanna talk to you today about.

So you can understand my vision for the RTA as well as our team's vision, as we continue to really move that forward in light of a new administration, not only at the mayor's office, but also a lot of our suburban mayors have changed as well.

And I would dare say a lot of our residents have changed as well.

I am taking liberty by saying our, I am only been a Cleveland resident for about two and a half years.

My husband is in the audience.

So if you have any questions about me personally, I'm sure that he'd be happy to complain on my behalf.

So we have moved here though for this particular opportunity and for his opportunity and his career as well.

So with that, Cleveland is a really special place for us.

It's a place that we are choosing to raise our family.

I'm just gonna go ahead and dispel rumor mills right now, we have two pandemic babies, and we've also done an amazing amount of things, of course, moving the city forward at the same time.

So that only goes to show you that it really is the resilience of the Cleveland community and coming together that we're able to thrive.

And so therefore RTA should be able to thrive as well.

So as I go through this, I wanna be able to talk about three simple words, connecting the community.

It's not by happenstance, that the title of today's talk is connecting the community and not the state of transit or the state of RTA.

The reason for that is because we actually have changed our mission statement at RTA to exactly that, connecting the community is very simple.

In fact, it was almost too simple when we were in spirited debate about what we should call ourselves, as far as mission goes and it was back and forth.

Well, what should we say?

Do we wanna make it lofty?

And do we wanna have people try to figure it out and Google it and everything else?

And I said, well, if you can't remember it, then it doesn't matter.

And when it came down to it, we figured out that we wanted to be able to emote why we come to work every day.

Why dock is up at three o'clock in the morning, making sure that the ice isn't on the rails, why Nick Bigger is making sure that you have folks that come in 30 minutes early so they can get the buses out on time.

Why you've got Natoya running around throughout the city, trying to make sure that I'm in rooms like this.

This is really why we come to work.

And when we talk about connecting the community, it really means partnerships.

It means mobility.

It means accessibility and equity.

Those are the things that by sheer virtue of the board's hire for me, it should tell you something that we're ready for change.

I do not look like the typical transit CEO.

I do not most times sound like the typical transit CEO.

And when I say that, I say that there's a shift.

There's a shift happening where that those items I just mentioned as far as DEI, accessibility and equity are coming to the forefront in public transit, where that has not happened for decades if ever.

And this is a really unique opportunity for Cleveland to also come to the forefront.

Well, I always hear about Rockefeller or Carnegie or Carnegie, I do understand, I'm in Cleveland, I need to say it correctly.

And that's kind of what you hear as far as the stronghold.

I sat in a room right before coming up here with our illustrious host.

And he informed me that in 1912 is when these discussions started.

And the idea was that this is a historical kind of place and RTA being at the helm here today is historic in itself.

So when you look at that, you've really gotta understand that this is our time.

This is our time to move forward.

I did not move to Cleveland and drag along my family to be able to do things status quo, we have to be able to push the boundaries.

We have to be able to push and see what we can get as far as it comes funding, the 20 million that was mentioned.

That's a drop in the bucket.

And I'll go into that in a little bit as well, just to give you an idea of how much it costs.

Transit is not cheap and we all understand that as well.

I did come from Nashville as was mentioned.

And if you've done a little bit of your homework you know that they did have a failed referendum in Nashville.

I was COO at that time, it was a really good opportunity.

Referendums, typically on average, you have to go to the ballot three or four times in order to get a win, just as information, especially if you're dealing with anything where you have what I call white knuckling the steering wheel culture.

And that was in Nashville.

And dare I say, that could be a Cleveland because we don't have traffic like you would have in New York City, you don't have traffic like you would in Chicago.

So we're battling those things where the lack of traffic is a problem for RTA because it makes us work harder.

But dare I say, that's actually a challenge and an obstacle, not a problem.

It pushes us to be more innovative.

It pushes us to be more creative and it also pushes us, I think, to be able to be more of that economic driver I talked about, and not just simply the bus or train.

That alone will not get us a win at the ballot.

That's what my experience tells me.

So we'll go into that a little bit, I'm sure.

I'd almost be willing to bet money that there's gonna be questions about a free fare, there's gonna be questions and people are giggling, I did look at the roster before I came in and I am a planner so I try to do a little homework.

And there're probably gonna be questions about referendum, gas tax and that kind of thing.

So I'll give you a little bit of information, but happy to talk about that as we take questions.

Really quickly, though, getting back to that mission I said, I wanna also read to you our vision statement because that also has been revamped.

Leading the delivery of safe and creative mobility solutions and community connections.

That is our new vision statement.

So with that, that really gets into some of the innovation and programmatical things that I wanna talk about today, just to give you an update, to be able to put us in that mind frame, that we're more than a bus and train, that also rides us through some of the lower ridership times that we're dealing with right now for pandemic, our ridership right now, hovers anywhere between 50 and 65% of what we would normally take in from the fare box.

That is, believe it or not, pretty good as a national standard in current times.

We also have boasted and I'll say this because I'm proud of it, a really good relationship with our union members.

As far as it goes, coming into work, you can't drive a bus remotely from your house.

You've gotta be able to be there, be on time.

I did waddle in as much as I could to work.

And I think I did it till I scared people.

And I said, okay, maybe I need to just take a week and then have the kid and come back.

And so that being said, we really have to be able to push the needle and push the needle as far as state of good repair, we cannot come to the ballot or any other forum with vehicles that are past the end of their useful life, that are not reliable, that are not safe.

All of the things we had in our previous mission statement that have not gone away.

But again, the idea is why do we come to work?

It's the why, not the how.

If you come to expect from us at RTA that we're solely safe and reliable and on time, and that's the only expectation you have, then that means that we're not doing enough.

So that being said, we're doing all of these things behind the scenes in order to maintain the basic tenants and then moving a little bit beyond.

So as was mentioned, we had the All-Star weekend, went really well.

And I think that we have shown those kind of partnerships with the city to be very fruitful.

Part of that I'll mention, as an example, is the walkway.

How many people have utilized the walkway between Tower City kind of like their cafeteria area and RTA, you guys don't count and then (laughs) gotcha.

And then going to the (indistinct), right.

Okay, so I'm seeing a couple hands.

How many of you guys have been freezing as you did that in the winter?

Okay.

How many of you all have been bored as you walk through that as well?

So those are the kind of things that we wanna start to turn around.

So if you had an opportunity and this is an example of the partnerships, if you had an opportunity to go through that space last weekend, you started to see the light.

You started, literally, you started to see it's lighted, lit very well.

You start to see jerseys on the wall, you saw officers that were hanging around and make sure you were safe.

It was populous.

It had people there and people were talking and having good time.

That's what the kind of partnerships that we wanna start to emblaze here in RTA, and also here in Cleveland.

Being able to have that kind of partnership, where we bring life into the areas of Cleveland, that once were the Mecca for shopping and in retail.

We wanna be part of those conversations because to be very honest with you, we own a lot of that property.

And when we found out, and when I found out that we actually own that walkway, I said, are you kidding me?

We have to make it look better than what it is, right?

We can't have an embarrassment of vehicles that are not up to speed or opportunities for facility enhancements that are not up to speed.

So we're taking that kind of approach in everything that we do.

So that brings me to rail car.

If you have watched the news, anytime in the last two to three years, you probably have heard a very high price tag for rail car purchase.

Just curious.

Does anybody know what that figure is to replace the rail cars?

RTA don't answer.

- [Audience Member] 50 million?

- So I heard 50 or 60 million.

- 60.

- 60, I heard 60.

You could double that number and it's still too low.

Give me one more.

(audience members speak faintly) (laughs) So that's close.

That's very close.

300 million is the price tag right now.

Now that's the number that we have in order to push forward and replace the entire rail car system.

I'm not talking about track work.

I'm not talking about anything else.

And that's the current number.

So what I do people ask all the time is how are you comfortable with those numbers?

I say, well, it's like buying a good pair of shoes.

You wanna make sure that it's going to last you, but you also have to make sure or almost like a car, you wanna make sure you have the financing in place in order to buy that vehicle.

You also don't wanna buy the car that has the cloth seats, you wanna buy the leather, you wanna buy the moon roof.

You wanna buy the security system.

That's the same way you should look at or we look at purchasing a major equipment like rail cars.

Now imagine you wanna buy that vehicle and you have Chevy money.

I've had Chevys my entire life.

So no disrespect to Chevy, but let's say you really want a beamer, That beamer costs about 50,000 more than what you're prepared to pay.

But you come into the dealership with $20,000 prepared to buy that Chevy in your mind you know you should.

But you want this beamer, and that beamer, they're gonna say, sir, ma'am, we're gonna finance you, but you can't start the process unless you have that 20,000, which becomes your down payment instead of your full price out the door.

Think about that with a rail car.

So we have actually identified $189.4 million to be able to get in the game, to be able to open that door to the dealership so to speak, to buy that rail car replacement.

However, it's 300 million, that's the beamer.

We have Chevy money right now.

So what we've gotta do is be able to work hard, fast and efficiently over the next three to four years, to be able to make that 110 plus change million dollar deficit.

That's the gap.

So this is the way that I like to explain it to our staff, especially to those men and women who are out there really having their lives on the line with equipment that may or may not fail.

We cannot continue to have that kind of environment and be able to tout ourselves as a world class city.

We have to be able to be ahead of the game.

We have to put on our planner hat, right?

And I mentioned, I was a planner in the beginning.

I'm an urban planner by trade.

I am an editor before that.

I apologize for the edits, but that's the kind of mentality we have to start to adopt when we're looking at becoming a world class transportation system, we cannot have that in name only.

So we are doing the work, we're pounding the pavement.

We actually had a very successful last couple of years in DC and Columbus being able to meet with our senators, being able to meet with our legislators and representatives to ask them to support us.

A good example of that would be the state investment in public transit in Ohio.

ODOT as you might be familiar, the Ohio Department of Transportation has been working with us, and we've been trying to kind of understand the dynamic between highways and public transit.

That's our competitor, so to speak.

We have to be able to span the gap between urban and rural so that the folks in the rural communities who may not have a bus stop down the street, understand the value and the connection of the urban core transportation system, which largely is GCRTA.

So when we have those communities, we're able to be able to knock down those barriers or knock down those doors and being able to explain to them that a $70 million investment in transportation statewide is not enough.

As I mentioned before, you know the price tag of rail, I'll give you an idea for bus so you have an idea of how we might use that money.

An average bus, well, let's say an average car, your average car, if you spend $50,000 on a car, you're doing pretty well, in your personal lives.

An average bus ranges somewhere between 600,000 to a million dollars, depending on what you want, what kind of diesel, fuel, hybrid, C&G efficiency, model, electric, whatever you want.

So if you take an average, let's say 750, if that budget of 70 million bestowed upon us by the state is divided amongst 10 plus agencies, and then you look at RTA that gets about seven and let's be generous, let's say seven to 15, even seven to 20.

How many vehicles can I purchase?

Maybe 10, maybe on a good day if I get a good contract.

And that's supposed to sustain us for a year, you can see how the numbers quickly dwindle.

And then the actual expectation and need of Cleveland, that barely gets you two or three bus routes worth of service every day.

We've got a network of tens of buses of routes, we're looking at 40 and 50 routes.

We're not looking at two and three.

We're looking at 60, we're looking at those kind of things.

And we're looking at ex expectations for expansion to the suburbs like Strongsville, like Solon, first and last mile.

We absolutely need the community to value the cost of transportation.

And so we're are working through that.

And I'm proud to say that we have had the door opened from ODOT to be able to start investing in small projects that might have four or $5 million attributed to them so we can start that process.

So that's the rail car.

In short, we do expect to be able to have our rail car replacement program up and running and on the street likely between 2026, 2025-2026.

I'm looking at our rail car procurement manager.

I have strategically included RTA here in case we have any questions.

Brian Moore is right there to make sure that we have those rail cars out.

Again, our idea is three to four years in planning down the line to make sure you get what you need as a community.

Fare equity is also a big question that we have.

We are currently looking at replacing our entire fare collection system.

We are about, dare I say, 12 to 14 years behind in technology as a city when it comes to transportation.

We wanna be able to be at the table.

We wanna be able to have those conversations with Midtown.

We wanna be able to have those conversations with the tech companies to be able to say, RTA makes it easy.

You should be able to use your phone and tap and pay.

We should be able to go beyond smart card.

Smart card was popular 10 years ago.

So that should be the base of what we look at.

So what we're doing is we're also looking at more of a regionalized attack or approach of fare collection.

We also have one of our managers from Tower City, Zekeah, there we go.

So these are the folks that are gonna keep me honest today.

If I'm saying something we're not doing, I'm sure I'm gonna see a nod, so I'm gonna backtrack.

But right now I'm on target.

Our fare collection system, we have a lot of issues as far as fare evasion that has come up as well.

Are we charging the right price and ease of use?

We wanna make sure that if you wanna catch a lake tram vehicle, hop on an RTA vehicle, and then hop on an e-bike, you should be able to do that in one fell swoop.

Ideally, you'd be able to go on this app, be able to pay for everything, and you don't have to go back in your pocket until you reach your end destination.

That's where we want to be.

We also would be looking at fare capping.

That's something has come up for those of you who are interested in that, have a little bit of knowledge on that, that basically incentivizes the customer to be able to hit a cap mid-month for those individuals who are paying on a daily basis, it's really advantageous because what it does is it gets you a little bit more bang for your buck, instead of just paying on your pocket every day out of your pocket every day.

We say thank you very much, you've reached 25 rides.

We will handle the rest of it from here until the next month.

That's a good example of what fare capping can do for the customer.

It incentivizes people to be able to take our service and be able to have solace in the fact that we've assisted with their monthly budgeting.

So those are some of the things we do expect to be able to have that fare system at least in beta testing ny the end of 2022, this year.

We also are looking at major TOD, transit oriented development.

Again, I'm an urban planner by trade, development is very important to us.

It should be important to us.

We own a lot of property, however, that property does us no good if it turns into a parking lot by which we are not located.

So we wanna make sure that if there is a apartment building coming up, if there is a new super center coming up, if there's a town home development coming up, we wanna make sure that we're there as well.

So what we're starting to do is look at priority projects within the community, especially those that have service to low income and mid-level sort of economic strata because that's our bread and butter for our customers.

Now, that being said, I also want the doctor and the lawyer to take our service.

I want it to be comfortable for everybody, and that's a long shot, but we'll get there.

We do have a good program 25connects.

If you have heard of that.

Good, thank you, appreciate that.

It is available in English and Spanish.

That's another thing DEI, you'll see that as a common thread, we need to make sure that we are communicating effectively as well is that's the community that is focused in on in that particular project.

We're partnering with Metro Health.

They have a lot of development going on.

We want to be partners in that because we're sharing that space.

If you all have seen the Healthline vehicles, we're really proud of the new fleet that has just come out, snap snap for that.

That's awesome.

That was also a spirited debate as far as what they should look like.

I believe doc, keep me if I'm honest, we wanted to look a limo and we wanted to make it look attractive and have you forget that you're on public transit and make you feel like you're in your own car.

So we've got a lot of amenities that are new on those vehicles by way of surveillance.

For those of you who do not know, we have anywhere between, I wanna say seven and 11 cameras, Nick, on every vehicle.

And so that has been enhanced as well.

There's different ad space availability.

That's a source of income for us that we have to take advantage of.

We also have sanitizer stations on those vehicles.

That's a new feature.

There's a lot of other bells and whistles that come along with that.

Nick is happy to give you more information on that if you need it.

We also are looking at system redesign.

So we've completed that, that is something we've completed through the summer.

We did that through the pandemic.

I believe we were probably delayed about three to six months, not even that, three to four months, given surveying capabilities and coming out and seeing everybody in person versus online.

But we were able to streamline the system with the majority of customers being happy.

You're not able to please everybody every time, but if you hit about 80, 90%, you've done a pretty good job.

The idea here is to be able to streamline the system so that you may have to get used to a new number of a route, or maybe walk another block.

But the idea is you don't wanna have duplicative services where you have two and three buses down the same line so you don't have that issue where they're all empty and then you can't be able to justify the system because perhaps someone's great-grandmother caught it in the '40s or '50s and they wanted to be able to stay with that particular line.

We have to be able to adjust as long as we can get you from point A to B with reduced wait time and less connections, then we've done our job.

That is the first iteration at that level that we've done in probably upwards of 20 or 30 years, if ever, it is not the end of the road, but that's our last kind of system wide attempt at that.

I'm sure we'll have another one within the next decade or less.

DEI, I kind of mentioned that a little bit.

Just wanted to bring a couple of things.

I know I've got a few minutes left until we go to Q&A, on time performance, I try to be, let's try to be good on that.

DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion.

We all have heard of this.

We all have talked about it, but how we live it makes a difference.

So to that regard, as was mentioned, I am the first African American female in this position.

I don't take that lightly.

I do not speak for every African American female in Cleveland, absolutely not.

I especially, I don't even do that in my own household.

My daughter sometimes looks at me like I'm nuts, but I will say that I have a obligation to the community that we serve to make sure that our management and our leadership reflects the values that come out from our community in Cleveland.

So that being said, we have to be able to recalibrate and look at our hiring practices.

We have to reach out into those communities to let them know that we're here.

It's not enough to say that we've hired one or two people into a position and say, we've checked the box.

We have to be able to reinvest into training programs.

We have to be able to reinvest into development and internship programs.

We have to be able to have mentor programs, all of those things.

So we've done a lot of things starting with the signing of the Hispanic pledge.

Have you all heard of that?

Okay.

So good deal.

We are the first transit authority in the nation to sign onto that pledge.

That means that we have an intentional step where we are going to do all the things I talked about with the targeted focus on the Latino community.

I mentioned the 25connects program.

That's a version of that, but we have to take it deeper.

We have to be able to also get back into the community.

We have hub programs, transit hub programs with Tri-C that we actually are working with Tri-C to think about ways that we can increase the workforce in those areas of color, in those areas of need.

We also are starting to diversify our own team.

We have hired our first female, African American chief for police.

She's sitting also here to my right, Deidre Jones.

(audience applauding) And she is also very committed to the diversification of the transit police staff.

We are hiring, so if you have anyone who is interested, please let Deidre know.

We also have created a DEI team that falls under Natoya Walker Minor, who is the first in her area as well as far as equity and inclusion and marketing and communications, as well as external affairs, that emphasis will also be put in our hiring practices, along with our deputy general manager of human resources, George Fields, who's sitting over that way as well.

So we've got a lot of things going on at our TA.

I could go on and on and on about it.

I won't waste your time today.

It's not a waste of breath, but I wanna make sure we get to your questions.

And then I do wanna hit on a couple of things before we go to Q&A, if I can, safety is a big issue.

We have transit ambassador program that will start up in quarter three of 2022, to be able to help with navigating the system.

And that could be a lot of different things.

It could be fare questions.

It could be, how do I get to the next connection?

It could be, I need to be able to buy this pass, a lot of different options.

We would like to also attack the homeless issue that is plaguing our stations.

Ideally, we'd like to be able to have an overlay of social services on top of that transit ambassador program.

And we are looking at hiring those folks over the summer.

We're coming up with a policy and the procedures for that program now.

We also will have a civilian review board for those escalated disciplinary issues that come up within transit police.

That will be not just RTA, but in addition of people on that particular board who will serve in that capacity.

We also will be having just a increased awareness of our clean and safe initiatives.

So you'll be seeing a campaign rolling out likely in the summer that will last in the pilot as well.

So with that, I know I could go on and on, but I will stop here in light of the time and look forward to taking questions that you may have.

(audience applauding) - Arriving just a minute or two late at the Q&A, it's India Birdsong, General manager of the Greater Cleveland RTA, the general manager and CEO.

We are about to begin the Q&A with all of you.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members and guests, students, and those of you joining us via our livestream or our live radio broadcast on 90.3 WCPN Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, you can tweet it @TheCityClub, or you can text a question to 330-541-5794, and our staff will work it into the program.

May we have our first question please?

- Okay, Ms. Birdsong, my name is Gail and I work on Shaker Square, so I'm traveling like 25 minutes to get to work.

My customers have said that since they cut the eight, cut the 11 off and made it until the eight, they're not able to get to doctor's appointments, their banking, and of course, Dave's, with the bus running at every half hour, every hour, not every half hour on the weekdays.

we have a problem.

We need to get it running every half hour.

And my second question is when you said the infrequency, the buses running I've had to at night and on the weekend with the rapid not running, we only had two buses going West 25th.

And the problem is with that one, with it running every half hour on the weekends, every half hour at night, I'm not able and several other people are not able to get home after dark to the destinations without having to freeze.

And we also worrying about prime, is there any chance that you can get both those issues taken care of?

I brought it to Reverend Lucas's attention quite often and he's tired of me complaining.

- That's why I'm here.

I appreciate the input.

So thank you for your input.

And what I have is the number eight and then the West 25th.

- Right, well, West 25th route.

- Okay, route.

What I will say is that's route specific so let me take that, and we've got our team here who's also taking down notes why you see their head down writing it down.

- It's like the 51 bus for that one and eight going down Buckeye.

- Yes.

- Cleveland.

- Yes.

I have heard about the eight.

So I know that we can evaluate the time span to make sure that we're operating as long as we need to.

So we'll look into that.

And I'll also, I talked to Reverend Lucas on my way over here, so I'll make sure to let him know that I've talked to you.

- [Woman] He told me he saw me.

- Yes, I appreciate it.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- As a lifetime Clevelander, I wanna thank you for bringing your talents and your passion to what's always been a very challenging and important role here.

So thank you for that.

- Thank you.

- My question is about the business community.

What is the relationship with RTA and the business community?

And I'm curious how, giving your extensive history, how does that compare 'cause as Clevelanders we wanna know how we compared everybody else, what is your history with that relationship?

And what's the potential for that?

'Cause obviously those companies have so many employees that need to get to their jobs.

- So that's a great question.

Thank you.

And I appreciate you all for having me here.

I will say our relationship with the, well, let me back up.

When I first got here two years ago, I made a point to try to either reach out via call before the pandemic or in person.

And then through the pandemic virtually with those members of the business community to find out what our history had been, because what I didn't wanna do is repeat things and I didn't wanna go knocking on doors that had great relationships already.

And I asked the key question, a lot of those members of the business community, I said what's been our history and had we had any projects together and partnerships together.

And the response that I got was RTAs is pretty good, we don't have any issues, but we also don't have a lot of connection.

And we also we saw them at the event and we saw them at the ribbon cutting and you guys provide good service to us and that's about it.

And I realized that it was very surface relationship.

It had been amenable, it had been friendly, but it didn't have the depth that I feel is necessary for us to really become players at the table and decision makers.

So what we're starting to do is transform those relationships and say, how can we partner together beyond just having a bus stop, clean and safe in front of your building.

How can we really think about those things such as transportation, hiring hubs, and how can we be able to look at the shifts that you may have, let's say Sherwin-Williams kind of partner, and be able to say at your particular site, do we have an issue with first and last mile and how can we work to solve those issues?

And once we start to scratch the surface, I think we've come to realize there's a lot of money out there as well.

And the companies are willing to give it if the conversation is had and they are more of a partner rather than just a byproduct of our service.

So to answer your question in a nutshell, I have tried to personally take advantage of that and push our team to do those things as well.

And also on a personal note, any boards that I sit on have to have a strategic purpose.

So just being able to sit on a board and kind of be present is not enough.

I also am honored to be in the current leadership Cleveland class.

And I will say that they probably, Bob probably laughs at my approach to it and Maryanne where I say my goal is to have a partnership with at least half of my current class, which is 63 stakeholders from the business community.

And I think I'm currently around 15.

So it it's a wheel in motion, but we're getting there.

Thank you.

- I just want to follow up with Paul, Eddie Kraus, Mayor of Soland, I could just tell you, just in the very short time that India's been here, we have 900 businesses, we've got 30,000 jobs.

What she has done just in that short time with her great team.

Number one, expanded the bus route in our community just to make sure that people can get to the retail jobs in Giant Eagle and Marks.

Two, provided four new bus shelters so that folks in our community don't have to stand out there, but have nice shelters.

And lastly, probably most importantly, they're a huge partner in our mobility task force, Senator Matt Dolan, put this together to try to figure out what's the best way to get folks from Cleveland and all over to the jobs hub.

And there are some folks that takes 80-90 minutes just to be able to get to the jobs.

So I came here to thank you for taking these jobs up seriously.

We have I'm just one of 58 other mayors in the suburb, but we really appreciate your partnership because it's the only way that we're gonna be able to compete with Boston and Portland and Seattle to make sure that our folks don't take 80-90 minutes to get to the jobs hub, but maybe 30 minutes, especially people with childcare issues, people that you have to get home.

So thank you for the partnership and keep it up.

- Thank you, Mayor, I appreciate you so much for that.

(audience applauding) And dare I say, that's likewise, without mayors that think out of the box, such as Mayor Kraus, I think that it's difficult to be able to get those partnerships.

So I appreciate you.

I think we're actually on a call a little later about rail, so that's awesome as well.

We are working on a first, last mile solution.

I did mention that, I'll do a little advertisement on that if I can.

It was the impetus of the conversations with Solon and the conversations with Strongsville, with legislative support, to be able to think about how can we be creative and our team, our operations team, our planning team started to think about what's in our budget, right?

So we kind of comb through and I actually found money in our executive budget and moved it over.

Again, I would rather have a partnership than go to a chicken dinner.

That's just me.

So what we ended up doing was had a micromobility pilot, Mary Beth Fee can also answer questions on that, she's sitting at the table.

And that actually handles the first, last mile conversation that I mentioned before from your door to our bus door, to be able to help kind of fill that gap.

We wanted to be able to have an opportunity to have business communities put their money where their mouth was, so to speak in a respectful away, and we will match their contribution up to $600,000 in order to have a pilot for that service for six months to a year.

If we find that that service is successful, because we do have to prove ridership to the feds in order to continue our service, it's a business, then we can absorb that route into our system network and make it permanent.

And that way we can hand it over to our unionized folks.

So that's just an example of the conversations that come out of the ones that we have with mayor, such as Mayor Kraus, to be able to get innovative and work on solutions and just not complain.

So I appreciate that comment as well.

We appreciate you.

Lou.

- Hi, good afternoon.

Yes.

This is Lou.

Thank you for telling us all the capital projects, important projects affecting everybody here.

However, for a public service, we wish it could be human centered design.

So right now there are a couple points I would like to share with you.

For example, system redesign is a good idea, but it does affect, for example, we just heard one question about her route making her daily routine very inconvenient plus it does affect how paratransit service is running.

So lots of people, they are already having disabilities.

They are heavily negatively affected by this design because now certain places they cannot go or to be picked up.

Then another thing will be for example, regular rider's voices, the citizen advisory committee, how would you be able to elevate this committee into a real committee, just like evert other standing committee to raise the voice.

And at the same time we do celebrate that we will have more members with a rider background experience as well.

So the other thing would be how would you change the culture?

Not just the engagement in our community, don't use car, use public transit, good for the environment, good for your health, also the internal culture of the organizations, we wish everybody could think about more as human centered approach instead of only looking at the cost effect, the budget issue.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

That was about three or four questions and I'm gonna try to attack them as I can.

And I think they were all very salient points, I appreciate that, Lou.

I'm gonna start out with the paratransit.

So understanding that any system redesign doesn't please everyone, but should please the majority.

There is a lot of room for growth and we appreciate that and we do understand that.

As far as the paratransit services, we are not a perfect entity, but we have a lot of improvements that we have made over the past couple years.

We do have our paratransit manager, Anisha Houston, who's in the office, in the office, this is the office, the mobile office that can answer questions as well.

And we were just talking about these things the other day, we have reduced the wait time.

The biggest complaint that I heard when I first got here was how long does it take for someone to address my need if I'm a paratransit customer and I'm trying to call in to see where my vehicle is or where my ride is?

That's been reduced, dare I say, by 95%.

We were looking at wait times upwards of maybe 30 minutes or so, the very worst, we're now down to under two minutes, I believe.

And even less than that.

We're also looking at replacement of our paratransit vehicles in our fleet.

The average age of a paratransit vehicle is about six years or so, 10, if you're really keeping 'em too long.

And we usually try to replace those at the end of their useful life.

Those are quite a bit less in cost than you would have on a bus or a rail car.

So you can do that a lot quicker.

We have a fleet of about 80, so that's a little easier to maintain.

I'd also say the way that we book our scheduling system has changed dramatically as well as our rules.

So we're doing a lot of things and revamping things that have not been touched in years and our Reverend Lucas, our board chair is actually a paratransit rider, a daily paratransit rider as he is wheelchair bound as well, and does not hesitate to let any of us know when something's not right.

So that I believe definitely has been a shining star especially in inclement weather, even with the recent events where we did have to shut down temporarily, I'm sure that'll come up as well, paratransit continued through, and we were able to get folks to dialysis and emergency appointments without issue.

One thing I will say, just to be able to address the surveying for customers.

I wanna be able to mention this.

Having the voice heard is really important.

Having your voice as a customer is really important.

We are a large agency.

We employ almost 2,200 employees and being able to think about hearing everyone is a little tough.

So what we actually have looked at is an internal culture change, where we are going to look at the way our metrics and goals are set and calibrate those by our deliverables like you would in any business.

Are you able to deliver your projects on time, under budget and all of that, but then also have an overlay of a net promoter score?

Have you all heard of net promoter score before?

Okay.

It's utilized a lot in the private industries so that you think of it as like a Yelp review, how likely are you to recommend RTA to someone else?

We find that our biggest customers are by word of mouth.

And so if you have a bad day on RTA, you're gonna let somebody know about it.

And if they're an occasional rider who takes it to the Brown's games or to the Indians, now Guardians, and whatever's going on, Rock Hall, that kind of thing, you may be less inclined to take it because your neighbor told you that of their bad experience.

We wanna be able to turn that narrative around and first find out what our net promoter score is.

And then compare ourselves.

I will not forget how do we stack up to other agencies?

I did write that down, in other cities, that's what we're gonna utilize to be able to find out how we're doing.

And then moreover, find out if the projects that we're spearheading are what the customers want, not just what we come in an office and come up with on our own.

We wanna make sure that we can calibrate that with the expectations of the city.

And we'll be looking at that on a quarterly basis.

Matter of fact, if you've been on a vehicle within the last two weeks, you might have been approached by a surveyor that also offered you a free fare pass for a free ride in response for your response in how we're doing.

So we're starting to be able to take that approach.

We have scorecards that we are developing internally, just as information that we have deliverables and we have owners and we will be able to look at that on a quarterly basis internally as well, monthly on a tactical level, to be able to change our culture and our pace so that we can turn out programs on a quicker clip and be able to come with quality programs for the city at a quicker clip as well.

So I hope that scratched the surface a little bit.

Yes, sir.

- You mentioned the transit ambassador program, which I'm gonna give a shout out to Clevelanders for public transit for their advocacy on that.

And will they be doing fare enforcement?

Will the civilian transit ambassadors be doing fare enforcement?

Will you bring back proof of payment fare enforcement on the health line and will you expand proof of payment fare enforcement throughout the system?

- Okay, thank you so much for your question, Mr. Martin, the transit ambassador program is in the works right now, is being created and drafted by our transit police division.

Our board has also been updated as we go along.

We expect to be able to come up with a full job description for those ambassadors by the beginning of the summer so we can start actually the end of the spring so we can start the hiring process.

Our goal is to be able to have them assist with that fare enforcement, but that will not be their only role.

We don't want to replace the fare enforcement with those ambassadors, but we want them to be able to assist folks in taking transit so that they also become more comfortable with it.

The idea of fare evasion does not, is not lost on me at all.

So I appreciate that.

And I understand the importance of it.

I think another way to look at that as a potential solution to it is the technology that we're gonna put in place for fare and replacement by the end of the year.

A lot of the issues that we have are gaps in the system where you might be able to hop off the vehicle without any kind of tapping or any noise, or any sort of blockade.

We will be looking at that as well to make sure that we have systems in place that will alert us when we have those type of evasion issues.

But it's an iterative process.

I would expect to be able to hear a little bit more on the ambassador program and what it will entail within the coming months.

And we'll make sure to keep all of those things in mind as we continue through the process.

- Hi, we've got a lot of questions via tech so I'm gonna ask you one of them just so that you, so that they're represented.

Many of the issues mentioned today, such as rail car replacement would fall under capital repairs.

With the state capital budget process currently underway, does GCRTA public transmit get any public dollars from the state capital budget?

And if not, can RTA apply for state capital funding for new rail cars?

- Gotcha.

So our capital improvement plan now stands at $126.6 million.

If you compare that to our operating budget, which is around 275 million, you're looking at a little less than half, but you're also looking at a pretty robust capital improvement dedication of dollars.

We previously had half a billion dollars of unfunded capital projects.

So if you're looking at 500 or $500 million in unfunded, that's a big hole to climb out of.

And it's difficult for us to be able to ask for more money when we know we have a hole that we've gotta fill and have new programs coming up.

So the steps that we've taken also have included debt defeasance, it's funny because I have a lot of people that say, what is that?

And to me that's a red flag, because if you don't know what debt defeasance is, it means you got a lot of bills and it's very unusual in transit or most businesses to be able to tout that phrase.

But what it means is that we've been able to kind of pay back our debt in advance so that we actually are looking nine years down the road and paying those debts down with the funding that we have started to accumulate via grants and state funding and the like.

So what we've done is being able to move our monies around and be a little bit more responsible and predictive with some of the improvements that we can make.

And so we've reduced that backlog into the $300 million area.

I know there's still a lot of money, but we've reduced it significantly over the last two to three years by about 170 million.

So that's a pretty good number.

We also are pretty aggressive in our plan to apply for ending for rail cars.

Our goal is to be able to rake in somewhere between 20 and 30 million annually through the next three or four years, so that we can bridge that gap of that 110, so we can pay for that beamer instead of that Chevy.

So ideally we'll be able to get to that point.

And then we also can increase our rail car, the number of cars.

You always get a better deal when you have lower or I'm sorry, higher bundles.

And we actually are currently out to bid or receiving procurement responses from potential partners so that we can go to the next steps and get the rail cars starting to be built.

Again, it takes typically 18 months to get a bus in.

So rail cars are usually between two and three years.

- Hello.

Hello, this is Leonard Rodriguez.

I'm one of the paratransit riders, and I'm very pleased with the service, and I'm so pleased that I really respect the schedulers and dispatchers, some of the dispatchers, a little different, but for the most part, I get a good service, but one suggestion that I want to make, and this will improve the scheduling department.

If we try to do like to have the schedule as work from home, I think it'll make it a whole lot easier and we can get more schedulers and call wait times will be much faster.

And another thing I want to see happening the meet and greet in the summer, if we can meet and greet schedulers and dispatchers at your offices, that would be great.

Thank you.

- So thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez.

It's good to see you as well.

I know that that's not falling on deaf ears here.

I'm looking at our paratransit management to my right, and we'll make sure to coordinate something for the summertime to be able to kind of target some of our customers and be able to reach out.

I think that's a great idea.

As far as the schedulers, our work from home policy is also an iterative process, but there are certain jobs that can be done remotely and some cannot, but we'll take a look and see what's feasible, but I appreciate the compliment and we appreciate you as a rider as well.

(audience applauding) - Thank you very much today.

You've joined us for a Friday forum with India Birdsong, she's general manager and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

Our forum today is the Leonard Ronis Transportation and Planning Forum.

Mr. Ronis was a transit leader at the local state and national levels working for the Cleveland Transit System.

And later one of the architects of regional transit authorities across the state of Ohio.

He served as the first GM of the Greater Cleveland RTA and founder and president of the Ohio Public Transit Association.

And we have two forums next week I wanna let you know about, I mentioned the first one Wednesday, March 2nd will be at the Happy Dog on Detroit at 58th.

I believe the transit authority serves that neighborhood for a critical conversation about the war and invasion happening right now in Ukraine.

We'll be joined by two Ukrainian Americans with deep ties to their ancestral homeland and its capital Kyiv.

They'll provide their perspective on what is happening and why it matters for all of us.

And then next Friday, March 4th, we'll hear from Chris Kuhar, he's executive director of the Cleveland Metro Park zoo.

And he'll be talking about the zoo's efforts in wildlife conservation around the world and creating experiences that connect all of us with that natural world.

You can purchase tickets and learn more about other forums at our website cityclub.org.

That brings us to the end of our program today.

Thank you, Ms. Birdsong.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and again on behalf of the City Club, welcome to Cleveland as well.

Thank you all.

Have a great weekend.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

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