Debra Johnson, now chief executive and general manager at the Regional Transportation District of Denver — and its first female head — recalled an instance from earlier in her career.
She was in government relations working on major projects in the San Francisco region.
“I was told by the head of an extension program that he built concrete and I sold air. And I made it clear that without me selling said air, his concrete would never [materialize],” said Johnson, who began the Denver job in November. “So we have to recognize that there are interdependencies upon which we need to embrace, and have an understanding that they may not do the same thing, but there’s a place for all of us, analogous to a puzzle.”
Johnson spoke
“Imagine that your first day on the job that you’re walking in in the middle of a pandemic, and your workforce and your customers are at risk of a virus that no one really understands and is a mystery,” said TransitCenter executive director David Bragdon. “Ridership is way down. Your budgets have been slashed and the very existence of your agency is being questioned.”
Fixed ways within the industry also present challenges, according to Bragdon.
“The transit industry typically is pretty hierarchical, kind of command and control. A lot of it is seniority-based in terms of labor-management relations, somewhat rigid, often confrontational,” he said. “Some of that’s by the nature of the business, you know, the 7:38 ought to show up at 7:38 and there are certain routines that go with that, and if the brake pads need to be replaced every 10,000 miles, they need to be replaced for a reason.”
Newer management strategies involve collaboration, according to the three.
“I can’t approach the situation saying ‘it’s my way or the highway.’ There could be instances where 20% of the time I have to take that stance due to the fact there’s not information available for public consumption,” Johnson added. “I need information in order to make a decision. I’m not just going to do it based on attitudes.
“We have all worked in organizations whereby employee X didn’t get along with employee Z and they get moved to another department, and then you have this whole island of misfit toys and nobody wants to deal with that person.”
Sharon Cooney, who worked at the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, became its CEO shortly after predecessor Paul Jablonski died of a heart attack.
“I was not used to going into a room and being the only female with 20 people, all of whom had been the industry for years,” she said.
Cooney started in government affairs.
“You have to really know a little bit about every aspect of the agency in order to do your job well,” she said. “It also gave me the opportunity to really learn a lot about the board and board relations, and really how to provide enough information and communication to the board members so they can make the right decisions when making policy.”
In 2007, after a round of layoffs, she took on planning and scheduling duties.
“Government affairs and planning are perfect things to take,” she said. “Here at MTS, we’ve had a number of our planners move into both the rail and bus operations as supervisors and administrators, and some of them are our highest-level, most senior personnel.”
Carrie Butler had an additional layer of troubleshooting when Louisville’s Transit Authority of River City named her executive director in September. She succeeded Ferdinand Risco Jr., who resigned after several women accused him of sexual misconduct. Protests engulfed the city after police shot an innocent Black woman, Breonna Taylor, to death in March during a midnight raid on her apartment.
“We were coming off an unfortunate scandal in the midst of a pandemic, and in the midst of civil gatherings,” said Butler, the former general manager at Lextran, the transit system in nearby Lexington, Kentucky.
Butler morphed into transit through community planning, urban design and land use planning.
“I graduated from college, I had a marketing degree and I worked at Kinko’s. I was a classic case of ‘did not know what I wanted to do with my life,” she said.
A light bulb went off when she and her father talked about a local land-use issue. She followed up with graduate school.
“You have to be a little bit nosy sometimes, if you want to move up. You don’t want to be obnoxious to other departments or other functions of your organization … maybe curious is a better word than nosy. I was always asking questions.”
Amid the pandemic, transit agency executives find themselves exploring whether service reaches the people who need transit the most. Johnson, for instance, cited a Pew Charitable Trusts survey from 2017 that said 54% of mass-transit riders nationally were single women of color.
Getting out and about is essential, Johnson said.
“I’m out riding the system in the midst of a pandemic, I’m double-masked and doing what I need to do to be socially distanced, but I’m going to where the people are. I’m not staying in the administrative office. I’m going to divisions, I’m showing up at 4:30 in the morning.”
