CIIP '18: Week 2

Two events this week presented the opportunity to interact with the Baltimore community in ways I have never. The first was the MTA’s transit ambassador’s (TA) program. This week marked the official public launch of Transit as the MTA’s official app of choice for navigating the city. The TA program was comprised of MTA employees flooding the most populated bus stops around the city at peak rush hours to manually spread the word about the app. The program lasted from Tuesday through Thursday and my time was split between working bus stops and checking in on employees. While working the bus stops, I quickly found myself comfortable enough talking to random people on the streets. I found that is came naturally to lead into a conversation about app while standing at the bus stop. I tried to pay attention to any biases that presented itself however, I found that you really couldn’t predict who had the app or not based on their appearance.

The second opportunity came in the form of an informal “in-reach” to gather some information about late-night operations for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). In-reach is a chance for MTA planners to engage with bus operators to properly inform planning decisions. It’s program with great promise as it would not only improve planner-operator relationships but also improve services for the Baltimore community. At this informal in-reach I had the chance to speak with a few operators about their experiences when working overnight shifts. This is part of a small project the CTA tasked us with as they are trying to improve their late-night operations. After my ignorant fumble last week calling the operators “bus drivers,” I was a bit nervous before talking to them and this was important job for me to do since we had a hard deadline. However, once I started chatting with the operators, they were not only receptive, they were open to share some of their hardships. Here is what I learned: being an operator is no easy task. Any sentence I write will be an understatement compared to what operators actually go through. They must not only display incredible patience and diligence in high pressure situations, but also do so under extreme conditions such as working 8 straight hours without a proper lunch or bathroom break. You see, people (like us) rely on public transit to be on time and to get us where we need so operators must be incredibly precise. They must adhere to a strict schedule and have very little room for error, but in the real world, error propagates in all kinds of ways. On paper, operators are to be like machines reaching their stops on time and managing individuals with great composure. However, as one of the operators stated, they are “people, not machines.” They get hungry, tired, and frustrated especially with an often-impatient customer base. As I spend more time with them, the more I realize how important the community engagement portion of an organization like the MTA is. As I stated earlier, In-Reach is program with great promise, however it is not there yet. It still feels like there is a huge disconnect between operators and planners. As key people in transit, they need to have a bigger voice. Maybe I am being too naïve about this, but this is what I am seeing. I plan on digging in and learning more.