[Thomas Lambert] We do have a culture in this agency of
service. I think when you have a culture of service, and you
recognize that we just don't deal with emergencies everyday
we plan for them.
[Laura Whitley] Serving and connecting the community during
a crisis. I'm Laura Whitley in this episode of The Next Stop
a look at METRO�s COVID-19 response.
[Male] The Next Stop.
[Female] The Next Stop.
[Male] The Next Stop.
[Male] METRO�s Podcast.
[Laura Whitley] METRO continues to support local public
health official�s response to COVID-19 and provide essential
service. That means significant operational changes. METRO
President and CEO Tom Lambert along with a dedicated team
has led that effort. He joins us now to discuss this
response. Mr. Lambert, thank you for being with us.
[Thomas Lambert] Well, Laura thanks for having me.
[Laura Whitley] At the time of this recording, we're just
about a little over two weeks into the major shifts that the
spread of COVID-19, brought to the Greater Houston area with
a closure of the Houston Rodeo and other major events in the
Houston area. But really the planning and response from
METRO started even sooner.
[Thomas Lambert] Yeah, we've been working with public health
officials, the emerging management partners throughout the
region, and of course, following the leadership of Mayor
Turner and Judge Hidalgo of what METRO needed to do to make
sure that we continue to provide essential transportation
services. Folks are using our services to get to health
care. They're using our services to be those health care
providers that support this community during a crisis that
we're underway right now. But it's also using our services
to get to those retail outlets to support the groceries that
folks need in this region. METRO has a long standing
approach toward an all hazards approach to emergency
management.
Clearly, the planning we've done in the past, whether it's
the lessons we've learned from Hurricane Harvey or Tropical
Storm Allison, the thing you learned in that all hazards
approach is that you have to be flexible, and you have to be
adaptable to changing conditions. I'm very proud of the
organization. We've been adapting to the circumstances as
they changed. We�ve made sure that our messaging has
reinforced the guidance we've gotten from public health
officials, a tremendous amount of effort in social
distancing messaging, and then how we've adapted the
operation to reinforce that message as well.
[Laura Whitley] Let's dive in a little deeper. Let's talk
about some of these operational shifts that have occurred
really in just sometimes it's day to day that that the
changes come about, social distancing operations. Let's talk
a little bit about how you can continue to operate a bus
that has -- it puts people together but figure out how to
spread them out in the other vehicles that we have.
[Thomas Lambert] Well, again, I want to begin by
complimenting the staff, and I want to continue to reinforce
their creativity and their willingness really to look
outside the box. We work with a staff and said, how could we
reinforce the message onboard our vehicles of social
distancing? They came back with a concept of how could we
basically mark seats to say, don't sit in this seat, sit in
the next seat. It�s really begin to look at how could you
adapt a transit environment and fall within that six foot
range of social distancing? How could we use signage? How
could we really highlight the message of letting folks know
to do that whether you�re on a bus or you�re on a train? We
also did that in our paratransit service.
Normally our paratransit vans can carry four wheelchairs at
a time. We now are limiting that to two will wheelchairs at
a time to, again, reinforce that social distancing message.
But we also looked at some other features, not only did we
do posters on onboard of our buses and trains, but we did
them in all of our rail platforms. We've done it at transit
centers. Our social media team has been very aggressive in
marketing that social distance message throughout all of our
communications.
Our marketing team developed all the signage and the posters
to reinforce. Then our print shop has done over 200,000
different collaterals that we put on board our vehicles to
reinforce the message or on METRO real estate. I think you
have to be willing to empower people that are very committed
to look outside the box. We know we're an essential service,
we've got to keep it up and running. But we also know we
have to do our share, to make sure that message of social
distancing, personal hygiene, everything that the public
health officials are saying we need to do. We've reinforced
that in all of our messages as we've gotten into our support
for the community during this crisis.
[Laura Whitley] This operational plan essentially has
brought the customer seating brought it down by about half.
[Thomas Lambert] Yeah, what we base the messages, we're
looking at no more than about 50% seating capacity on buses
in the same old rail. We also, again, I want to compliment
the staff, we've reprogrammed all of our destination signs
on the buses. As a bus operator gets to a point and he's
already at or she is already at that 50% seating capacity,
we then engaged the destination sign to tell our customers
to catch the next bus. We've also interline more buses on
routes that had heavy ridership and continue to have it, so
that we spread out that customer base by adding more service
to route. We're really adapting the service that reinforces
the public health message, but also ensures that we continue
to provide an essential, critical service to this community
throughout this crisis.
[Laura Whitley] The boarding procedures for the buses
changed as well.
[Thomas Lambert] Yeah, again, I want to really compliment
all of our operators that really stepping up to continue to
serve this community, but in supporting them as well, we're
now boarding all of our customers on the local service where
we do have two door boarding through the back door of the
bus. We're also going to -- and we're in the process today
even of adapting the operator cab environment, if you will,
to put a kind of a distancing between the operator and our
customers as well. We're trying to make sure we're doing
everything to do that. We've also suspended fare collection
because we don't want any interaction between the operator
and the patron in paying their fare, nor do we want people
having to collect fares or fare inspectors are no longer
inspecting fares. We make sure we�re doing all the things we
can to maximize that social distancing message.
[Laura Whitley] You mentioned the operators and they really
are truly frontline employees and so committed to providing
the service.
[Thomas Lambert] They are, and to the degree that they're
doing more than just operating buses and trains. Again, we'
ve had mechanics work with our colleagues in the print shop,
to get materials prepared that we can then install on buses
or trains. We've had bus operators step up, willing to do
more cleaning on their buses. We provided hand sanitizers,
we provided wipes to the operators, but they're taking that
extra step that reinforcing the cleaning of airs where our
customers may come in more contact. I'm extremely proud of
the employees in this agency. They are passionate about
their public service. They're committed to that public
service and they're willing to take a step up in this crisis
as they�ve done in other emergencies that have confronted
our community.
[Laura Whitley] Again, all of this, the purpose of all this
is for METRO to continue to provide essential services to
the public.
[Thomas Lambert] It is to the public and just even to the
health care workers that serve the Texas Medical Center.
Everybody knows the Texas Medical Center is the largest
medical center in the country. We're still about a third of
the trips for doctors and nurses and employees that support
health care to the Texas Medical Center are on transit. We'
re still seeing significant ridership on our Park & Ride
service, on rail for those employees to get to the medical
center. To the degree we've actually added a shuttle bus
service in the Texas Medical Center to help reinforce that
social distancing to spread the rail ridership out on buses,
to get people where they needed to go, but also to assist
with social distancing for those health care workers as
well. They're continued to ride, and so it's very critical
we continue to provide that service to the medical center.
It's also critical that we provide those employees to the
grocery stores, and all the things that are essential to
this community, and so we'll continue to do that. We'll
adapt our service based upon changing conditions, but we'll
continue to do that as well.
[Laura Whitley] This total change in our entire world is not
necessarily something that we all saw coming down the road.
What do you think has been enabled you and the rest of the
staff at METRO to be able to respond to this current
situation?
[Thomas Lambert] I think that we do have a culture in this
agency of service, and I think when you have a culture of
service, and you recognize that we just don't deal with
emergencies every day, we plan for them. We also recognize
that if you empower people, and you give them good guidance,
and you give them good flexibility to be able to adapt the
changing conditions, they will do that. We also recognize
that you got to take care of your people. The one thing that
we've done from the beginning and will continue to do is
recognize the value that the employees at METRO bring to
this organization and to the community.
The first message is take care of yourself, because if you
don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others.
We're trying to make sure that we're taking care of all of
our colleagues. We want to make sure they take care of their
families because if you do that, then they will continue to
take care of their community. Making sure that we're
constantly communicating with the employee so they know
conditions are changing, and they're changing every day, to
make sure that they're hearing from us the reality of the
circumstance as we know it and to keep them engaged, and
making sure that we're reinforcing. There's nothing wrong
about caring about the people you work with, and that's what
we're trying to do and they will take care of this community
as we go forward.
[Laura Whitley] Well, thank you so much for your service and
leadership, METRO president and CEO Tom Lambert, thank you
for being with us on the Next Stop.
[Thomas Lambert] Thank you, Laura.
[Laura Whitley] For complete information on modifications to
service visit ridemetro.org. Customers can even sign up for
service alerts that will come directly to your e-mail inbox
or phone. We continue to remind everyone to follow the
advice of local public health officials.
[Music]
[Laura Whitley] That's all for this edition of the Next
Stop. I'm Laura Whitley. If you'd like to check out more
episodes, you can find them on our website or subscribe on
Apple Podcast, SoundCloud, Spotify or Google Play. Until
next time, drive less do more with METRO.