Metro Magazine, June 2020

Q A JOHN ANDOH By Alex Roman MANAGING EDITOR John Andoh Executive Director CEO The COMET The COMET officially the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority CMRTA operates mass transportation in Richland and Lexington counties in the Columbia metropolitan area of South Carolina Like most transit agencies The COMET is providing essential transportation throughout the region while dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic METROs Managing Editor Alex Roman recently spoke to The COMETs Executive Director CEO John Andoh for a new podcast called METROspectives which is available at metro magazine com During the conversation Andoh discusses how the agency is dealing with the pandemic what it is like to manage his workforce during this time and what transit in his region might look like in the future Can you talk about the status of The COMETs service right now and what you are doing to keep riders and operators safe We are running a Sunday schedule right now And for the areas that lose fixed route service because we are on a Sunday schedule we created an on demand service so those riders can still have access to our system We are fare free doing rear door boarding and aggressively disinfecting the fleet daily We have a full utility staff and have also contracted a detailing firm that sanitizes all the buses daily so we can ensure that we are keeping people safe We are also cleaning the buses at our downtown transit center during the middle of the day as well as cleaning our bus stops including our bus shelters bus benches and wall panels The agency has been looking at ways to supplement fixed route for some time how has that planning had an impact on your ability to change things on the fly We were able to implement programs that helped those that need nighttime service before But now since Lyft and Uber Pool are not available they are only doing single rides to keep with social distancing We are also looking at how we can expand the partnerships with those TNCs to help us with essential worker travel when we start getting into capacity issues because we have cut the capacity of our vehicles in half We are trying to get creative in how we still provide essential transportation without also breaking our bank of course How have those existing relationships helped continue finding new ways to move people The development has been great I can say our ridership is not what it used to be before COVID 19 but we have people still using those programs especially the partnerships which provide access to the grocery store What it is like to manage a workforce during this time It is completely surreal to be honest but it is ever changing We must keep paying attention to the governors executive orders as well as our local jurisdictions since the city and county may sometimes do things differently than what the governor wants to do or our President right So we are trying to be flexible to change the operation at a moments notice and make sure the customers are aware of what we are doing in advance so that they can plan accordingly And we are working to be flexible with our operations contractor and their personnel to ensure that when services must change at a moments notice they are ready to do so This definitely has taught us that we need to ensure that when we do our safety and emergency planning we just cant focus on the traditional emergencies like hurricanes tornadoes and earthquakes Now we also must plan for biological issues or things like this pandemic that is going on right now This ensures that we are prepared and able to quickly respond if this ever happens again 8 METRO MAGAZINE COM JUNE 2020 John Andoh has helped lead The COMET during the pandemic and has aggressively addressed keeping passengers and operators safe including distributing masks to operators that match the agencys colorful logo scheme Michael Dantzler