Metro Magazine, June 2020

11 JUNE 2020 METRO MAGAZINE COM As far as being in touch with your operations team and people you would see on a day to day basis how has that worked out for you Microsoft Teams has been great for us We have been able to have our weekly meetings with the contractor to discuss issues and conduct our staff meetings on Microsoft Teams I have given folks the flexibility to work from home or in the office or any combination of both since we are viewed as essential Many of our operations team is still coming in at least on an every other day basis At this point I would say four of us are still coming into the office generally but even when we are here we are maintaining social distance and conducting meetings via Microsoft Teams We are not necessarily engaging with each other just so that we can ensure people are being safe Also anyone thats getting sick or has the potential of being sick were advising them to not come to the office or in the case of our contractor come to work and operate our buses so we dont expose anyone else or have the potential to expose anybody And how are you dealing with your frontline workers during this time Every week on social media we are highlighting different transit workers to talk about them and thank them for their service and encouraging our customers to do the same since they are working through this unique period If it were not for our frontline workers people in our region would not be able to get where they need to go so we want to make sure that they feel valued We are also ensuring that they have the necessary protections in place As I mentioned before we are fare free and doing rear boarding so that the operator and the passengers are separated Our contractors are also supplying personal protective equipment and we have even designed masks that match with The COMETs colorful paint schemes that we are distributing to our staff We have also worked with our local government to supply hand sanitizers on our vehicles for our customers and the operations staff We are just trying to provide any equipment our operators need to feel safe And what kind of feedback are you getting from those frontline workers You know during this moment they understand the importance of what they are doing We have not had any significant concerns from the workforce because we have been proactive in advance to keep them safe and not waiting until the last minute to make changes For instance we have been detailing our buses and cleaning at our transit centers for some time We have also had hand sanitizers on all our buses since 2017 but we have been more aggressive with these steps since we have known about the outbreak How do you think this pandemic will impact The COMET moving forward Our board has formed a COVID 19 committee where we meet once a week and talk about emerging issues and trends Part of that discussion is what the new future public transit will be because the status quo is not going to be the norm for the future So we are discussing things like if we resumed fare collection how are we going to separate the driver and the passenger Are we going to have to ensure that our buses and passenger amenities are continuously cleaned How do we address social distancing or some form of social distancing in the future because obviously crowding conditions on buses is probably not going to be the norm in the future Lastly what does that cost look like to the transit agency if we must add more frequency to prevent having standees on buses Clearly we must rethink the size of buses we use as well Do you foresee having to have a larger fleet to deal with demand in the future You know that is a good question It is going to be interesting to see what happens when all this is over and if people continue to use transit how they plan to use it We are getting ready to undertake a comprehensive operational analysis so the timing is appropriate Recognizing all that has happened over the last few months will help us design the transit system of the future Lastly how is the agency using the funds it received from the CARES Act and do you feel it is enough to help get you through this time In our case it will be sufficient since what were going to do is use the CARES Act funding to cover our operational costs that we pay our contractor and any additional costs over and beyond what we typically pay to take care of COVID 19 So that in essence will allow us to defer our local sales tax revenue that we use to fund transit operations for a full year which will basically buy us an additional year past our sunset date of when we stop collecting sales tax revenues for operations and change our fiscal sustainability plan a little bit Q A Sean Rayford