Metro Magazine, May 2018

YOU CAN BE THE MOBILITY RIDER QUANTUM allows wheelchair users to secure themselves with a simple one touch operation that provides a safe worryfree ride all while keeping drivers in their seats and focused on the road qstraint com quantum 11 MAY 2018 mETRO mAGAZINE Q A able because employees really dont think about that when they are applying Many times they see the increase in pay and decide to just go for it So when they meet with our organizational development professional they will sit down with the employee and tell them that although they may not be qualified for a particular job we are going to work with them to find something they are qualified for and then build a pathway for them to eventually get to that mid to high level administrative job Its really more mentorship coaching and actively doing that with the employee thats interested in upward mobility And really that is the first step the employee has to express the interest and take the initial step Palm Tran is working on a route maximization project what does this involve As a part of my assessment I learned that we have not had any significant change in our route structure in over 20 years In that time population has changed density has changed structure and the roadway network has changed but we have not changed and kept pace with population growth Our planning division estimates that by 2020 another 120000 people will reside in Palm Beach County Were at 146 million now By 2025 our planners predict that we may be somewhere around 155 million Based on the 25 year employment forecast employment is projected to increase by 25000 jobs per year We are living in paradise in Palm Beach County Folks will continue to come to Palm Beach whether we ask them to come or not Are we ready to deal with the congestion that comes with that Thats one of the things that we are undertaking is to rework our transit system comprehensively to make it more efficient reliable and customer friendly Our project is called Route Performance Maximization or RPM When you increase RPMs you increase a vehicles speed So RPM in Palm Beach symbolizes our route reorganization program at Palm Tran by making it faster to get to the customers destination We wanted to make sure that we branded it so that it had meaning to draw a quick association to our employees and customers on what this project will do We are targeted to make those changes in September 2019 We are first going to start with a very robust public outreach campaign that will start in April and then take the plan to the board There is this value conversation thats out there about coverage versus ridership And essentially it is should the county focus the resources they spend on transit on a sizable geographic footprint aiming to ensure that a transit dependent resident can access a bus wherever the rider is located Or should we focus on increasing ridership by having frequent buses in the areas with the biggest potential for transit use It is definitely a trade off and that is the dichotomy to which we will have to work within The policy makers our board in a perfect world would want to provide transit service to everyone in Palm Beach County but they recognize that there are not enough resources to serve everyone For an area the geographical size larger than several states we recognize that the coverage and ridership tradeoff will be extremely challenging Nevertheless we believe that our redesign will result in better transit service for the residents and visitors of Palm Beach County What is Palm Tran doing to help bridge the funding gap that many transit agencies experience We dont have a dedicated source of funding Fifty percent of our funds come from the county through ad valorem equivalent support such as gas taxes and property taxes and the remaining is fare revenue state and federal funding That totals about 149 million annually Again we want to try to optimize this funding Over the next few years Im really going to be working hard to continue to be prudent with our existing funding support Of course we are looking at small gains in terms of working with the TNCs to reduce some of the paratransit costs and looking at our farebox to make sure were getting maximum farebox recovery We are implementing projects which probably will not generate a huge yield but will make us more efficient in working on the expense side of our balance sheet