India Birdsong Terry: Leading Change and Challenging Perceptions in Public Transit
On this episode of Transit Voices, Ben Whitaker welcomes one of the industry’s most inspirational leaders, India Birdsong Terry, the General Manager and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.
India, who took the helm of GCRTA just before Covid, delves into her decision to maintain fare collection during the pandemic. “I did not want folks to devalue the $2.50 that was paid in order to get on board our vehicle,” she says. “We understand that we help when it’s needed – we’re a social service – but I didn’t want to give the impression that’s free – someone pays for it”.
India Birdsong Terry sheds light on the innovative strides of GCRTA in revolutionizing the payment system. The organization is leveraging the latest technology to offer fare capping through an app: “So we’re almost dangling the fair capping idea as a means to have folks get rid of the old technology in their mind that they’ve been promised for years, but hadn’t been fully realized,” she explains, “To say, hey, you really don’t need that, let’s zoom ahead and get with the program on a global perspective, and be able to fair cap in another year or so.”
The conversation then turns to the use of public transit to drive down the use of the car, especially in city centers, something Ben is very passionate about. “Having two shops either side of a boulevard that you can’t get to safely because there’s no sidewalk, no bridges… six lanes to cross and it’s just not a space made for people and it’s killing our cities,” he comments. “Downtown dies when you’ve got huge numbers of vehicle lanes stopping you wanting to be there. And it’s the complete opposite of making a nice place for people and it resulted in in shopping malls. The shopping mall is an artificial city center where there are no cars allowed, and that’s why people like hanging out in the shopping mall because they can wander around and cross from one shop to the other without cars everywhere.”
In a very busy conversation, the episode also covers GCRTA’s efforts to enhance transit accessibility and encourage public transit usage, from extending routes to partnering with major employers. India describes their strategic approach: “We created an RFP, a request for proposal… and we handle all of the marketing, the scheduling, all of the kind of soft services that go into transportation,” she says. “And if an Amazon, for example, has a new plant somewhere that we don’t serve, they are responsible for finding a third party operator to be able to partner with them, and they partner with us to be able to provide the shift times and they actually drive that service from our last bus stop or train stop to their front door.”
Additionally, the dialogue touches on the importance of employee benefits, including childcare, elder care, and healthcare, which India argues are essential for retaining enthusiastic staff.
Set aside 45 minutes for one of the best discussions on transit you’ll encounter this month!