Katherine Conrad: Focusing on Core Transit Services and Strategic Partnerships

Ben Whitaker’s guest on this month’s Transit Voices is Katherine Conrad, Executive Director at NEOride,  works to break down artificial boundaries, streamline operations and make it easier for riders to use public transit to travel across Ohio and beyond.

In the conversation Katherine tells Masabi’s co-founder why transit operators need to concentrate on what they’re good at, and not get distracted by things they would be better off buying in: “To me, the purpose of public transit is to provide transportation and that is our realm,” she explains. “Do public transit really want to get into journey planning complex apps, or fare payment or all of these other things in the name of being able to control it, where you could be partnering with other companies whose whole business is doing this?”

 Also, she tells us about her international travel, how she’s found traveling in London, the benefits of Open Payments, and how she doesn’t want to go toe to toe and compete with Google Maps or Transit app, when trying to make public transit available.  “Keeping up with that technology is expensive and time-consuming,” she says.  “And so for any transit agency, to try and take that on, to me is ridiculous, because we’ll never have the funding to be able to go toe to toe with Google Maps.”

 Katherine explains why she thinks cities should focus on providing easy, contactless payment options instead of investing in complex, customized fare systems and simplifying fares to make transit more accessible. You’ll also hear her and Ben’s thoughts on how to ensure transit agencies don’t compete with each other and utilise solutions such as central call centers to ensure they operate as efficiently as possible. You’ll also hear why her boondoggle is the revenue versus capital expenditure funding conundrum.