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Regional Transit

The future is nipping at our heels. This article in the New York Times is the very thing that I was trying to emphasize when writing about a Transportation Hub that would make (re)use of the Coliseum and the adjacent land immediately north of Alberta Avenue. The location is central-ish and has a clear glide path along Gretsky Drive to the river Valley that would take passengers away from dense urban populations. The Coliseum area already has LRT, a functioning bus terminal, and access by the CN main line for train excursions. While it is difficult to enhance the image enough to clearly define scope and possibilities, it is easy to imagine the great advantages in a regional hub, distinct and apart from EIA that connects to the hinterland that includes near-distant locales such as Vegreville, Lloydminster, Cold Lake, Athabasca, Whitecourt, Grand Prairie, Red Deer, Rocky Mountain House, Hinton, Jasper -- places that figure strongly in the well-being of north/central Alberta. I would like to see the Mayoral candidates grab a hold of this theme.
www.nytimes.com

What Is a Flying Car? (Published 2021)

Inside Silicon Valley’s 10-year quest to make soaring above a crowded city street as easy as calling an Uber.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
The EMTSC's HR and Compensation Committee had their monthly meeting a couple of days ago, and the CEO (Paul Jankowski) gave an update on the hiring process: Their second permanent employee, the Director of Stakeholder Relations (position overview), has started. Their third permanent employee, the Executive Assistant (job posting), will start this coming Monday. The CEO hopes to have the fourth permanent employee, the Director of Financial Services (CFO) (position overview), hired and starting in late summer. I linked the job postings for if you want to see what capabilities these new employees add to the Commission as it goes through the onboarding process.
 
There is now a job posting for the Chief Operating Officer of Transit Operations. The deadline is September 24. There will also be two board meetings this month, since the broadstrokes regional route network needs to be approved before their 2022 budget can be finalized. So this is the month where we'll really start seeing the rubber hit the road in terms of transit services planning.
 
The draft regional service plan was presented to the EMTSC board yesterday. It is not yet available to the public unfortunately (I reached out to them asking for a copy), but from the reaction of the board it sounds like a fair bit of routes were cut from the original proposal in the business case. For example, Beaumont was originally envisioned to receive off-peak and weekend service to Edmonton, on top of its current peak-hour weekday service. The business case also showed it receiving a route to the EIA. Both of these improvements were cut from the proposal. The CEO cited Covid-19-related ridership declines and fiscal concerns as the reason for these changes, but Beaumont's rep on the Board insisted that before he made up his mind about these changes, he would need to see the financial justification for them. "Don't just say it's because of Covid; show us the numbers."

The EMTSC, which now has four permanent employees (CEO, Director of Stakeholder Relations, Executive Assistant, and CFO) will present an updated proposal at the September 30 Board meeting, taking this feedback into account. The EMTSC is receiving support on this from some consulting agencies, and staff from member-transit services have also previously offered to provide in-kind support. The Board will need to approve the proposal or reject it at this next meeting.

Overall, the Board seemed to agree that the principles making up the proposal are great, but opinions about the proposed route are less enthusiastic overall.
 
Some of my email exchange with the director of external relations for the EMTSC. This is not in order of what was sent; I'm just presenting each question next to their respective answer. I also removed some of the preamble I had in some questions.

"Would you be able to specify whether Fort Saskatchewan's route in the business case (via West Edmonton Mall) is still under consideration? And if so, is there a possibility of it being in operation outside of peak hours? Or, is it one of the routes which received a rollback in the first draft of the regional service plan to mirror the current status quo?"

>We’re working our way through what we’re calling our “Opening Day” network, and it’s still too early to speculate on any particular route, but it’s not accurate to say we are contemplating rollbacks to mirror the status quo. I can understand some confusion, but I ask that you hold that question for now and I’ll get back when I know.

"Is it likely that regional transit staff will be able to keep their jobs in some capacity, or if their jobs are redundant, be given the option to be grandfathered into another role? Or is there serious thought being given to starting fresh with the commission's non-senior staffing?"

>We know that there is anxiety in many of the shops and that it is very difficult when something like this is announced but then there’s a lag for detail. I can tell you that the efficiencies described in the business plan weren’t based on workforce reduction. Certainly, there will be some redundancies but I expect every effort will be made to accommodate as many as possible.

>I’m learning Transit people are very passionate about their business and I know I am constantly impressed with the driver/operators and the little things they do for people every day. I get the sense most riders feel the same way. They’re a great resource for our city.

"The various regional transit services are currently rolling out the Arc fare payment system. Is it safe to assume that the EMTSC will use it as well, given that the capital investments were already made?"

>As for the payment system, I’m looking forward to getting a demonstration soon, so I have to say I don’t know much about it, but I can’t see any good argument for going any other way if there has been investment.
 
The EMTSC's second board meeting of the month was yesterday, but the draft regional service plan was not approved as originally intended. Instead, detailed regional route design and financial analysis will begin, but EMTSC staff will also work to determine what it would cost to implement the original proposed routes in the 2020 business design. Once both are done, they will present both to the board so that they can weigh the pros and cons of each and decide where to go from there. This change of course was made in light of the lukewarm/surprised reactions from the board to the September 2021 draft proposal, as I mentioned previously. The CEO acknowledged that there had been some council and public buy-in to joining the EMTSC in-part because people saw the map in the business case and liked the proposals.

On another note, they pumped out job openings for a few other positions. Aside from the COO for transit services, for-which applications close tomorrow, there are now three other positions they are hiring for: Communications Manager, Financial Services Manager, and Digital Media Advisor. All applications close on October 15th. For posterity, I linked their specific job posting documents (see the COO document in my Sept. 3 post).
 
There's no word yet about whether the EMTSC has picked a COO of Transit Ops; I imagine we won't know more until their meetings in early November (their first since the municipal elections). However, they did open applications for the Director of Corporate Services, with the posting closing on November 12.
 
The EMTSC is pushing its service commencement to early 2023, and 2022 will be dedicated to preparing for that. They have a lot on their plates and are still behind on staff hiring. To their credit, the workplan which was just approved by the Board today is very comprehensive, and I would much prefer that they take the time they need to do this right. I took screenshots of the major slides from their workplan presentation and budget presentation; you can see them here since there tends to be a gap of a few days from the end of the live stream to when meetings are re-uploaded to their Youtube channel.
 
Taken from the meeting package of the audit and finance committee: Here is the EMTSC's proposed hiring plan for 2022.
EMTSC Hiring Schedule.PNG
 
occidentalcapital said:
I think the transit service offered by this regional body will initially be quite limited.
Click to expand...
We'll have to see; it sounds like the staff tried to propose a scaled-back regional service package in the fall, but the board of governors (who are elected councilors from each member municipality) were completely opposed to any major rollbacks from the original consultant report since the map of potential routes in that report was pretty crucial for them to sell this to their colleagues on council. This is why the regional service plan was not approved at that meeting as originally planned. I think this is the real reason for the delay in starting service; they realized that it wasn't possible to offer the sort of service proposed in that consultant's report as originally thought, and the councilors weren't ok with scaling back any services to stay within the resources they do have.

My personal guess is that they're focusing on building up their core staff and policies and trying to ride out the pandemic a bit, so that in fall 2022 they can come back with a strong regional service plan that requires more municipal investment, but be in the position where municipalities have the fiscal strength to invest in this, and also the confidence that their money will be well utilized (since the EMTSC will be a stronger institution than it is now).
 
Also, here's an update on where they're actually at with hiring staff. They had to go through a second round of hiring for the financial planning position because negotiations with their first choice failed. As well, they put in RFPs with a few firms to get help with finding a Chief Operating Officer, because they realized that doing the entire hiring process for that position in-house just won't work. As for the Director of Corporate Services, they're beginning advanced interviews today; three applicants passed the first round of interviews.
EMTSC Hiring chart.png
 
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