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Article Excerpt
New Flyer congratulates the recipients of Mass Transits 2009 Top 40 Under 40 Award. As leaders in your respective organizations, you are facing a unique set of challenges never before faced by public transportation. At New Flyer, we are confident that through your vision and leadership, you will reshape and strengthen our industry in North America.
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As the largest transit bus manufacturer in the United States and Canada with approximately 2,500 employees, New Flyer recognizes the skills required and the demands placed upon our employees. Our employees are a critical element of our approach to Sustainability; without happy, engaged and healthy employees, we cannot continue to strive toward a better product, a better workplace and a better world.
We are committed to recruiting, developing and retaining talent, and have many programs in place to assist us in this effort. We work closely with local universities to ensure that faculty and students are aware of the opportunities at New Flyer and to jointly develop programs to improve our bench strength. We have summer student programs, work co-op opportunities and, in Canada, provide work experiences for new immigrants.
In addition to our external outreach efforts, we provide our employees with professional training and development and educational opportunities for continuous learning and to grow as leaders. Our succession plan identifies candidates and ensures that the plans are in place for employees to move up and learn new skills. Within existing positions, employees are given opportunities to expand their responsibilities.
To ensure that our initiatives meet the needs of the next generation of leaders, we seek input from our employees through both formal and informal research tools. We are proud to report that in our most recent employee satisfaction survey, 88 percent report that they are proud to tell others they work at New Flyer and 79 percent say that "this is a great place to work."
Our dedication to workforce development is part of our overall sustainability strategy. If we do not make certain that we have the most qualified people in place to lead our company for upcoming decades, we will not be sustainable for our customers, our employees or our shareholders. We see this as good business sense and it is a part of what helps us provide a better product, a better workplace and a better world.
Congratulations on this outstanding achievement and we wish you much continued success.
Mona Babauta
Deputy Director
Santa Rosa City Bus
Years in Transit: 10+
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At the city of Santa Rosa City Bus, Mona Babauta has enjoyed managing the city's fixed-route, paratransit, commute alternative, and bicycle and pedestrian planning programs since November 2003.
She has completed key projects that have improved the effectiveness, reliability and long-term viability of the system that led to the agency receiving the California Transit Association's 2008 Transit Excellence Award.
She served as the project manager for the construction of the Transit Operations Building and she initiated the first major "facelift" of the Downtown Transit Mall. She has enhanced the fixed-route service by rebranding the system, transforming an unproductive fixed-route into a successful deviated fixed-route, which has reduced paratransit ridership in the community.
Babauta led efforts to "green" the system by installing emission reduction devices on its bus fleet; replacing all electric-powered lights with solar lights in the bus shelters; converting 23 percent of its fixed-route fleet to hybrid buses; and enhancing the city's Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Program, which annually eliminates more than 200,000 single-occupancy car trips and more than 1.2 million vehicle miles traveled.
Currently Babauta sits on the California Transit Association's Hybrid Task Force and is assisting the association for the second time in planning its annual fall conference. She also participates in several committees and assumed leadership positions in regional organizations, including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Transit Finance Working Group.
Jayme L Blakesley
Attorney-Advisor
Federal Transit
Administration
Years in Transit: 5
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Jayme Blakesley is an attorney-advisor in the Federal Transit Administration's Office of Chief Counsel who has worked on some of the agency's most innovative legal policies, including joint development, transit-oriented development and public-private partnerships. His other practice areas include New Starts, Buy America determinations, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeals and employment law issues.
His favorite aspect of working for the FA is finding time to work with transit authorities, metropolitan planning organizations and cities on their joint development and transit-oriented developed projects, which he knows can increase the opportunity for fostering community and development partnerships. He has internalized the need for transit-oriented development and is an active, forceful member of the FTATOD Working Group.
Taking land use and fostering community development seriously, Blakes-ley's desire expands to his Alexandria community where he serves as vice-chair of the Alexandria Transportation Commission.
Blakesley lives in Alexandria with his wife Katie and his 2-year-old son, Lucas, (with a second on the way) and is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
James A. Bradford Jr.
Assistant General Manager of Transit Services, CTTransit
Years in Transit: 14
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Riding the bus when he was 13, James Bradford Jr. became pro-public transportation when he realized the opportunities and freedom as he could meet up with friends, go to the Boys' and Girls' Club or even the mall without needing a ride from his parents.
While attending the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, his hometown, he became a student bus operator. While at UMass Transit, he went on to work other positions, including CDL trainer, dispatcher and operations supervisor. He enjoyed working at UMass Transit and ended up majoring in public transportation and operations management.
After college Bradford worked operations at CARTA in Charleston, S.C.; then on to COTA in Columbus, Ohio; Ryder in Concord, N.C.; and by age 29 became general manager of ART in Arlington, Va.
As assistant general manager of CTTransit in Hartford, Conn., he is responsible for more than 560 bus operators, 50 supervisors and 10 managers.
He was a key supporter in the implementation of SmartDriver training from CUTA, which has lead to a significant increase in fuel efficiency and decreased wear on brakes at CTTransit. Bradford has also administered his company's online extended learning program and is an active participant on the company's diversity committee.
Carrie Butler
Director of Planning Transit Authority of River City (TARC)
Years in Transit: 10
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Awarded the Florida Department of Transportation Transit Fellowship in 1998, Carrie Butler spent a school year working at Star Metro (then Taltran) in Tallahassee and then had a summer internship at Miami-Dade County transit.
After graduate school, Butler worked for Dover, Kohl & Partners, a South Miami-based firm, working on new urbanist town plans. The firm specialized in design charrettes and she worked all over the country coordinating public outreach meetings and designing town plans.
Returning to Louisville to raise a family, she began working at TARC as the communications coordinator for a proposed South Central Corridor light rail project, where she showed her passion for new technology. The New Starts project put on hold in 2004 and she transitioned into the Planning and Scheduling department.
She was soon promoted to the newly created position of director of planning and oversees the route and service planning, as well as on-street facilities. In her position she has been involved in many advances at TARC, including the installation of new online trip-planning software, the purchase and installation of bus stop management software, the development of a Transportation Management Coordination Center, the development of an on-street infrastructure position and production of a long-range strategic plan for the agency.
Butler has done presentations on design standards at the American Planners Association annual meeting and at Rail Volution and is currently working on the APTA Standards program for Sustainability and Urban Design.
Rick Cardentey
Project Controls Manager
Parsons Brinckerhoff
Years in Transit: 13
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Boring tunnels under the Hudson River for a commuter rail link between New Jersey and New York City and extending the No. 7 subway line from Times Square to Manhattan's far west side are two of the largest and most complex mass transit projects in the New York metropolitan area. Helping to hold these projects together--making sure invoices are submitted, the schedule is kept and contractors are on track--is Ricardo (Rick) Cardentey, project controls manager with Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB).
Although the first seven years of his transit career were spent designing highways, more recently large transit projects have become his forte. Among Cardentey's first mass transit assignments was project controls manager for the reconstruction of the 1/9 New York subway line lifter the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed a section. Cardentey's work on the 1/9 subway started in February 2002 and was complete in September 2002.
And even as he works on the tunnel, Cardentey continues to mentor and advise his successor as project controls manager on the No. 7 subway project, on which he worked from September 2002 to August 2006, with weekly conversations to discuss any and all issues and concerns.
Dr. Floun'say R. Caver
Director of Service Quality Management Greater Cleveland RTA
Years in Transit: 6
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Anative of East Cleveland, Dr. Floun'say R. Caver began his transit career as an intern at the Greater Cleveland RTA while a graduate student at Cleveland State University's College of Urban Affairs. From there he would pursue his Ph.D. in public affairs from the University of Texas at Dallas. After a year teaching at the university, Dr. Caver returned to Cleveland and the RTA as the manager of budgets and eventually worked his way up to become the director of service quality management.
At GCRTA, Dr. Caver has created the TransitStat program to monitor the entire system's performance. The TransitStat program has resulted in savings of more than $2.5 million and performance improvements across the agency. Dr. Caver also worked as the sole RTA staffer assigned to work with seven consultants as part of a rail performance assessment. Not one to not get his...
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