Launching Successful Innovations at SEPTA with Emily Yates

Episode Transcript
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Paul Comfort (00:05):
Should passengers on public transportation have
to fold up their stroller?
We'll ask Emily Yates today.
Emily is the Chief Innovation Officerfor the Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority or SEPTA,the public transit system in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and thefifth largest transit system in America.
I'm Paul Comfort and thisis Transit Unplugged.

(00:27):
Today we dive in with Emily in adescription of all the interesting
innovations she's bringing to thetransit agency, her and her team.
She leads the Office of Innovation, whichfocuses on driving innovative initiatives
through internal and external partnershipsand collaboration there at SEPTA.
In addition to growing a culture ofinnovation, the Office of Innovation

(00:48):
works to incorporate sustainabilityprinciples and data driven decision making
into all the aspects of SEPTA's effortsto become a lifestyle transit network.
Prior to this role, she was the smart citydirector for the City of Philadelphia,
and Emily has held a variety ofpositions in Europe and North America.
including urban planningpositions with the District of
Columbia, the City of Cleveland.

(01:10):
She's worked in Germany, has a Bachelorof Science in Landscape and Architecture
from Arizona State University.
And today we dive into a number ofspecific innovations they're doing
at SEPTA, which I think you'll beinterested in, including the one I
just mentioned, making some changesand even getting new buses that'll
better fit strollers and shoppingcarts to allow passengers to ride.

(01:30):
She said that two thirds of theirpassengers are women, and they
want to make sure they make changesto their policies to better allow
them to go about their dailylives using public transportation.
They're also adding up to 700 new e inkreal time bus monitors at bus stops.
We're going to dive into that andtalk about the process of driving
innovation at a large agency like that.

(01:52):
The different steps they have to gothrough to push it through the system.
The approval process is upto the Board of Directors.
We also talk about ways to increasesafety for the passengers, as well as
the operators, including deploying AIto make their stations safer, operator
support for mental health and training,and, sustainability, micromobility,
their sustainability playbook, and whatthey're doing about zero emission buses.

(02:16):
Are they moving toward batteryor hydrogen fuel cells?
Or both.
We'll tell you if you stay to the end,you'll hear all about it on the ZEBs.
That's on this episodeof Transit Unplugged.
Emily, great to have you withus today on Transit Unplugged.

Emily Yates (02:35):
Thanks so much for having me.
I'm really excited to talk with you.

You're doing so many great things there at SEPTA
that we want to talk about today.
and I think I'd like to set it upfirst off to talk about, , your
agency itself a little bit.
Tell me about the SoutheastPennsylvania Transportation
Authority, SEPTA, in Philadelphia.
Just some general numbers and statistics.

Sure.
So we are the fifth largesttransportation authority in the U.
S.
We cover seven modes of transportation,which is the most next to, MBTA out
of Boston where they have ferries.
and we service, the four surroundingcounties, including the County
of Philadelphia, the City ofPhiladelphia, as well as connecting
to transit in New Jersey and Delaware.
Southeastern Pennsylvania is thehub, the economic hub for the state.

(03:16):
So what we do is really important.
We have over 9, 000 employees.
here at SEPTA and provide, our latestis 700, 000, unlinked trips per day.
So we are, back to 70 percentrecovery, post COVID, which we're
really excited about and just recently
hit.

That's great.
And your CEO, Leslie is, hasbeen on our podcast before
and on some of our big events.
So, we really appreciate yourconnection to Transit Unplugged.

Absolutely.

Yeah.
And as I mentioned off, off camera,we also recently had a focus on
your SCOPE program, and I knowwe're going to talk a little about
your role with that today as well.
So, thanks for being with us today.
Tell us about your role inthe organization and where
you sit in the organization.

Sure.
So as chief innovation officer, Ioversee the office of innovation,
which I would say is probably nota typical office of innovation.
We cover a lot of topics here.
so in addition to having aninnovation vertical where we really
work to quickly pilot innovativetechnologies, and use of data.
and then rapidly scale it up.
We also look at data policy and analytics,and really focus on things like ridership

(04:17):
numbers, and helping support makingdata informed decisions here at SEPTA.
And then I also oversee sustainability.
where we're looking at things like,how can we increase our contribution
for renewable energy to the grid, butalso how can we become more sustainable
as a transportation authority, bothin the buildings that we build, in
our depots, and also the vehiclesthat we put out into communities.

That's good.
You know, I don't know if you know,but that's how, when I was CEO
in Baltimore, that's how I set upour Chief Innovation Officer too.
I put him over the Officeof Performance Metrics.
I put that person as the CIO.
Because I think that ourinnovations need to be data driven.
and they can't just be somegreat pie in the sky idea.
And if somebody doesn't haveother responsibilities under
them, I think the data shouldalways be driving our innovation.

(05:00):
I mean, do you, doesthat make sense to you?

A hundred percent.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I do think having data within theinnovation department is critical.
I also think it helps drivecreative ways of using data, right?
We have a ton of it.
how can we create better, moreinformative data sets that really help
us, be more responsible spenders ofour taxpayer dollars, but also how can
we start to think creatively, abouthow that data can form, the ways that

(05:24):
we provide services to our riders.
So,
couldn't agree more
.Well,

that's a great segue, I think, to the first topic I wanted to
talk about, which is how you're using,providing better data to customers to give
them a better experience on the vehicle.
As we know, you know, I don't evenwant to say the word post, it starts
with C O V, so I won't say it becausewe're trying to get away from that.
But anyway, in this new era oftransportation, there really is
a renewed focus on the customer.

(05:48):
There's new ridership patterns,and people have other options.
And so, making sure that riders have, thecorrect, accurate information about when
the bus is going to come is key, right?

Absolutely.
I don't like to use post COVID either, butI'm going to be risky and throw it out.
Um, we actually launched our SEPTAforward strategic plan early on in COVID,
which helped us pivot from a nine tofive commuter service to really focusing
on being the lifestyle transit networkthat we want to be, which means we
want to be the mode of transportation.
For all of our riders, whether it'sgoing to work or to doctor's appointments

(06:24):
or the grocery store or whatever,and providing real time data and key
information to them about detours,because there's always detours, right?
There's always some kind of constructiongoing on, especially here in Philadelphia.
and.
It's just, it's critical in order toget our ridership back up, but it's also
important, you know, we've done a lotof studies on things like perception
of safety in our system, specificallywith relation to gender, fair portion

(06:46):
of our riders, in fact, two thirdsof our riders are women who, ride our
system and do multiple stops, oftentimeswith children, and if we don't provide
them with correct real time data, itcan have a serious effect on their
feelings of safety and might makethem choose another mode of transit,
rather than riding public transit.

That's great.
So tell us some of the specificsof what you're doing with your, you
know, e ink schedules and adding,the ability to not fold up your
stroller, et cetera, on the bus.
Walk us through those.
Those are really interesting innovations.

Sure.
so our first one is,is I'm really excited.
we just hired an innovation managerabout six months ago and she got to
work on issuing an RFP and a reallyquick amount of time for E Ink screens.
And so as part of our bus revolutionstrategy, which is the first time
in 60 years that we've evaluatedall of our bus routes for efficiency
and service compatibility.

(07:34):
we are going to be deploying E Inkscreens, which is basically like a Kindle.
but their solar poweris what we're hoping.
So we don't want to have to deal with,connecting to the power, in the ground.
We want really quick deployment.
And basically what it'll do is ascreen that will update our riders
with real time locational information.
So if there are delays on ourline, We can provide that to them,
as well as detours and whatnot.

(07:55):
So, just being able to provide realtime data at bus stops, which are
historically, you know, just a seat oreven just a street pole that has, you
know, this is where our bus stop is.
We'll be able to provide much betterinformation to them, regardless of
their ability to utilize technology.
So, that's really exciting.

How many of those are you planning to deploy?

Initially in the pilot, we're looking to deploy a hundred.
So we're looking to do some comparisonbecause we've done kind of a landscape
analysis and some people have hada great, experience with them.
Some people haven't, and wewant to understand how the
solar aspect of it works, in oururban canyons here in Philly.
so we'll deploy a hundred for acouple of months and, you know, make
sure we're tracking metrics on that.

(08:33):
And then we are looking to scale it upto 700, within the next year or two.
Okay, so it'll be a quick pilot.
and then with regards to our micromobilitystrategy, which we launched last year,
it's really looking at how we canconnect folks better to our system.
So we recognize that a lot of peopleare riding bikes, riding the e scooters
that are darting down the street.
and we didn't really have clearguidance about how those, how Modes

(08:54):
connect to our, transit and what'sthe best way to utilize them.
we also, again, going back to thefact that women are a large portion
of our ridership, recognize thathistorically we've asked people to
close up their strollers, and takethe children out of them and board
our buses, as a means of safety.
We now know that's not necessarilycritical, and so we've, made the

(09:15):
recommendation that strollers do nothave to be closed up if space allows.
Right?
That's the most important thing is weknow that our buses are crowded and
we want to maintain safety on them.
And if it's super crowded, you do haveto close your stroller, but that's
at the discretion of our operators.
but we've also, gone as far as to procurenew buses, with space for strollers now.
So we're doing a seating reconfigurationthat allows for, a stroller to be stored.

(09:37):
open.
And we hope that this really helps make iteasier for our riders to ride our system
and not have to, you know, lug a toddler,a baby, and a stroller onto a bus,
which is, as a mother, I've experiencedthat and can be quite challenging.

Yeah, that's great.
And shopping carts, anything with those?

Shopping carts are included.
So, you know, if a person is coming onwith their heavy shopping cart, they are
not required to offload the groceriesor whatever is in it and close it up.
So really, again, just meetingpeople where they're at.

That's great.
And you mentioned tying inmicrotransit and sustainability
with the scooters and all that.
what exactly are you doing there?

There's concerns around e vehicles on our system in terms
of safety, the batteries are a hugecomponent of concern, not necessarily
the new batteries, but the ones thathave been retrofitted or updated, Those
tend to have a higher rate of fire.
And as we know with lithium batteries,they can be hard to put out.
So we just wanted to provide guidancearound when we're allowing those

(10:36):
on our system, how we're allowingthem, and really just kind of
be clearer with our guidance on

those.
Let's talk a process question if wecould, and that is, so your office will
analyze, for instance, you analyze,let's use this one as an example, two
thirds of our riders are women, weknow that they sometimes have children
with them, a lot of times have childrenwith them, and we're going to make
a recommendation that they not berequired to fold up their stroller.
Walk me through the process of howsomething like that gets approved.

(11:05):
So you have a recommendationand then what happens?

so we submitted, we went to the board for, well, I would
say, first of all, the importantthing is to get the internal buy in.
And so, Ann Tiska, my sustainabilitymanager who ran the project,
did a lot of internal meetings.
We worked with our vehicle andengineering folks on, the bus layout.
We worked with, our operators to makesure that they understood the new policy

(11:28):
so that they weren't, issuing guidancein contrast to what the policy says.
We updated all of our websites.
to reflect this new policy changeand made sure that it was coordinated
across all forms of communication.
And we ultimately took it toour board and, presented it
to them and got their support.
But it was just a lot of internalbuy in, and making sure that the

(11:48):
communication was, organization wide inorder for it to be fully implemented.
And now we're working on procuring thebuses with the spaces, making sure that
the signage internally is very clearabout these are spaces for strollers.
or carts, and, you know,working on announcements to let
our riders know this update.

And would you be able to give us like a estimated timeline from
the time you all thought of the ideathrough working it out, getting Leslie's
approval, and then taking it to the board?
How long does something like that take?

I would say it was about a year or so.

That's great.
And I really appreciate youwalking us through the steps
because, you I don't want peopleto think that innovation is easy.
Change is never easy.
even something that makes senseto a lot of people, Oh yeah,
you know, this makes sense.
We want to serve, put our customers first.
The process you go through involvesa lot of stakeholders, doesn't it?

100%.
And I think, you know, I alwaysjoke that you don't go into
innovation to make friends, right?
Because you're expecting changeand people are going to be, annoyed
with you because what, what'sbeen happening has been working.
and that's kind of a sentimentwe have here at SEPTA.
Is, you know, what we had in place wasworking, from perception, but what we
knew from looking at surveys and feedback,and recognizing that in this shift

(13:00):
from commuters to lifestyle network, wereally need to focus on those who were
riding our system a lot, and this is justanother way that we could, meet some of
our critical riders, where they're at,and, you know, You know, it was a lot
of culture change and getting kind of,okay, we've seen this happen elsewhere.
We're not, leading in this space, right?
We're not the first to try this.

(13:21):
So we know that it's safety, it complieswith FTA, requirements and whatnot.
It's just, we've got to change theway we think about who our riders are.

Now let's take a shift if we can from, one group of customers,
which is your passengers, to anotherinternal group of customers, which
are your operators, your fixed routebus operators, your rail operators,
your paratransit drivers, operatorsafety and well being, is critical.
a lot of focus has been paid to, Youknow, mental health , but there's
also the actual physical health of ouroperators, and you're taking action there.

(13:52):
Tell us about that, Emily.

Yeah, the unfortunate part of this that drives a lot of
this conversation around, say, ouroperators mental health is that they
experience some traumatic eventswhile they're providing services.
Philly is no stranger, the cityof Philadelphia is no stranger to
violence on our streets, as any cityreally is, any large city, right?
and so, our drivers have experiencedtrauma and Innovation saw an

(14:14):
opportunity, to step in and say,you know, is there an opportunity
to address some of the concernsaround our operators' mental health?
We already have a, somewhat ofa process in place, but as is
pretty standard, I would say.
It's not a standardoperating procedure, right?
We have support, but whatis the actual process?
And so, Innovation wants to stepin, and we've had a few handful of

(14:38):
conversations around how can we usetechnology to help address this.
Some of the issues are around thingslike, the belief that some operators
feel that they don't need therapy, orthey don't need to talk to somebody
after experiencing a traumatic event.
but then a few days later,they'll say, you know, I
actually, I can't drive right now.
I'm really upset from whatI witnessed the other day.

(14:59):
And so can we insert some sortof innovation, whether it's on
call, therapy, is it, providing aspecial, room where there's privacy.
you know, is it formalizing a standard,operating procedure around this?
But, it's really important to us thatour operators feel that they're supported
in any and all aspects of their work.
and this is just one that, you know,is really prevalent right now due

(15:22):
to just what we're experiencing onthe streets and around our services.

what about overall physical, safety?
I mean, there's been a rash of.
violence against drivers, or potentialviolence against operators in a
lot of cities across the country.
What are you doing at SEPTA to addressthat with cameras, AI, et cetera?

So we're deploying, some technology in our stations.
I'm working closely withthe police department.
actually my team is working closelywith the police department and SCOPE,
which is our, the service we provide toindividuals that experience homelessness
or drug addiction, within our system.
And we're deploying technology onto ourcameras, which are one of our best assets.

(16:01):
We have over 3, 000 cameras aloneon our subway and elevated system.
So our, Broad Street line and ourmarket Frankfurt line, we tested
a pilot recently for about a year.
It was looking at gunshot detectionor weapons detection, rather,
sorry, not gunshot detection.
and we really, it was an R& Dpartnership because the company
we were partnering with had neverreally deployed at a transportation.

(16:22):
system.
They had deployed in schoolsand been really successful.
They were a local organization.
and so we tested it on ourinfrastructure, which consisted of
analog and digital cameras, right?
We have some legacy infrastructurethat we're working with and trying
to upgrade, but at the time we hadabout 50 50 in terms of cameras.
we deployed it on 300cameras in 10 stations.

(16:42):
and.
Just experience challengesboth with the algorithm itself.
and then also our situation.
as you know, Paul, transportationstations below ground can
often be a little bit dark.
it can be a little bit crowdedand those make it really hard to
do things like weapons detection.
and so we.
ended that pilot and determined thatit wasn't in the best interest to

(17:03):
scale it up further given some of theconstraints that we had experienced,
but we're still committed toidentifying, a technology solution.
So we're looking at other algorithmsthat can work given our, given
what we learned from that pilot.
you know, maybe it's not weaponsdetection, but it's better tracking
individuals through our systemonce an event has happened.
So we know where somebody came in, wheresomebody left, and we can better support

(17:25):
the City of Philadelphia Police in.
capturing the individual whocommitted a crime on our system.
so we're doing that.
I think also is important,is we're partnering with New
Flyer, our vehicles team.
I can't claim this as innovation, but Ithink it's important to share that we're
looking at ballistics, for, you know,For protecting our drivers, you know,
making sure that they're protected if someindividual chooses to bring a weapon on

(17:46):
our vehicles, and, you know, making surethat we're addressing their concerns.
This is what they'veasked us to look into.
And so we're partnering with NewFlyer to explore this because
it's never been done before.

Wow, that's interesting.
And then finally, speaking about vehicles,let's move into zero emission buses.
This is a hot topic this spring.
It's probably the hottesttopic of discussion among
executives of transit agencies.
What are you all doing thereat SEPTA in Philadelphia?

Yeah, so we're in the exact same boat.
you know, I think the rate of innovationthat's happening, especially with this
massive infusion of funds from the federalgovernment is really going to change
the landscape of zero emission buses.
Everybody that I'm aware of has amandate to transition their fleet.
We're committed to transitioningto a fully zero emission fleet
by 2040, which, you know, is 16years away, but in transportation

(18:35):
authority time, that's not too far.

No, because you have 12 years of a life cycle of
a bus, which means you have toget started within a few years.

Exactly, and we were early adopters.
We were really committed, you know,we didn't commit to CNG, that didn't
make sense for us as a transportationauthority, but we did purchase 25 battery
electric vehicles in 2016, batteryelectric buses rather, and we were, you
know, a little bit, bitten on that interms of we had the buses operating for
a short period of time before we had toremove them from service and haven't been

(19:03):
able to bring them back into service.
and so now what we're looking atis, lessons learned from that.
it hasn't completely removed us from thebattery electric space, largely because
there has been so much innovation,but it has made us look more deeply at
what buses make the most sense for us.
We're pretty confident that itwill be a mixed fleet because
of the variety of scales.
Scale in terms of theroutes we serve, right?

(19:26):
We have very short routes herein the City of Philadelphia.
But then we also drive on thehighway and connect to our suburbs.
And so those are longer routes.
And we, you know, we think that maybeour shorter routes will be better
suited for battery electric, wherewe can do on route charging, and the
longer routes might be more, better,for fuel cell buses, where we think
that the long range will help us, right?

(19:48):
But there's a lot ofproving that we have to do.
We don't know a lot of, we alwayssay we don't know what we don't know.
the TVMs say that buses, hydrogenbuses can get 300 miles per hour
and that, you know, fueling isvery similar to our diesel hybrid.
but we don't know yet because wehaven't tested out in our local context.
We're going to be implementing a varietyof pilots, which I'm really excited for.
We've got, we have 10 fuel cellhydrogen buses coming to us,

(20:11):
in early fall, late summer.
We have a mobile fueling station.
As well, and we're really excitedto just see what that means.
we're going to do 10 batteryelectric buses as well, so we can
do more of an apples to apples interms of new vehicle comparison.
We're going to get, 5 fuel cell and 5,battery electric articulated buses or 60

(20:32):
footers as well to just really understandwhat, the spatial demands of what those
are, operationally, if they work aspromised, as marketed, and the project I'm
really excited for, because I think it'sa great tool to have in our zero emission
transition toolkit, is a pilot we're doingto transition 12 of our, diesel hybrid
buses from 2018, into battery electric.
So we're partnering with the company to,develop battery electric kits and then

(20:55):
have our mechanics install those kits.
And hopefully in time for theWorld Cup in 2026, it's coming to
Philadelphia, But this is a lowercost way of transitioning fleets.
And I, you know, we don't know yetagain, what we don't know, but,
looking at the bus market in termsof supply chain challenges, TVMs that
are available or, you know, are ableto accept federal dollars and provide

(21:17):
us with battery electric or fuelcell buses is a smaller group now.
So we just anticipate that there'sgoing to be a little bit of delay as
the demand increases for these vehiclesand being able to transition some of our
vehicles at the vehicle overhaul point,is really exciting for us to test out.
And so we're, we've committedto doing 12 vehicles.
to see if this is somethingthat works for us.
The great thing too is thatonce we develop the battery

(21:37):
electric kit, it's really easy todevelop a fuel cell kit, right?
Because it's just adding the propulsioncomponent onto the battery electric.
should it be successful, look athow we can do, fuel cell as well.
The other exciting thing, you can tell I'mexcited because I just can't stop talking
about it, is that there's an economicdevelopment component to it, right?
The company is looking to locate theirheadquarters here in Philadelphia.

(21:58):
We'd love to become a hub for thiskind of, work where, you know, MTA
and WMATA bring their buses up hereand we can help them transition.
But there's also a workforcedevelopment component.
And that's something that we're lookingat in the ZEB space as well as how do
we train our mechanics, who are amazing.
I, like, one of my favorite things is togo out to our facility in Barrage and just

(22:18):
see all that we can do with our buses.
You know, you talkedabout a 12 year lifespan.
We actually are able to keep our busesoperating for 15 years, because of the
great work that our mechanics do here.
and this, you know, having them installthe battery electric kit will train them
on how to maintain and better understandhow a battery electric bus works.
So there's lots of benefits,to that pilot as well.

(22:38):
And, you know, we're looking tohave, to make data informed decisions
about what the mix of our fleet is.
in 2026, hopefully, so we can startto procure, vehicles and kind of queue
those up to, to support the transition.

And about how many buses, SEPTA operates?

We do, we operate over 1, 300.

Okay, yeah, big fleet, very big.
Big,

Very big fleet.
Buses are our biggest, you know, are50 percent of our rides on a given

weekday.
Well, Emily, this is fascinating to seeall the things you're working on there.
You've got a full plate.
How many staff do you haveto help you with this?

I have nine.
Well, actually, my team justgrew because we added traffic
checkers to the data program.
So, 12 on my team.
Very good.
They're all very passionate andgood collaborators because this
requires more than my team.
I think that's the exciting partis innovation is collaboration
and couldn't do this without ourcolleagues across the organization.

That's great.
Any final closing thoughts you want toshare about innovation in general or
where you think the industry is going?

I just think that there's.
You know, with the zero emission busesand vehicles coming out, with AI and
chat GPT and the language learningmodels, there's so much opportunity to,
address a lot of the challenges thatwe're seeing coming down the pipeline
in terms of workforce challenges.
In terms of how do we create moreefficiencies with limited budgets and

(23:55):
maybe not the ridership that we want, thatis just a really exciting space to be in.
you know, innovation is somethingthat's critical to every
transportation authority in my mind.
and I'm excited to stay in contact withyou, but also to see what my peers are
doing and that can benefit SEPTA as well.

Very good.
We wish you all the best as youcontinue to innovate in one of the
nation's largest transit systems.

Thank you so much.

Tris Hussey (24:24):
This is Tris Hussey editor of the transit unplugged podcast.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode with our special guest.
Emily Yates.
Now coming up next week on theshow, we're celebrating the
release of Paul's latest book.
The new future of public transportation.
We have interviews with two ofthe contributors from the book Dr.
Karen Philbrick Executive Director ofthe Mineta Transportation Institute.

(24:47):
And Paige Malott who is a researcheron high-speed rail for the
international union of railways.
And if you have a question for Paulabout public transportation, you
can email him at Paul Comfort attransit unplugged.com and ask him.
He'll read it and he may evenread and answer your question
on this podcast in the future.
Transit Unplugged isbrought to you by Modaxo.

(25:08):
At Modaxo.
we're passionate about moving the world'speople and at Transit Unplugged, we're
passionate about telling those stories.
So until next week ridesafe and ride happy.

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