Exploring Tucson's Transit Future with Mikel Oglesby

On today's Transit Unplugged podcast, we take you in person behind the scenes to Tucson, Arizona with our special guest, Mikel Oglesby, who is the general manager of SunTran, the local transit system there. Uh, it is a great interview. We take it on the road, walking and getting on the, their, uh, street cars and taking some of it in his office. It's a fun, interesting interview that I recorded while I was there, uh, speaking at the Southwest Transit Association Conference. A great conference.

They're street cars. That's right. We're gonna

What's the difference between a streetcar and a light rail to you?

Well, a streetcar, the rail is actually physically on the street. Light rail can also have, ballasts underneath it and stuff like that. Right,

like a train. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I love your streetcar, by the way. It's beautiful. Well, thanks for welcoming me here and for, we're doing a TV show plus a, a podcast at the same time. How's it going, man?

Everything's perfect. I mean, we're here at the SWATA conference. I'm here with you, and we're just excited to show off our system.

Well, you've got quite a system to show. We've already been here about a day and a half, and I've seen so many cool things.

Sure. So, we're about a 92 million budget. we have, We have three different modes. It's SunVan, SunTran, and SunLink, so it's basically fixed route, paratransit, and streetcar. And, we're really excited to provide this service to three transit centers.

All right, and which one are we going to now?

Well, right now, we're going to go to, 4th and 9th and get on the train and go over to SunLink.

That's great. So we're going to take this podcast recording. While we're on his vehicles, we're going to, he's going to tell us what we're seeing. It's going to be one of these live in person podcasts, that we've done a few times before that people find so popular. and, you work, you're the general manager.

That's correct. I'm the general manager of all three modes and, oversee it and report to the city..

We're back here. And, Mikel, we're going to hop on one of your streetcars here. Where are we headed?

We're heading to our SunLink facility and, to go see our staff and kind of walk around and show you what we're all about.

Let's talk about the organization structure. You know, a lot of people that listen to our show work in transit, so I think your structure here is very interesting. Tell us about how it works here in Tucson.

It's very unique. So, the city of Tucson hired a contractor, which is RATP DEV, to oversee the entire system. It's four positions. Mine is one of them, and I have control over all 900 employees. Most places do the same thing, but it reports to a transit system. The transit system is knocked out, and I'm directly to the city.

Gotcha. And I met the guys that you work with from the city. They seem like sharp guys, too. They're really into what we're doing here, right?

Yeah their support is 100%. They were instrumental to getting me here. And I support them 100%.

A unique, you might be the biggest fare free system left in America.

Yeah, it's fare free, I mean, when you have paratransit, fixed route, and the rail system, fare free. And when you have a rail system, basically streetcar coming from the U of A and these students are depending on this, free fare, it has been extremely successful.

That's awesome. And, and so the city is, the city council is really behind transit, obviously.

Yeah. 100%. They're supplementing the, additional costs and it's been going on all for about five years now.

So, you also have something great coming. What? Let's first talk about what you've got, then I want to talk about your BRT, which is what you're hoping to bring in here. Yeah. So, tell me about your bus system.

So, our bus system is a unique system. We have, a hundred and eighty five, buses, and we service, approximately three hundred and twenty three, square miles of, of service.

It's a big area. We were driving around today, driving for fifteen, twenty minutes, and you're still in the city. It's, it's big.

It's big. And it requires a lot of service. Not only are we free, but we're efficient. So we make sure people can get to where they need to be, when they need to get there.

And then tell me about your streetcar system.

So the streetcar system is a 3. 9 mile loop, but it's jam packed with innovation. It's jam packed with the ability to go shopping, go to places that you have to, go eat. There are so much things you can do.

Yeah, yeah. That's great. And then your paratransit.

So our paratransit service is the same, square area, and we actually service some a little bit outside of that area. And one of the great things about our paratransit service is that we still stand behind the leave nobody behind, technique with it being free. And we are really doing that simply because we have the best employees. That's the reason why.

That's awesome, man. Yeah. Yeah. I've been working with Cindy Gleason from your staff and a couple of the other folks. They're top notch.

Oh, yeah. Cindy, she's with our marketing group. I have Davida with our planning group. I mean, I could go on and on. The ones you've dealt directly with, it was a dream for you to come here, and especially during the SWATA event, during our 50 year anniversary, during a time where the rodeo was celebrating their 100 year anniversary. And then last year we celebrated 10 years Sunlink.

That's beautiful. Yeah, 50 years of transit, and tomorrow we're going to go to your museum, which has all the vehicles from the last 50 years, like a different one of each kind?

Oh, that's correct. It goes, it has paraphernalia, it has articles, there's even a person there that carves out buses, hand carves them. He'll be right there, hand carving them, and he can talk you through the fact that he does it to spec.

The other day, one other thing I want to mention was, you and I got on a bus the other day, the number three bus, which was, from the Ronstadt Center. Tell us about that. Linda Ronstadt's family's from here, right?

Yeah, absolutely. The Ronstadt Center's very popular. We have, three centers, that's one of them, and we went from there over to El Charro. it's so popular, that it's hard to keep up cleaning it, but we are there just working feverishly to make sure it looks good.

Yeah, and if you want to see what he's talking about, tune in to our YouTube channel. Our Transit Unplugged TV show on YouTube from Tucson and the food at El Charro last night. The owner and the two chefs came out, described each meal. They brought us platters of their best everything and drinks and what a fantastic story too. Started by his grandmother and his mother, each of them had it for 50 years.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. And the fact that they have carne seca and they dry it with the sun on the roof in a cage. I'll tell you, I don't know what it sounds like it tastes, but I can tell you that it tastes good.

And wow, he gave us some of the Chimichangas. They actually invented them here.

Yeah, the myth is that, they dropped, food into the fryer and when they pulled it out, it ended up being a chimichanga, but,

It was like magic!

Yeah, yeah, voila!

Yeah, yeah, no, that's great, man. Alright.

Yeah, so we're working on bus rapid transit going along Stone and it's the first step. So, if this is successful, then there are other corridors that we would like to implement. I'm really excited because when I came here, I have experience with BRT. So, when they said this is the path we're moving in, I think that's the way to go. sort of extend our rail that we currently have. So people may say, are you going to extend the streetcar?

I was just over in Brisbane. Jaime and I were over there. We were filming for our shows and Brisbane is, is, they have, it looks just like rail. It's called their Metro, but it's going to, it's BRT. I mean, it's fantastic. And he was, you know, all the reasons why everybody from Curitiba to Brisbane. and now Tucson is wanting to do bus rapid transit. I'm a big proponent of it. It's like, what, a third of the price of rail and you can move it if you need to.

Absolutely. I mean, bus rapid transit's proven. I had, was instrumental in getting BRT, the Silver Line in Boston,

so

I'm familiar with it, but what you're talking about is a 60 foot articulated vehicle and it even has a little hub over the wheel. That's right. You know what I'm talking about. That covers it and makes it look like our actual train.

Yeah. It's on the cover of our Brisbane episode. We took a picture of it. It's just one of the coolest looking buses I've ever seen. That's cool. Yeah. So, tell me, tell me about, how you got here and, and how long you've been here and all that kind of stuff. You've got quite a, quite a history.

Well, well, well, I will say, I mean, though I've only been here eight months, I've been in transit over 30 years and I've run various systems, large and small, different locations from Boston to Florida, to California. Yeah. but I will tell you, this is my favorite. I mean, I'm very happy because I can take a lot of the skills that I've, I've learned and hone them, right? And then apply them here and help the city. And it is working just perfectly.

That's great. Well, we're getting ready to get on your streetcar. It's going to be pulling up here in just a minute. We'll see if your estimated arrival time signs are working right. It says it's going to be here in three minutes. All right. So, yeah, I'll be here. I'll be the judge of that, as they say. No, I'm just messing with you. All right. So, once we get on there, I want you to tell me the story of your dad. And, I want to wait until we get on the streetcar to do that.

Yeah, it's great. A lot of people say, Oh, you're in, you're in Arizona, isn't it hot? Well, there's three months of hot. But then, the rest of the time, it's cool in the morning, it's nice in the day, it's cool at night. Yes. The same people that are saying that are in places like Detroit, where I'm saying, okay, well, you don't like Tucson, but you don't, three months, you don't mind three months of, snow. Right. So, the only And the freezing.

Absolutely, man. I love it here. This is great weather. Your system is amazing. What else is happening, in the world of transit here? We've talked about the BRT potentially coming. Tell me a little bit more about that. what is the next phases? You're in the planning phase right now? You're seeking funds? Or where are you at?

Well, right now, we're solidifying. So we're identifying the funds for the first phase of the BRT, but one of the things we're really stretching out on is really taking a look at our alternate fuel technology and the direction that we're going, and I'm glad that we're going in the direction of a CNG electric split because we can provide transportation. Some people go all in on electric. And they've been burned.

That's interesting. And you have a lot of CNG here anyway, right? I mean, underground.

Right, exactly. So Yeah,

you're like Fort Worth and there's other places that say, Paul, we just pump it up. Kansas City, Frank does too. They, they have CNG right there and it's, it's very clean.

Right, it's very clean and we're in the process of And you'll see it when we go to the North Yard, we have a CNG facility with more that's being built. And really the goal is to combine the two, facilities eventually once we get that built to house everything in one location.

Ah, very good.

All right. look at that.

Look at the time. What time is it? We're gonna hop on. It's right on time, baby. Good job. Don't even try it. Cars are pretty quiet though. Alright, we'll see how quiet these vehicles are. They're coming up now. It's right on time. It's actually a second or two early. So that's great. But it won't leave early, I'm sure. Here it comes. Beautiful.

Got it, George.

Alright, Mikel, now we're on your, now we're on your, streetcar here. This thing is awesome. it's, it's keeping us plenty cool, even though it's hot outside. That's why you, you hear the air conditioners back here. That's right. this thing is ten years old now?

It's ten years old, but the air conditioner's brand new. Okay. We just replaced it. But it's ten year, it's ten years old, and we are, it's ten years young, actually. Yeah, there you go. And pretty soon, we'll be looking at, moving forward with additional vehicles, but right now we're doing pretty good. We'll wait till you see. The, layout and the format you'll see. Oh, that's awesome, man. We're doing very well.

How many, how many, buses do you have? total buses, like 200 something? Oh, total buses? Yeah.

We have 185 total buses. Okay. We have eight trains.

Eight trains. Okay, very good. All right, looks like it's almost time for us to hop off. So, one more, one more stop. One more stop.

Yeah, absolutely First of all staffs fantastic They're very clear and concise on what we want to do moving forward But did you notice you could almost eat off the floor in that maintenance garage?

I commented on it I was like this thing is What 14 years old and it looks like it's five or you know seven years old or something.

We pride ourselves on keeping it clean and that brings up morale People are really excited to be able to move forward and work every day and know what they're they're coming to work to do

Speaking of coming to work. So you've been here about eight, nine months now. But you have, you and I have been friends for a while, and you have a long and storied history in the public transportation industry. But I'd like to take you back to the beginning.

Well, you know, this, this one's a little different, but, a lot of people say that when they start in transportation, especially as an operator on the front line, they say they cut their teeth on the wheel. My father used to take me around on the bus, so I actually really used to chew on it.

And your dad was a bus operator, right?

Yeah, yeah, my father was a bus operator. He drove for 34 years in Boston for the MBTA. and they didn't have babysitting back then, right? It was the early 70s, so he used to actually take me on the bus. I remember my feet wouldn't even reach the ground and he'd take me on the bus. I learned everything about a transit and even during the breaks, they'd sit me on the pool table and the supervisors would babysit me. So I've been in transit for a long period of time.

You see my boy over there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd get a call from a supervisor. Your dad's down here and I'd have to say, leave him alone. so, so thinking back, my father told me one thing and I really didn't know what he was saying. I was probably about eight. But he said, I'm driving a bus, so you won't have to. And I never knew what that meant. Fast forward now, I've been general manager, CEO, executive director in public transit, so I guess he did a pretty good job.

That's amazing. The bus drivers though, they really are the backbone of our operations. They and the mechanics.

Absolutely, and that's one of the reasons why I'm glad that I'm where I'm at, because when you get to general manager stage the way that I have, you have an appreciation for the frontline employee. So I've learned to treat the frontline employee the same way. Or the janitor, the same way that I would treat a mayor or a governor. And it's been very successful for me so far, and that's why I like to keep in contact with all employees, especially the operators and the mechanics.

Take us through the Oglesby Trail now. Alright, so you, you get promoted to AGM of MBTA.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the, the fifth or sixth largest transit system in America.

Yeah, at the time it was the fourth.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah. 6, 500 employees, 29 unions, light rail, heavy rail, paratransit, ferry service, and locomotive. We had our own police department. So, everybody who, in their early stages, went through Boston, it was like, we call it, boot camp. You did everything. So from there, when you go out to like a smaller system, you can utilize the skills that you acquired from each discipline.

And where did you go from there? How long were you there and then where did you go?

Oh, I was there about 12 years or so.

Which is? Coachella.

That is in the Coachella area or Palm Springs, people say. Right. And we ended up being the leader in alternate fuel technology there and that's where I learned about hydrogen and CNG.

Before Loren Skyver got there. You got it set up?

That's correct. Okay. So I created the American made fuel cell bus. It's the first American Made bus with American made parts with the fuel made on property in America to get away from the use of foreign oil and the FTA administrator gave me five million dollars to create the project.

I didn't know that, man. Yeah. That's awesome. So that West Coast Center of Excellence on the hydrogen. I've been there. I've seen the hydrogen plant. I toured it. That's fantastic, brother.

Yeah, we did it then with a hieratics reformer and electrolysis process with steam reformation. I'm not sure if the education building's still there, but it created a hydrogen education format. And what we did is we moved forward all CNG vehicles, and then I was on my 7th generation hydrogen vehicle when others were just starting out. So we were very popular.

And now they're selling in hydrogen back into the general market. Trucks come buy fuel up there. It's amazing.

It's amazing how times have changed and different colors of hydrogen. At the time, we were making it the, you know, through the electrolysis process, where you take the, oxygen goes in the air, hydrogen goes in the tank, and you pump it. But now it can be made out of

Water comes out the tailpipe.

Water comes out the tailpipe. A quick, quick story about that. Okay. So, my maintenance guy, was watching me and I was being interviewed on television, and I said water can drip out the tailpipe, so he put a flower with a vase there. The water's dripping out the tailpipe. And the person interviewing me said, they said it's so clean you can drink it. Will you drink it? I said, absolutely. And I turned to my maintenance guy, I go, Tommy, take a sip. Oh, he was not happy, but he did.

I'm sure he did. Yeah. So, it's funny, the, the naming nomenclature. You were at SunLine and now you're at SunTran, but what'd you do between those two?

So, after SunLine, I went, I ran rail from Miami to West Palm Beach. TriRail? TriRail.

South Florida Regional Transportation Authority.

You got it. Yeah, I was,

I Where Dave Dech is now.

Yeah, Dave's there now. Yeah, I was a deputy, there for quite some time and did a lot of great things, positive train control, the Irish crossover, getting into downtown in the early stages, created and developed that. I heard they recently executed it. That's great. and then, uh, I did something that I didn't think I'd do.

Yeah, tell me about it. I know what it is.

I, I got talked into it. going to Detroit, running to Detroit, the Motor City, at first I was very hesitant but, everybody there was really positive and based on my background, they really needed my help. So I went there with my heart, not necessarily my brain, but it ended up being fantastic. I created, a comprehensive operational analysis. I did a bunch of great stuff to move the needle forward, but I promised I'd be there for three years and on that third year, I left.

So, when you were in Detroit, I know they were having a lot of, a lot of, there was even news, what was going on up there, that you could see regular news, not just transit news. So, which, there's three agencies there, right? There's the RTA, there's SMART, and there's DDOT?

Yeah, there's the RTAs, a overseeing agency that kind of does the funding, but it's really DDOT and smart. DDOT is more downtown inner city smarts, the suburbian portion. And there's a lot of pressure, Robert and,

and, Dwight. Oh, they're there now. Yeah. Yeah. , that's great. I know, I know them both. Yeah. Yeah,

I know them both. Robert's a great, great guy. As a matter of fact, I hired Robert, to run people mover. So, it's great that he's moved in that position. He well deserves it.

We're going up there, in a couple months to film an episode of our TV show there. And we're already prepping with them. My boss, Rod, is from there, so I think he's going to come with us. It's going to be great. It seems like a great system.

It's a great system, We worked hard on making sure we had the fleet replaced, but there was a lot of things that needed to be fixed, after the pandemic and there were issues before the pandemic. We put in a safety plan that wasn't there. There's a lot of great stuff that's, the bones are there. it's just, it's just what they do with it.

Yeah. So you go from super cold weather in Detroit.

Yeah.

And the Detroit Lions. Down here, to super warm and actually in the, in the, it's, this is like perfect weather for me, man. It's cool, like in the evenings. Yeah. And gets moderately warm. Yeah. I know I'm not here in the hottest time, but you know, we're, right now we're here in February. This is awesome.

Yeah, you know, I think about it like the Coachella Valley area and sun. Yeah. Sun, line, in a way. And the reason why is because the weather's the same. It's the desert. Yeah. if you want to go to a place that's high end, there's Indian Wells here, there's Catalina Foothills. I mean, it's identical. I truly think the only difference is one has palm trees, the other one has cactus.

That's good, that's good. Alright, so, last kind of question, let's do a future question. what do you have planned here? you know, what's in your pipeline that you want to do? And then I want to get your take on the industry, where you think we're going. So, but first let's do what you're doing here in Tucson.

So, so I'm here. I'm here to stay this is it. I'm very happy. the format and layout fits my skill set. it's multimodal experience. so I'm really working with the team to develop a vision moving forward. it's going to include focusing on alternate fuel technology and making sure we focus on it. Because after we do a pilot, a test program, basically we have ten vehicles. But it's 10 vehicles is like a pilot program.

It'll be more with low than no, I bet you.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. But here's the great thing about a low no grant compared to an old fashioned FTA grant. You call the shots. They basically say, this is, you say how much you want. You say what type of technology you want. You say Who you want. This is unheard of. I mean, you know, you're supposed to just be real general. You could put who you're talking to. You put in the infrastructure. You make sure that's in there and then you make sure the labor, everything's in there.

So, speaking of FTA, they've written some big changes coming out of Washington just the week that we're here, where a lot of the, newer employees that were on probationary period were let go and many of the employees, 20 I hear is the number, took the buyout that was there. So, it appears as if FTA staff levels have been dropped by about 10 percent, from the 760 or so employees, maybe 80, are no longer there. So, we have the federal government and how they are involved in transit.

No, but I can tell, well, I have a few, but I will tell you this, we have been affected by the FTA movement, as a matter of fact, the recent people who were either laid off or left, one of those people were our representative and bringing in our next set of hydrogen vehicles. So we were going, we're going electric. So we're going stage by stage, everything's fine. Then we call and that person's no longer here. That's as of today.

And you're fare free. They're subsidizing the entire service. You're not getting any through fares.

That's right. At this time. You know, now that all of this is going on, things could change, but again, that's above my pay grade, so I'll eat popcorn and be told what to do when it comes to that point.

That's good. What about technology? Do you see a role for autonomous vehicles and, you know, VTOLs and all that kind of stuff in the public transit? you know, cornucopia of options that we're offering people.

honestly, for me, I don't think so. Okay. and the reason why is because they've been talking about autonomous vehicles for years. I know a few agencies that have tried autonomous vehicles. I know, in Jacksonville, Dan. Yeah, a lot of money. I know Nat very well. They put a lot of money in, and it was quite some time ago. I'm not sure where it is now, but I mean, the amount of money invested is so big. Yeah. Like when you go back, hindsight's 20 20. Is it worth it? Is it not worth it?

And lastly, let's talk about the Southwest Transit Association Conference that was here this week that you hosted and I think you spoke a couple times. Tell us about the conference and what it's mean to you to have them here and what you told the audience.

Well, it's an honor to have it here, especially during our 50 year anniversary. I mean, you couldn't plan this out any better. We just came off the heels of our 10 year anniversary with SunLink and then we go into our 50 year anniversary, the rodeo's here, and it's a 100 year anniversary. It was a perfect storm. So I was very proud to be able to show Tucson off and to say, listen, you don't know about Tucson? A lot of people were saying, oh, you know, I've never been here.

Yeah. Rich Sampson and Amanda do a great job putting this together every year. It was great to be here with you. Thank you for hosting us and for showing us your amazing transit operations.

I appreciate it. It's a pleasure.

Thank you for joining this edition of the Transit Unplug podcast featuring Mikel Oglesby, general manager of RATPdev for the City of Tucson. And who oversees Sun Tran, Sun Van, and Sun Link. My name is Julie Gates. I'm the executive producer of the podcast and I wanna thank you for listening to this show. And if you're listening right now, I have a favor to ask of you. Would you please give us your feedback about the Transit Unplugged Podcast?