From the Eye of the Storm: A Transit Unplugged Special Episode

How does a public transit system In the state of Florida or any state respond to a major hurricane or a major natural disaster such as this. Well, today you're going to find out right from the leaders of the public transportation and the highway system in that area.

We begin with Brad Miller. Brad is CEO of PSTA, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority. Right in Clearwater at St. Petersburg, which was, at the epicenter of the storm. The storm, as you may recall, Milton, the most recent one, was coming right up and was aimed right for them in Tampa. And then at the last minute, swerved slightly south. He tells you how he rode out the storm in his house, how the storms were roaring around him, how their public transit System responded.

The roof of Tropicana Field being lifted right off by the winds. You'll hear it right from someone who lived right through it and how they responded. Amazing.

We'll also hear from Coree Cuff Lonergan, the CEO and General Manager of Broward County Transit, on the other side of the state where the storm went through and the impact that the tornadoes, over 150 tornadoes, that went through the area of Florida afterwards, and the response that they had to those.

We also speak with Ivan Moldanado who is the new Executive Director of PalmTran, and he talks about how they prepared for the storm in the EOC and the coordination, that is so much required between public transit agencies the EEOC. And the public government agencies that are around them, such as the counties and the public works department, the sewer department, the road department, all the things that have to be coordinated.

We also hear from Tiffany Homler Hawkins, who is the CEO of the transit system in Orlando, Florida, where Disney and so many of those are called LYNX and she talks about their response and how they don't charge for people when they're riding out to, go to hurricane relief centers and storm centers and all the different impacts and how her team, not one member of her team called off when they were back in service because they understand the role of a transit system in

being, a first responder and really part of the essential services of a region.

We also speak with Dave Dech. Dave Dech is the executive director of SFRTA, commonly known as TriRail, which is the commuter regional rail. Which comes up from Miami all the way through all these counties that were affected. He talks about how they work together with those agencies to provide great service and the importance of keeping the railways clear so that CSX and others can bring in supplies after a storm.

And then we speak with Greg Slater. Greg Slater is a former colleague of mine. He was Secretary of Transportation here in Maryland and was head of the State Highway Administration when I was head of the Maryland Transit Administration. Now he's down in Florida as CEO and Executive Director of the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

I thought it was important to have someone kind of wrap it up and explain to us the role of the road network during a major disaster like this and how they coordinate so closely with public transit agencies to ensure like traffic lights and all the things that are required for buses to work in a region.

This is a coordinated effort and this is a look inside the storm at how public transit agencies help a region prepare for endure and recover from a major disaster, a natural disaster, such as these back to back hurricanes, Helene and Milton. Stay tuned for some great information that you won't get anywhere else except right here on Transit Unplugged.

Hey, great to have with us Brad Miller, my good friend, who is the CEO of PSTA, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, in the Tampa Bay area in Clearwater.

Thank you so much for being with us today, Brad.

Because this is the first time that we've had Not one, but two hurricanes, Hurricane Helene and then now Hurricane Milton, come very close to the Tampa Bay and have major impacts on the Tampa Bay Region, certainly the biggest impacts, since I've been here and, and now historic with Hurricane Milton, historic impacts to the, the Large Tampa Bay region, you know, which is like four, four plus million people. This is probably the biggest impact they've had in their lifetime. So, yeah.

And, uh, so, certainly we have it down pat on, you know, what our operational plans are and everything like that, but just in the last two weeks, toward the, the last week of September, Hurricane Helene came straight up the west coast of Florida and actually kind of landed ground just a little bit east of Tallahassee, up in the Panhandle area, but it was only about 100 miles offshore, and that was the That was the biggest impact of what is storm surge, where the hurricane winds blow basically

the Gulf of Mexico saltwater onto land, uh, and, uh, it was like a record number, especially along the beaches. Like Clearwater Beach, which is a huge tourist area, all the way down the beaches is basically inundated and a lot of damage. A lot of damage. Basically, oh my gosh, you can see the sand from the sandy white beach. And then basically all just got lifted and plopped right on the road with it.

Wow. It runs down the various islands and, you know, you know, I used to, I've seen, you know, you see like up in Buffalo and stuff like cars totally submerged under snow. Right. It looked the same way, but there were cars under sand. Wow. Really, really, really bad. and a lot of people did lose their transportation, lost their cars. So they were looking to transit, to get them to, you know, to FEMA had set up a whole bunch of, food sites and things like that.

And, so that was, that was a, Kind of a surprise. I mean the, the rest of the hurricane kind of missed the Tampa Bay, but they, just the way the, wind went, it pushed all that water into storm surge and a lot of low lying areas around the Tampa Bay really got a major hit of storm surge, which, and some people actually lost their lives, that couldn't get out of their house fast enough, and so that was really devastating

. And then just, About six days later, we get Hurricane Milton, and this one that we just got back in the office, today, from, that hit last Thursday, Wednesday night into Thursday, was a wind and rain, storm, like there not, not, has not been in, the Tampa Bay's history.

Luckily, well, I guess luckily, actually touched ground a little south of us down in the, uh, Sarasota, Bradenton area of Florida, on the west coast of Florida, and then it just went basically straight up the I 4 corridor, past, St. Petersburg, Tampa, up to Orlando. I think it was still even rated a hurricane as it went past Orlando, and then out the other side on the Atlantic Ocean side.

But, it was the north side, we were on the north side, and that's where the worst wind and rain was, for this hurricane. It was, Cat 3, it got 100 mile an hour winds right, in my neighborhood where I live. Wow. I was here. Yeah. My family had luckily evacuated and a lot of people did evacuate. I stayed through it. I was in my house. It was, I was, had my headphones in and then I would take them out. It was roaring for like six hours of just incredible wind. The noise inside the house.

I mean, it was, but. It's what we're all good, safe. the, there wasn't really much storm surge with this just because it, the winds were going in a different direction. actually, it's kind of fascinating. The water goes away from that.

Of course, that also, basically eliminates the traffic lights, because there's no power, so it's very treacherous driving, you know, on the roadways, so, a real, real major impact, just a one two, so, we're just all very happy and blessed to, to be here. Still be here we're doing just fine.

And, luckily I live in zone D. pretty high, it's 27 feet above sea level, so I'm fine. They evacuated, in my county, A, B, and C, mandatory. So, over half the county evacuated.

The, we all have a full blown emergency operations center, at least where I had come from in the past, they had used, like, a room in City Hall or something for something like this, but for emergencies, but here, there's the permanent facilities that are just in there.

They have a permanent director and, you know, it's a very, sort of, uh, command control kind of set up where we, we, we always have people there 24 7 during a storm and, um, the requests come down to us and we provide the evacuations. This one was so big and threatening to come right to us that they actually relied on us just running our regular bus service, which goes by, you know, the evacuation, centers. that, that they set up are the schools.

They close down the schools, and then they set them up in high schools, the evacuation centers. And, supposedly, on this storm, a record, like, nine or ten thousand people actually went into the, evacuation sites, the schools, and churches, and things. And, you know, our bus, our bus network, serves, All those schools, pretty, pretty effectively just with its regular routes.

So we, we ran our regular service until late on, uh, at their, their request, Tuesday because that's, that's the, and it becomes free and, you know, that's the best, most frequent way to get as many people access to the evacuation centers as possible.

And like I said, Helene had taken out a lot of people's cars and our transportation, so, that was even more necessary, so we did carry a lot of people to the evacuation centers, and then, of course, we just, inundated with specific requests, and maybe you heard from the other folks that you talked to about the same kind of request where, low, low lying, nursing homes and, medical facilities and things like that, of course, we have the

largest fleet of wheelchair accessible vehicles in, the county, you know, with our paratransit vehicles and with our, our buses all having, wheelchair accessibility, so, we're called to those sort of special needs to evacuate all those folks that, you know, need a wheelchair accessible vehicle to get out and, or a hospital, you know.

We have to make sure that our fleet and our facilities and all of our employees are safe first, and then, then we can provide the service. It's an essential service to the county, to the citizens. We moved all of our buses to higher ground because the facility, of course, most bus garages, I think in the United States, are built in flood zones, probably, but we're in Zone B, so we evacuated our buses to higher ground, themselves. We did that, Wednesday, right before the storm hit.

and then, left some buses, our older buses, just in case something bad happens, we don't want one of our brand new buses to get messed up, to provide the, uh, evacuation services as long as we can. our policy is we will run, it's really for the safety of the riders, we will run until, sustained storm force winds 45. and that's what we did. Okay. And really we're, Appreciated, I know, but the county very much relied on public transit to help them get the people safe.

And then, And they had sent a warning out before this, but you know, downtown St. Petersburg, one of our main areas that we serve, is just really booming economically, and there's maybe, I don't know, seven, eight, maybe a dozen, those big huge cranes, building, buildings, and they said, you know, be, be wary of those cranes with hurricane force winds, and one toppled over, and basically landed on top of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, building. Oh, wow.

and kind of crushed the corner of it, and it almost, right, right in the downtown core of St. Petersburg where our BRT goes, it probably missed our BRT station. Right in that part of that area, by about, 30 feet or so.

So, we're talking mostly like smaller nursing homes or maybe, you know, senior living facilities and stuff like that. so we're, we're still providing, uh, As of today, we did something like 200 people, uh, get people back still today. Supposedly, they're going to have all the power back by tomorrow, and we can, maybe get back to some resemblance of normal, normalcy.

this time, you know, I think largely, due to the lack of power at gas stations, there was a run on gas very long lines to get gas, at places, you know, our paratransit system, which is heavily used, during the, hurricane, The cabs and the Ubers, you know, that we use a lot of here, they were having trouble getting gas, and so PSBA has big tanks, and we have a lot of unleaded fuel also.

We opened up our facility to basically fill up all the taxi cabs to keep that service going, just in the last couple days. We've been doing that too.

The, the destruction from the storm surge from the first hurricane along our coastlines, and then, and then this. This, the power and the, of the last, being out, it's, it's a real challenge, but we're just grateful that, by and large, our, our employees are all safe, and accounted for the incredible work getting, the, so many people to safety, and really helping out, and I'm just, I'm, I'm grateful for them and, and the great work that they've done.

And I, we are always, learning, you know, what, what goes wrong, what, what we could do better, what could be more efficient, through every storm, and we're trying to make those adjustments, I would certainly say, you know, and I didn't know any of this before I really came down here to Florida, and then I've just been sort of indoctrinated in it, have a plan, have a, procedure in place on how you're going to make decisions, on, you know, service, how you, we, we work very carefully with our

union, to include them in the discussions, now with the power of Zoom, like this, we have, Zoom calls, replacing like in person meetings a lot because we're all in our evacuation spots or at home. and, communication is probably the number one, lesson I've learned is key, from myself as the CEO and the leader of the organization.

And I'm interacting with the leaders of the other public organizations, the cities, the first responders and things like that, on down to, to make sure that we can really be there for the community when they, when they need us.

and the tabletop exercises and all the things that go into this, you know, like you said, these are real professionals that have been doing this for a long time. And, it almost, it's not second nature, but you have to have a plan, you have to coordinate and communicate, and then you have to be able to execute, right?

Like, I, I have been in communication with, Tiffany Homler, in Orlando, Nat Ford in Jacksonville, our State Transit Association, Lisa Bacow up in Tallahassee, of course the Florida DOT, uh, the Expressway Authority, Yeah, everybody has called me up and said, is there anything that they can do to help me, you know, or coordinate with them, in any way? It's been, it's been fantastic support for us. Yeah.

So then it just becomes a matter of executing that plan based on whatever variables. The storm throws at you. So while we were initially watching, it really looked like it was going to go far enough north on the coast that we weren't going to have to do much. And we were, we're fortunate that we have great partners in South Florida. So we were, you know, we were having three times a day, three and four times a day calls with the Florida East Coast Railroad and Brightline.

And they had their weather people on there with just these really great in depth analyses of, of the weather. So, When it took a turn south, we, we, we said, okay, now we need to make a decision. And our, our hurricane preparedness plan calls for if there's going to be, wind speeds, the sustained wind speeds above 40 miles an hour, we must start to secure gates. So that's where really what we start to worry about are the crossing arms and crossing gates.

we made sure that we had, You know, light, light plants stationed throughout the area in case we lost power at a station. we put our signal people all in rest, because our signal people are all hours of service. They can only work so many hours in a day. so then you start thinking ahead, okay, I've got to put these people down for rest, so that when the storm hits, I have people available to go out and work. So we were going through all those, those preparations.

And then, fortunately for us, you know, that, that the eye hit the, the eye wall and the south end of the eye of the storm kind of opened up and released a lot of the energy on the south end. so we didn't get the winds that we anticipated. I'd much rather be prepared and not get the wind than, you know, not be prepared to get it. So I still think we made the right decision to curtail our operations.

and we, we did sustain damage to, um, Our Mangonia Park station, we lost a lot of the roofing, in the station, so we'll have to make some repairs there. We had some light poles down, a lot of trees down.

You know, I have a friend of mine sending me pictures from his backyard of a tornado in his backyard. So, we were very fortunate. that we, you know, we sustained very, what I think is very minimal damage for what we were expecting, from the storm and we'll, you know, we were back up and operating on, on Friday.

We went through a storm called, we called, Snowmageddon, where we, you know, the roads and the transit, which is on the roads, we coordinated dramatically and we ended up shutting down all service, everything, for like two days, which is something you almost never do in transit. Shut it all down, but we had to. But he said it's so different.

Handling hurricanes because, you know, in snowstorms, you're usually you're trying to keep everything open, keep the roads open so people can get through, but in a hurricane, it's close everything down and stay home. so it's a whole different mode.

So we had dispatchers around the clock still, but you know, you think about you arrange hotel rooms, you, you know, you, you've got, you, you get your phone list so you can do wellness checks, you know, for people, you know, when the storm goes through, you want to make sure your people, all your teammates are okay, because it's not just affecting the railroad. You know, if you, you know, we have a lot of people who live up North who, you know, and, and so now we're worried about. Are they okay?

Are their families okay? Are their, you know, their houses okay? but it is, it's, it's an exhaustive list of, of preparations. some of it you don't think about, right? So, I mean, you, you, you got to keep your locomotives running. In these kind of storms, because you don't want the water to come into those exhaust stacks. It just, just,

You know, along the thing, we make sure all of our tampers and our regulators and our on track equipment and everything, we go out, start it up, make sure it's running, because you just don't know, you know you're going to need those things after the storm.

and then, you know, the biggest thing for us, Especially in a storm of this magnitude that we were expecting is, you know, our role then can be more vital, not really moving people around, but opening up that track, get out of the way. So if CSX needs to bring in, you know, supplies

I think you're leading the nation in the way of You know, of reorienting what might be traditional commuter service to now adapt to the more hybrid work schedule by opening up the schedules and making them more of a regional rail.

And if they get to that point, then we start to, close down our service and we don't operate. So we didn't have that situation. So we were so fortunate. but I do want to send, My well wishes out to our colleagues on the West Coast, and in Central Florida that did take direct hits. they're doing amazing jobs recovering there and I and my thoughts are with them for sure. but for us, we were able, fortunately, to keep our service running the entire time.

we did have one, only one detour, and that was because of flooding in one of the local cities here called Hollywood. for those of them familiar, Hollywood Beach. well, our Route 6, had to be detoured for about two or three days as, because of flooding. other than that, we ran our normal paratransit service, our normal, fixed bus route service, and, we were able during that time to carry a ridership of about 100, 000.

in Broward, and so we do have people that are dedicated to, watching the weather, and, and, establishing, what the, protocol for response is going to be based on weather reports, and that obviously triggers certain reactions, from a county perspective on how we respond. But it's taken very seriously here. as you know, we're kind of the hurricane capital of the country down here in Florida. not something that we're proud of, but there, that's a fact.

and so because of that, you know, hurricane season is very important to us and always top of mind and the preparations are very, rigid and, important.

Great to have with us my good friend Ivan Maldonado, who is executive director of PalmTran, the transit agency in Palm Beach County, Florida. Ivan, thanks for joining us on today's podcast.

I've never seen anything like it, until I got to Omaha. So yeah, they can be very devastating. Yeah.

So, the storm actually proceeded somewhat northeast, so we weren't necessarily affected by it severely. We had a lot of shrubs and things down, and, but we were able to, to resume services, practically the very next day. we, we, started notifying customers that services might be interrupted, but what, What was, interesting about this whole plan, we wanted to make sure that we got people safely to shelter.

So, so the day before the storm, we wanted to make sure that they knew what options they had available for to get to the different shelters. So we ensure that our services continue to operate as long as it was needed before we pull services back inside. We started to get pretty strong winds. So we were initially we're going to close services by 12.

But the county administrator made the decision to continue to operate services as needed to get people to the regular shelters and the special needs services. So, we got information out there that we'll continue to make sure that we'll get them there. If we needed to get supervisor vehicles out there, we would do whatever was necessary. information was very thorough.

we, we had our call center, all modes of, communications available to them so they could call if we needed to, coordinate special services. we were able to get people safely to the, to the shelters and then we were able to, pull services backup.

Everyone did a fantastic job, the supervisors, the operator in good spirits, always, obviously concerned about their safety, but also concerned about the safety of our customers, and, and the day of the storm, obviously by that time we had everyone, in, in, in place where they needed to, to, to be at, but we were grateful to hear that we would not be affected and we were able to get folks back home safely as soon as possible with no issues whatsoever. The communications were great.

We worked with the different departments of the county and we were able to get people safely.

But before we can actually bring people back home safely, you have County Engineering that has to go out there and look at the roads to make sure that they are completely free of debris so we can safely take them to their destination. We have supervisors out there. monitoring the roadways. We have communications with the, the different, community service providers out there, especially if they're managing the shelters, to know that we're able to bring them back on.

We just don't simply show up at the, at the shelters and, and get people, to the destination.

Something that the county did that, I'm proud of the coordination with the different agencies to make sure that the homeless community were not just left out in the community, so we took buses out there to the different sites, and we identified locations throughout the county that we could pick up the homeless and make sure that communication was thorough, and we were able to transport them safely to the regular shelters.

It was just a wonderful coordination, and I'm used to that level coordination, I think all the transit systems in Florida do a fantastic job to make sure that people are properly served. but, but it was a great opportunity to see firsthand, Palm Beach County and the different stakeholders doing what they do best and that is to take care of the All of these are the kinds of people that we serve.

Great to have with us Tiffany Homler Hawkins, who is the CEO of LYNX, which is the public transit system that covers the Orlando area. Thanks for being with us today, Tiffany. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Thanks for having us. So, on today's episode of Transit Unplugged, we're really talking about the value of public transportation during a natural disaster, and you all just had two of them back to back in Florida. Amazing. Tell us about that and the impact it had in the Orlando area.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Well, it's, so, it, there are two certain things in Florida. It is going to be hot and humid in the summer, and at some point you are going to be doing some type of hurricane prepper response. And, you know, we were fortunate here in, Central Florida, Orange Seminole and Osceola County, Helene, we had some winds, and we did not shut down service for Helene, Milton, which was catastrophic, both, both storms and, you know, the whole southeast of the U. S. for Helene.

Milton, we shut down for less than 24 hours. And so, you know, this is the things that we prepped for and, at least for our team and because hurricanes are definitely a given. And so we have a meeting starting in May. Hurricane season is June 1 through November 30th. And, so vacation times are limited because unlike snow days, in the north for transit systems, we know we're going to have hurricane days.

But, you know, for us, we, our standard policy and has been for over 20 years is we pull the buses when the winds are sustained at 35 miles an hour. And, so it's the timing of those winds. all of our, partners, emergency operations centers, we have the HURABAC models. We have the same models and so it's a timing issue. it takes us about three hours to get all the buses, off the routes, refueled and staged so that they're secure.

And, you know, we start our 72 hour prep to get our facilities, secured and work with our major employers. You know, we have one of the, largest single site employers in Disney. Yeah, Disney, yeah. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: 85, 000 employees, universal. And do a lot of them ride your bus system to work? Tiffany Homler Hawkins: A lot of our passengers are hospitality workers. Yeah. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: And so, you know, we can get, we get them out and we don't want to leave them stranded.

So we work with the parks for the timing of closures. we also have a lot of, hospital workers that they are on their ride out crews, during an event. So. We, we work with them to find out what their timing, is as well to go to Alpha Bravo shifts. Okay. Oh, yeah, right. So, so the impact, Helene, sounded like it didn't hit you too bad, but how, what did Milton do in the Orlando area? Did you get tornadoes, like some of the folks in Palm Beach did, that kind of stuff?

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: No, we, we had a lot of wind, we had wind gusts of, 87 miles an hour at Orlando International. I think one of the sustained clocked winds was about 65 miles an hour. Okay. We did have a lot of rain. the ground was already saturated, so it doesn't have anywhere to go. Some of our areas are still dealing with flooding and rising, waters on some of our rivers, in the northern part of our service area. and down trees.

we did not have the tornadoes like they did down in Palm Beach and southeast Florida, but it was definitely a wind and rain event for us. Speaking of flooding, I saw a picture, I don't know if you can comment on it or not, but I don't know if it's true. It seemed like it may be a fake one. I saw a picture of Disney World under, like, you know, with water all over. Is that, was that a fake picture? Tiffany Homler Hawkins: From what, from all accounts, it is a very much a fake picture.

Okay, yeah, yeah, because it didn't seem like you had that much water there in Orlando. so tell me about, the day of the storm when you, when you had to shut down. What happened? What did you all do? you know, what was the role of public transit in helping to recover? Tiffany Homler Hawkins: so, in shutting down, you know, we timed it. we wanted our buses to start coming in about 3 p. m. Okay. So, our dispatch worked with calling in the outer routes to kind of Was that on Wednesday?

The day the storm was or Tuesday? That was on, Tiffany Homler Hawkins: that was on, Wednesday, yeah. Okay, yes, that's what I thought. Okay, that's the day it was kind of hitting the West Coast. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: It was hitting the West Coast. We were getting the feeder bands. Okay. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: so we made the decision about 3 o'clock to start pulling service. again, the, the major parks were closing down at 1 and 2 p. m. Okay.

Tiffany Homler Hawkins: And they do work with their, their staff to, for those that ride the bus, to let them leave first. Okay. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: So, get the buses in, get them secured, and then it's a waiting game. And once we can monitor the winds and they start dying down, we work, with the Public Works for all three counties. We go out and do roadway assessments.

To make sure that the buses can get down the road, obviously there's going to be light signals out, we had electrical outages, power outages, throughout all three counties. we're, we're pretty restored by Friday, but on Thursday, about 1. 30, we did the, all call for folks to report. We have a, alert system, robocalls, an employee hotline. to keep everybody informed.

And I, I will say that's one thing about the employees at LYNX is they are all on board, they understand our role in the community and lot of times during events, holidays, take it, take it out of the natural disaster, you have a lot of call offs. We didn't have any for Helene and Milton. Wow. So everybody steps up and, again, it's, it's our response. It's how, once the buses are rolling and traffic lights are back, there's a sense of normalcy that comes with, okay, I may have had damage.

Hurricane fatigue is real, but it gets back to, okay, the sun came up the next day and, you know, we're responding and we're getting back to what we do. so it really speaks to the role of public transportation as an essential service, right? Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Absolutely. and it sounds like your employees get that, too. They understand their role in it. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: They, they understand the role. They understand the assignment.

And, you know, during COVID, we were all talking about, you know, our, the bus operators and bus operations is essential. They're, they're first responders. That's right. And, Tiffany Homler Hawkins: you know, we only, we went to half service for about six weeks during COVID. And then we were back at full service. Now ridership was not back full. and you know, we're about 85, 90 percent back. But, you know, it's the, it's the demographics of our riders who need us the most. That's great.

first of all, I just want to say, I love your transit system. You know, we were down there last year and I got to ride it and see your, one of your central hubs. For those of you who'd like to see LYNX a little bit closer up, we did do a TV show there, Transit Unplugged TV, where we featured Tiffany and her team and her transit system. Just give us a quick update since then for those who kind of Keep pace with us.

What's the latest generally, you know, not talking about the, the, the hurricanes, but what's happening with your transit system generally now? Tiffany Homler Hawkins: So, Orange County is, putting about six million dollars, more, a year into service. we'll have more service in and around, Metro Orlando.

Link Central Station is going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary in November, and the skyline of Orlando 20 years ago is a lot different than it is today, and so we are doing a refresh at the terminal and bus bays and looking forward to celebrating, the 20th anniversary and the end of hurricane season in November. Yeah, when is that? When is the end of hurricane season? Is there a specific day?

I'm Tiffany Homler Hawkins: officially it's November 30th, but we have been known to have a few in December. Wow. Well, hopefully you don't have any more this year. I mean, you've had more than your share. Tiffany, your leadership there, I think, is just, it shows how, Some of the other folks were saying this too. Brad was saying how professional the response is in Florida to a hurricane. It's not like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

Everybody knows exactly what they're going to do. You guys have drills, you plan and then you just execute and your team sounds like they get it. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Yeah, it's the execution and we have our own EOC and it helps us coordinate with the three counties when those requests come in for shelter service, it, we do not charge a fare if you're going to a shelter.

And so, it's, Tiffany Homler Hawkins: it's the messaging and, the IT team, the communications team, operations, they've all been long tenured employees. Like, none of them have been there less than 10 years that sit at that table and help make those decisions and, and make sure that we're firing on all cylinders. That's great. Well, thanks for giving us an update today, Tiffany. Tiffany Homler Hawkins: Well, thanks for having us.

Great to have with us on the line today. Greg Slater, who is CEO and Executive Director of the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority. Greg, thanks for joining us.

So you come in, you've got these four or five days, even 10 days out, you're watching these storms develop. You got like an invest system now that's kind of flirting around whether it's going to make it to the Gulf or not. Oh, yeah. What you do is you start to track those and then a couple of days out, okay, do I have enough contractual resources? Are all of my drainage inlets clear of debris?

what do they look like in terms of whether we're going to get impacts from water or whether it's resilient? You know, but then coming out of those two storms. Couldn't have been very different for us, you know, so it was, you know, so when we came out of Helene, the first time, the first storm had a lot of water issues, a lot of flooding, you know, a lot of, of drainage systems that just handled much more than they were designed to do. So washouts and those types of things that we're repairing.

Coming out of Milton, because we're on the other side of the storm, we didn't, we had rainfall, you know, tremendous amounts of rainfall, but it was all wind. We've got signs that are twisted. We've got power lights that are down. We still got significant portion of our system that's still running on backup generator. We still don't have power in the system. So, you know, it's about resiliency. And when you look at us, And the people that we serve, the network is the network.

So, you know, we, other than our streetcar system here in Tampa, the system is really a bus based system. So you've got a lot of transit facilities and transit services that are running not only on our system, but the FDOT system and the local system, Pinellas and Hillsborough County, as well as St. Petersburg and the City of Tampa. So we've got to work together as an all hands on deck to make sure the system functions.

So that we can not only evacuate the way we need to evacuate, get people to safe places like shelters, but then recover in a way where you are running fuel supplies up and down the corridor. We had tremendous fuel shortages because the port got shut down.

But as we connect to the other systems, so the three bridges, really, across the water between Tampa and St. Petersburg.

All three of them are owned by the Florida Department of Transportation, so they coordinate with us and say, hey, this one's going to be shut down soon, or this one's going to be shut down soon, and then what we do is, for instance, one of them on the southern side that goes over into downtown St. Petersburg headed towards Tropicana Field, you know, so that one was going to be shut down, so what we needed to do is get out there and shut off the access

The elevator part of the expressway that goes to it so people don't get trapped on it and are able to turn around. The challenge for us is a lot of the system underneath of us was being flooded at the same time, so you've got to kind of work it together. How do you even get there? Yeah, that's right.

You're issuing warnings and saying, please don't go out, please don't go out, but, but the idea was to keep it mobile so, you know, hospital workers can get to the hospital, so the supply chain can keep moving. With a, with a hurricane, once you get to 30, 40 miles an hour, you're pulling even your crews off the system. And saying, hey, we're in a mandatory evacuation zone, you're kind of on your own.

And so, although we have bridges closed and those types of things, there's nobody out there to actually physically stop you from going across that bridge if you decide to go out, but if you run into an issue, you kind of, on your own, it becomes an emergency management type of an issue, but it really is a very, very different type of approach to managing a hurricane versus a snowstorm.

It's like, alright, let's take the pause, let's take a break, and And then let's figure out how we can get out there first light to work on the recovery and assess the damage and inspect all your bridges and those types of things. You wouldn't have to do that in a snowstorm.

although transit service was running to get people to shelters and those types of things through the storm, it's about how do you ramp it back up when you get power restoration? How do you ramp it back up to get people back to their kind of daily lives, but also to keep that supply chain going?

So it really is an all hands on deck communication exercise, as much as it is an operations exercise, saying, You know, somebody like HART will come out and say, hey, we want to start this service back up, or PSTA saying, we're going to start this service back up. We got to make sure the roads open, and we got to make sure we have the system in place to be able to run your routes, because we had, we still have a tremendous amount of people without power.

We still have a tremendous amount of our system that has, you know, a foot plus of standing water as the creeks are rising and those types of things. So those routes, as you know, Paul. You can't redesign those routes on the fly, you know, they work when they work, and so you've got to make sure that that route is open it's not as much us coordinating with them, but it is them coordinating with us and saying, hey, Do I have a whole route here that I can restore?

As you continue to recover.

Hi, I'm Tris Hussey editor of the Transit Unplugged podcast. Now can we up next week on the show, we stay in Florida in Miami, specifically. And we Schneider St. Pru, who is one of the recipients of mass transits, 40 under 40 awards this year. But Schneider also has an amazing. Amazing career trajectory. He started bus operator. Greater over a dozen years ago and he's worked his way up to be general. Superintendent of boss operations for the department of transportation and public works.

Works for Miami Dade county. his career success to hard work. Dedication education. And transit unplugged. Tune in to hear his entire story and his advice. Nice for those of you who also want to climb the career ladder. is brought to you by Modaxo. That Modaxo. We're passionate about moving the world's people and a transit unplugged. We're passionate. What about telling those stories? So until next week ride safe.