Lisa Walton — SFMTA

Lisa Walton is the CTO of SFMTA, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (aka Muni), and is responsible for one of the largest and most complex transit regions in North America. She needs to interact with over 20 different agencies and services around the Bay Area, not to mention all the people within the city and county of San Francisco. And the biggest challenges are seamless travel and getting the right information to people at the right time. One of Lisa's biggest projects recently has been a total overhaul of Muni's customer information system. Lisa and her team replaced a 20-year-old plus system--a system you couldn't even get parts for anymore--with a state-of-the-art system that gives riders all the information they need to get where they are going. Her system goes well beyond "the next bus will be here in 5 minutes" information to capacity information and soon ways to adjust your trip based on real-time conditions.

Listen to Lisa's interview with Paul and learn all about that and more about the technology that runs Muni.

Also on Transit Unplugged News and Views this week:

• Transit news of the week
• Elea Carey on marketing to keep riders riding
• Mike Bismeyer tells the story of how one agency came together in a tragedy in the transit family
• Paul talks about his newly released book and book launch at APTATransform next week

Next week on Transit Unplugged In-Depth we have Vernon Everitt, Transit Commissioner for the City of Manchester in the UK.

If you have a question, comment, or would like to be a guest on the show, email us at [email protected].