The Next Stop: METRO's Podcast Episode 41: Making Safer Streets Andy Skabowski: I take Vision Zero as an opportunity to also really promote the use of transit because we are, you know, not only a cleaner alternative, but we are the safest way to get where you’re going. Laura Whitley: I’m Laura Whitley. In this episode of The Next Stop, the key role METRO’s transit service plays in meeting Vision Zero, Houston’s goal of putting an end to traffic deaths. [Introduction music plays] Laura Whitley: I’m pleased to welcome to The Next Stop, Andy Skabowski. He is METRO’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Andy, thanks for joining us. Andy Skabowski: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Laura Whitley: So, you are responsible with your title for many things at METRO Operations. When you hear “operations,” that’s basically everything that moves, that everything that operates, right? Andy Skabowski: Yep. I mean, some people say, “What do you do?” I say, “If it’s got wheels, I got it.” That’s probably a real simple way of classifying, you know, what I’m charged with. And, you know, it’s just kind of not only the public-facing end and what we actually do every day in the street, and then also, a number of direct departments that affect our ability to put the service out are under my charge. Laura Whitley: Definitely. And then also under your purview are some of the other partnerships and relationships that METRO has as we operate throughout the region, and in this case, today we’re talking about Houston Vision Zero, which is a City of Houston initiative that is really committed to ending traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. We’ve talked about it before on The Next Stop, but METRO really plays an integral role in Houston Vision Zero. So, let’s start, first talk a little bit about what it is generally? Andy Skabowski: Vision Zero is pretty much very self-explanatory. It is a vision to have zero accident fatalities by a certain date. Many cities in the United States have implemented this program, and Houston being one of them. Within the Houston area, also, the County is working on a Vision Zero Plan, and they should be kicking that off soon. But for Houston’s Vision Zero Plan, there are four major goals, and you’re right, METRO is important to those goals. We’re actually—one of those goals is METRO, you know? It sits pretty much on us. So, let’s take a moment and go through the four major goals of Vision Zero with the City of Houston. Laura Whitley: Okay. Andy Skabowski: One is called “Approaches.” It’s the different ways in which they want to implement the program. Another one is making walking and biking safe. A third one is make connections to transit safe, and then lastly, it’s make driving safe. And so, all of those have transit elements in it. Laura Whitley: Because at the end of the day, the underlying principle, as you mentioned, for Vision Zero is that no loss of life is acceptable. I’d love to go through the principles and talk about how METRO is so critical through all of those. So, you mentioned first, “Approaches.” Andy Skabowski: Yes. So, the first is kind of—they have a number of pronged-approach to it. One is trust. It’s to be open with where we’re at with traffic deaths, with the public, with our stakeholder community. Report the results and get feedback. I mean, so one of their main elements of the approach is a trust factor. They want to build this trust factor with the community. Second is looking at safe systems, and so, safe systems both on a design side—meaning design into what we’re doing for streets and communities and transit projections and make sure that safety element is very clearly identified. It’s considered from the beginning to the end, and it’s got that public element in it. But also, when I say, “safe systems,” they also want to look at high-risk spots and really look at the high-risk areas. And, you know, there are certain areas right now that in the City have higher traffic fatalities—take a look at that and break it down and say, “Okay, what are we doing wrong or can be done differently?” And actually go through a re-design process of the high-risk locations. Laura Whitley: So, you’re talking about essentially that there may be some challenges with the actual design of the street layout, the width, that type of thing? Andy Skabowski: Like probably Westheimer has two or three of them. I’ll give you an example—inner Westheimer, through the curves over by Montrose, is an area in which there are higher accidents and traffic fatalities and crashes. And so, it’s really taking a look at those and saying, “Okay, all the different stakeholders, what can we all do to make this different?” From zoning and planning to Houston Public Works and making changes existing to the street to how METRO runs its transit through that area, and so, it’s all-encompassing. One of the other elements to the approach is communication. Again, it goes back to that trust factor. They’ve launched a campaign to spread awareness of both the program and the problem. Another one is education—from school kids to driver training to defensive driving courses. Talk about how to walk, bike, take the bus and use your car. I mean, there are elements of moving, of mobility, and really look at a multimodal approach to the education of people and how to move through the community safely. And the last thing is funding. To make sure when we have conversations about funding and grants and projects that we float in Vision Zero and that we make sure that we’re tying in where we’re spending our money to the overall objects of the project. So, that’s kind of the first goal of Vision Zero. Laura Whitley: And then you also mentioned connection to transit, correct? Andy Skabowski: Yeah, from universal accessibility to our bus stop program—adding bus stops, adding shelters, adding amenities to the bus stop locations. You know, we do have, and we know it, a number of bus stops, which are a flag in the piece of grass on a corner somewhere, and you know, that’s not very accessible. In some cases, it’s hard to get to. Is there a crosswalk near there? I mean, it’s all of these elements that we need to think about now as we move forward. And I mean, we have a general goal internally to improve universal accessibility at our bus stops, which we’re working through. Another one is to increase the number of bus stops and the amenities, and with that, we’ll take into the elements of making that stop and getting to that stop as safe as we can possibly make it. Another important portion of connecting to transit is our BOOST Network. You know, the basis of BOOST is to make the ride safer, faster, more reliable, and more conducive to use, and again, so as we put BOOST stops out, make sure we got all our Vision Zero elements in there. We’re working, and we’ll continue to work, on connecting to the bike network. Again, this is about safe mobility, not only safe driving but safe mobility and multimodal mobility. Laura Whitley: Sure. Andy Skabowski: Generally, also, as we move through METRONext, and we move through our standing projects, that we work in Vision Zero elements into our design and our thought process, and so that way we’re meeting the intent and goal of the project. Laura Whitley: And when you talk about safe mobility, you’re considering safety in terms of safe connections to transit and certainly, safer biking and walking, and that fourth element is safer driving—the behaviors of motorists. You’ve got a whole lot of motorists or drivers there at METRO. I know that safety and training is a key element of that. Andy Skabowski: We have a very stout program to both take any accident we have and break it down to understand its cause, as well as turn it into a lesson learned as we move forward to re-instruct and put it back into the operators we have. I’m very proud of our operators. We have a very, very safe accident record. Our operators are professional. They drive millions of miles every day, and our accident rates are very, very low. And, you know, Houston’s tough on an operator. Our training program is very well established. We hold our operators to a higher standard than somebody who drives a car. You ever hear, you know, you get an accident, and they figure out who is at fault? And you know what? Most of our bus operators are never at fault. But we then say, “Okay, well, if you’re not at fault, was it preventable?” And you go, “What’s preventability?” Well, preventability says that “I’ve done everything that I was trained to possibly do to avert this accident.” That’s a pretty high standard. That’s higher than fault. It really says that “You know, we’ve given you all these training tools, and if we see in the accident review something that you should’ve done differently, then that accident is listed as ‘Preventable.’” And that clicks off a couple of things. The operator has to go through a re-training. We really break that accident down with them and clearly identify what they should’ve or could’ve done differently. And it’s very helpful. I mean, our repeat rate on preventability is very low. Our percentage of preventable accidents to our overall accidents is fairly low as well. And that’s just through this continuous process of working with our bus operators and our rail operators because we have accidents on rail as well. And just when something does happen that shouldn’t have, really capturing that opportunity to re-train and learn from it and do things differently. Laura Whitley: Thank you for explaining that because I know we put a little bit of a pin in that, but I had the opportunity to go out to the training facilities and actually, you know, view some of the training, and I’m always impressed, and I feel like I need to take the class just as a regular motorist. And I wish my teenagers could take the class, too, because really what METRO provides its operators and those who operate the company vehicles, like you said, is way above kind of just your average driver education. For those who don’t have the opportunity to, you know, go through METRO’s excellent training programs, you know, in the context of Vision Zero, what is the focus? Yeah, I think you were getting to that. Andy Skabowski: Yeah, one of the goals is making driving safe, and you know, I’m just going to say this, in Houston and some other cities, there is a culture of speed. We have focused—and most cities and most planning groups—you know, everybody wants to get work at a certain time. Nobody likes sitting in traffic. Everybody wants to get where they’re going, and everybody’s, you know, “It should take me 30 minutes every day to get to where I’m going, and if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong.” And that’s the mindset. And it’s a cultural mindset that, you know, it’s not good to be 10 minutes late to work. You know, what? I’m okay with you being 10 minutes late to work if you drive safely, and that cultural change is part of Vision Zero. Safe speeds, safety over throughput, and that’s a little bit, you know—a lot of the focus is making streets bigger and allowing cars to go faster. Vision Zero is looking at things like, “We’re going to set up a transit lane here, so it can move a bunch of people on one lane, and then in the remaining lanes, we’re going to look at, ‘Well, should this speed be 40? Should it be 35? Should it be 30? Are we in a high-risk area where speed’s probably the biggest factor?’” And yeah, you would expect that to be at 45 miles an hour, but guess what? We’re going to make it 35 miles an hour or whatever number they decide on, and then we’re going to enforce it. I mean, there’s an enforcement element to this. So, it’s really trying to break the culture of speed. The culture of my convenience and my ability to get to work is more important than the safety of myself and my fellow members of the community. It’s looking at what we all can do through design, through public communication, to really focus on the fact that, you know, going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit has real big repercussions. Laura Whitley: Right, right. And actually, and I know that I’ve looked at these statistics before, it generally doesn’t really save you much time at all. It increases the risk exponentially. Andy Skabowski: You know, I’ve always commuted. I’ve always either had to drive a distance, or you know, when I worked at New York City Transit, you know, I was in my 20s, a long time ago. Laura Whitley: That was last week! Andy Skabowski: Yeah! I would leave my apartment way out in Long Island because that’s where, at the time, I was, and I would get on Long Island Railroad. Long Island Railroad, even now, the one thing they are—it might take an hour and ten minutes to do something, but it always took an hour and ten minutes. And so, there’s something to say for, “I know it’s going to take me an hour to get where I’m going every single day,” and then just adjust your life to that. We’ll keep improving our times, but really, you know, it’s pretty darn reliable. You’re going to get where you’re going in about the same time every single day, and you’re not going to be stressed about it. I mean, I take Vision Zero as an opportunity to also really promote the use of transit because we are, you know, not only a cleaner alternative, but we are the safest way to get where you’re going. We really are. We focus so much effort on a safe operation of our vehicles in our training, and it’s a big, safe vehicle. It is the safest way to get where you’re going. Laura Whitley: Wonderful point, Andy. And, you know, I appreciate that so much. And if folks are interested in learning more about Vision Zero, there was another podcast episode here on The Next Stop that solely focuses on that, and then also, there is a website: houstontx.gov/visionzero, where folks can go to learn, and one thing that everybody can do is actually take the Vision Zero Pledge. And that’s a simple pledge where, you know, just to raise everyone’s awareness of different things that we can all do to help meet this goal. But as you mentioned, Andy, really, utilizing METRO and riding transit is one of the safest ways to be on the road. Andy Skabowski: Yeah, and thank you for that. Now, there’ll be more over probably the next year. There’ll be more concrete, specific projects and tasks, you know, from this Vision and of these groups’ different approaches and goals. They’ve put together 20 or 25 specific goals. One of them is METRO supplied an inventory of all of our stops and, you know, which ones we know have been through the universal accessibility, which ones have seen improvements, which ones have shelters. They’re overlaying that on top of other statistical information, like, you know, where are the hazard locations, and you know, how does that fit in with METRONext? I mean, so, there’s a lot of different pieces, and this builds over time. I mean, you’ve got a number of tasks laid out in which METRO has a number itself, and then Vision Zero becomes an important element as we roll out some of our capital projects and METRONext over the coming years. Laura Whitley: Well, thank you so much, Andy Skabowski, METRO Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Thanks for being on The Next Stop today. Andy Skabowski: Thank you. [Music plays] Laura Whitley: That’s all for this edition of The Next Stop. I’m Laura Whitley. If you’d like to check out more episodes, you can find them on our website or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Google Play. And, if you could please do us a favor and leave a rating or review, it’ll help us out a lot. Until next time, drive less, do more with METRO. [Music plays] RMETRO/pti:kh Page 1 of 1