What’s next for regional transit in southeast Michigan?

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Ben Stupka, executive director of the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) of Southeast Michigan.

After nearly four decades of on-again, off-again discussions, Public Act 387 of 2012 established the RTA.

Stupka talks about leading the funding, planning and coordination for all public transit systems across the four-county footprint. Services include D2A2, an express bus service connecting Detroit to Ann Arbor; the Detroit Air Express (DAX), a pilot express bus service connecting downtown Detroit to Detroit Metro Airport; and the MyRide2 mobility management system.

The RTA efforts gained a boost recently with Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield proposing a budget with increased funding for public transit in the city, including the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) bus system and the Detroit People Mover. The RTA operates the Qline.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Preview

Jeff Cranson 0:07

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Recently I spoke with Ben Stupka, who is the executive director of the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan. Ben has been in that role the past few years, having worked there previously before ascending to the top position. He has an extensive background in urban planning and has a great passion for transit and mobility for all, trying to serve all users, trying to coordinate services across Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan, which has been a challenge for a long time. But recently the RTA has made some serious strides with a number of services that they have a hand in, including the Q-Line in downtown Detroit. So he had a lot to say. He talked about how they basically focused on the incremental things that they can get done after very narrowly losing a ballot issue that would have provided solid funding across the region back in 2016. I think you'll enjoy his anecdotes and especially his enthusiasm for what he's doing. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. So, Ben, I uh set this up a little bit in the introduction, but I was hoping that you could, as a first-time guest on the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast, uh give a little bit about yourself and how you came to be the executive director at the Regional Transit Authority for Southeast Michigan, and then we'll delve more into what's ahead for the RTA.

Ben Stupka 1:44

Great. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be on the podcast. Um, so my background, I'm I'm from Southeast Michigan originally. Um, I went to Michigan State and University of Michigan. So I'm I'm uh one of the few that's gone to both. Got my uh my master's degree at U of M and Urban Regional Planning. Um I went out to the Bay Area uh for a few years after I graduated and worked at an agency that actually managed uh local transportation funding for projects as big as light rail and BRT and as small as city current programs and street trees. Um so I got a lot of exposure to delivering capital projects, to funding capital projects, and how to connect planning ideas to delivering projects. Um my dream was always to help uh put regional transit together in Southeast Michigan and bring some of those types of capital projects and interventions to Southeast Michigan. Um so the opportunity to work at the RTA uh came about in about 2014. Um I happily came back with my family, and my and my family's here anyway, so I was uh doubly happy um to work at the RTA. And I spent uh the first uh first few years back here working directly with the RTA. Um then I supported them as a consultant for for many, many years. Um and about three years ago, and coming back about three years ago, uh they uh gave me the honor of being the executive director. So it's uh it's been a ride with them in in many capacities, but I've seen every part of the RTA.

Why Creating The RTA Mattered

Jeff Cranson 3:17

Yeah. So um let's talk about establishing the RTA. Um, I was actually pretty new in the job at MDOT when we got it over the finish line in 2012. It was, I think, kind of clouded out by so many other things going on during that same legislative session, lame duck 2012, I'm sure you remember. Um, but it was a big deal. And Bill Rustum, who was Governor Snyder's policy director and had done a similar job 40 years earlier for Governor Milliken, uh, remarked at the time that, you know, we've been trying to do this for 40 years, try to consolidate and have some kind of central planning for regional transit in Southeast Michigan. And sounds easier than it is, right? So and you weren't involved then in that effort legislatively, but I'm sure you were following it closely. So just I guess talk about just how important it was, even though there was a ways to go and still is, just to get it established in legislation.

After 2016: Staying Optimistic

Ben Stupka 4:14

Yeah, I mean, the the the history, I uh um I think 40 years is probably right. And I know actually one of the first efforts I was involved in um when back when I was at Michigan State as an undergrad, and then and then my uh first position after that was actually some early establishment of the DARTA legislation. Um, so that was legislation to consolidate agencies and look at um um actually doing regional transit that ended up dying uh right at the end of Governor Engler's term. There was another effort after that that I kind of sat through as a more of an advocate to see if they could get um better coordination between Smart and D dot. That was probably the early, early 2000s, like 2003, four, five range. Um, and then it kind of died out again. And then uh finally we, I think got the right kind of the right size and scale and partnership together in terms of the four counties that we represent, Wayne, Washington, Macomb, and Oakland, um, you know, including the city of Detroit, kind of got all those leaders together um to say, hey, let's let's kind of put this, let's stitch this together at the county level so that it can it can be, well, it's about coordinating the transit providers, it's also about kind of coordinating at that county level um and city of Detroit level. And with those leaders coming together, um, what we've seen over the last 10 years is uh being able to use the mechanism of the RTA to continue to kind of evolve the improvement of transit through through those kind of county and city of Detroit relationships. I think that's been a really powerful glue that's held us together in this effort that's a little bit different than the ones in the past.

Jeff Cranson 5:53

So you knew growing up in Michigan and going to to college in Michigan about the the divide, the historical divide between the city of Detroit and the suburbs. Um, but you really saw it in stark relief as as this moved forward. Um and so after getting the RTA established in 2012, a ballot issue went forward in 2016 that would have provided funding uh across, you know, the whole region. Um and it narrowly missed, I think uh maybe not even one percent, very close. You know, a lot of people could have just thrown up their hands then and said, look, we tried, we gave it our all. You know, this is never gonna happen. Um you came along a few years later to take over. You were working there then, but to take over executive director. How do you keep your your faith and your optimism that uh things can things can still happen?

Ben Stupka 6:45

Um that's a great question. It's uh yeah. Um you know, it's the it's the people we it's the people we work with, it's the it's the um it's the issue itself. I I you know the reason I'm so passionate about it, and I I really love the issue and what I say to people is um, you know, when I grew up and I went went to school and I was trying to decide what I wanted to do, and I kind of got in this idea of urban planning, and I started thinking about things like affordable housing, and I started thinking about things like sustainability, and I started thinking about things like education and you know, all these different pieces of kind of creating better communities. And all the conversations I was in um transit, in particular in Southeast Michigan, transit and transportation came up in every single one of those conversations. Every time I talked about a different issue, healthcare, whatever you name, it always came up as something that was important. And it just kind of struck me that this is an issue that could unlock so much opportunity for so many people, um, that uh it just it just kind of was something that I I wanted to see. And then um just growing up in in Southeast Michigan and kind of having that idea of like, yeah, I didn't really taking the bus is not, I mean taking the bus to school, and you know, obviously not something we did, but it just it wasn't something that that we grew up with, even though they're all around us, and it just wasn't something we grew up with. Like, why is that? What's like you know, why why culturally are we here?

Jeff Cranson 8:08

So I'm sure it came up for myriad reasons in those conversations. You heard, you know, everybody had kind of their own reason, but what were the overall themes? Was it a was it a social justice thing, or was it uh this is how I'm gonna keep my kids here after they graduate and come back, or was it just all of that?

Ben Stupka 8:25

Uh in terms of uh why like the benefit of transit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you yeah, um, so there I would say that there's there's a uh it's almost always j jobs and connectivity to jobs. Um, and that comes from I I'd say two perspectives. So we hear it and kind of very obviously from people who are job seekers um and want to be able to, you know, get a reliable way to get their job without owning a car. As we all well know, it's very, very expensive, if not the most expensive, to own a car in Southeast Michigan, particularly in the city of Detroit. So there's a there's a large kind of that sort of that perspective. The other perspective that we don't really think about as much, but is but is just as um salient is the small business owners, right? It's the people who need people to get to their jobs and and be able to have reliable transportation and the idea of um having to retrain somebody and and all those all those costs that go in with that. Um so that that's another piece that we've heard about, and I'd say even more and more and more as businesses expand um and business opportunities. Um, so this is kind of the third piece, it's that business attraction. So another big thing that um really uh we weren't able to get everything done the way we wanted to, but I remember uh in 2019, 18, 19 when Amazon was looking for headquarters, and we all kind of tried to get together. And that was one of the things we heard uh back from them was that they weren't interested in Southeast Michigan because we didn't have a comprehensive regional transit system. So it it it's it's not only the person getting to the job, the small business who needs a person at their job, but it's also uh an economic competitiveness issue. And it in in some ways it's cost us um, you know, the opportunity for uh attracting large, large businesses and large headquarters and those types of things.

Jeff Cranson 10:14

Yeah, I saw it in in committee meetings in the legislature when talking about transit, when transit operators would come to make their case for, you know, local bus operating funds and what they needed. And it was surprising at the number of lawmakers who didn't think about the large retailers in their districts. They were in the suburbs, and that's where the malls are, and that's where the big shopping centers are. And those are the workers that the the people who run those businesses need to get there. So it seems like a no-brainer, but you really have to spell it out, don't you?

Ben Stupka 10:44

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll I'll never forget uh, you know, one of the early things the RTA did with uh Smart and D D Dot was we worked to establish what is now called the FAST service. So on Woodward, Grash, and in Michigan, Smart operates a service called FAST, which basically is a limited stop service, stops every two or three miles. Um, but it's been in uh the RTA helped get that started back in 20 uh 2016-17, uh using using some LBO money and some kind of our coordination authority to do that. And I remember early on getting on that service, maybe after it'd been running about six months, I wrote it. I think I was running down to a Tigers game. It was on the weekend. I got on maybe at three in the afternoon. Every single person on there had a uniform from a job.

Jeff Cranson 11:27

Interesting.

Ben Stupka 11:27

Every single it was fulls, packed fulls, the middle of the middle of a weekend, you know, early early afternoon on a weekend. Every single person was coming or going to a job. Except for me, I was going to the Tigers. But maybe some other folks too go to the Tigers game. But but I was like, this is exactly what we're talking about here. Like, there's people and then people go to jobs at mall, different types of jobs, all kinds of stuff. I was like, this is exactly what we're doing here. This is the point of getting good quality service up and running, is to buy provide those connections to jobs, let alone connections to healthcare and other community resources. I mean, you can kind of spread the gamut, um, but it's really that it's that job and opportunity connection that you know keeps me coming back. Um, when you get to see someone like that and be on the boss seat, and it just makes you makes you want to keep doing it, you know.

Jeff Cranson 12:13

Well, you know what? I want to talk about that a little bit. I mean, there was a really interesting story in Axios Detroit this week. Uh, and I thought it was probably you thought really good news for you to hear that Mayor Sheffield is very invested in this. She sees it as a as an important uh priority for the things that she wants to do on the city and her agenda. And I wanted to get your take on the discussion about maybe making some improvements to the people mover, which with the success of the Lions and the Tigers the last few years, that's had to have made a huge difference in their ridership, right?

Ben Stupka 12:46

Yeah, absolutely. Um so both the people mover and in the in the Q-line streetcar have um actually really rebounded very nicely out out of the pandemic um in terms of ridership numbers, um, getting close to, if not exceeding, pre-pandemic numbers. Um so and and no small part is that dude, you know, it's good. It's uh it's nice to have really competitive sports teams in a, you know, in the sports town where all the all the arenas are next to each other. And uh it's great to have a great convention and visitors bureau and tracting all the you know all the different events that we have downtown um for those services. But um I think both the Q-line and the People Mover are are you know looking to uh figure out how we can continue to take advantage of it, how we can work together to take advantage of those things. Um and they've been doing, particularly the People Mover, uh, they've been doing some really cool branding stuff and events and really activating the space. I mean, all their stations are in like these really cool old buildings and artwork. They're really trying to kind of explore like what are the other positive aspects of this service? How is it a cultural community asset beyond just the loop that you can ride? Um and I think they've done a really good job the last uh last several years um kind of figuring out how do we rebrand ourselves a little bit. Um doesn't hurt that they have a sponsorship to make it free. The QIN is also free. Um, that just you know makes it that much easier. Free. Well, free to the rider. Free to the rider. It is, it is, you know, there's some public money that goes to support it. Um, but uh, you know, we often say both for both services, I kind of think of them as like the front door to regional transit. So I think about a region where not a lot of people, particularly people within the region, take transit. Um, and if the first opportunity they may have to take it or they may want to take it could be the is often the QI or the people mover. So we can make those experiences as easy, as pleasant, and as fun as possible, it gets them, you know, kind of comfortable uh trying out something. Maybe then they try a fast bus, maybe they try one of our express buses, and we kind of just kind of can let bring them into it's okay, you can get on a transit vehicle. You know, it's it's it's fine.

Jeff Cranson 15:03

Um no, I think you're right. I think that that that gets them comfortable with the the concept. And then the more you do something successfully, the more you're willing to try something related. But I wanted to comment on your when you talk about the stadiums all being downtown. Um, you probably don't remember this, but there was a sports illustrated story shortly after uh the palace opened. And uh Coleman Young was quoted at the time because somebody for the Pistons, I don't know if it was Davison or somebody else, said, you know, hey, you can define the city in myriad ways, and certainly Auburn Hills is part of the city, you know, writ large. And Coleman Young said Poppycock, the city is where the freeways merge.

Ben Stupka 15:42

Yeah.

Jeff Cranson 15:43

If he had lived to see these stadiums all come back downtown and be centrally located and have LCA and Ford Field and Comerica Park, which I assume will be changing its name soon because of the bank merger, um, all in the same place. That's just that that that kind of you know synergy, um, overlap is great for lots of things. And you guys are doing the stuff you're doing at just the right time to capitalize on that, I think.

Ben Stupka 16:08

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I and I would say and uh we've certainly had a lot of success even with uh we have our new express, newer express bus services. They're a couple of years old. One connects downtown Detroit to downtown Ann Arbor. That's called D2A2. Uh, we have another one that connects uh downtown Detroit to the airport express, just one stop, you know, one stop stops at both terminals in downtown. Um both of those airport expresses is almost three years old. D2H is about four years old. And we've seen uh just ridership every year, up and up and up and up and up. Um it just continues to go really, really well. And the more events we have, um, not only for the regional traveler, but now we're seeing people you know from out of town coming in and using the service. It's uh it's really great. Um, and just another way to kind of get people out there.

Jeff Cranson 16:56

Yeah. So as that momentum builds, it eventually creates the case for uh a BRT, a dedicated lane to the airport, or uh possibly commuter rail, right? That's uh that's all stuff that we aspire to.

Small Ball Strategy And Community Transit

Ben Stupka 17:09

Yeah, absolutely. And that's and I think that's really the approach we've taken. You know, we talked earlier about the 2016 ballot initiative. I often say, you know, the if you look at that, we we tried to kind of uh w e kind of tried to hit a home run in one swing, right? Yeah, um, and we got it out. I mean, it we got out there. It went out, it hit kind of hit the top of the fence and bounced into someone's glove, unfortunately. But um, since that time, we've taken a little bit more of a deliberate of deliberate approach and tried to kind of hit some hit some singles, hit some doubles, you know, like just get on baits, take a walk if you have to. Just keep keep getting things out there, keep getting keep making improvements, keep positive stories up, keep working with different communities. Uh, one of the things we often talk to the legislators about that's been a really successful model in the last several years is uh making investments and supporting what we call community services. So these are the services in kind of the more suburban and rural areas in our region. Uh, you know, think of places like Lake Orion, places like Highland Township, places like Chelsea, places like Richmond, uh, where they have, they're working together with a couple of surrounding townships. They have their own community service. Um, and those services have been growing and growing, growing, as particularly as people are aging in place and the demographics are shifting even more there. Um, we've seen tons of ridership increases there. Um, and it's just given us the opportunity to continue to work with them and kind of bring them into the regional system. And how do we kind of just grow those partnerships to really maintain that, like it's so maintains a community ownership model. Um, but we're starting to bring a little bit more regional resource and focus to them. So we're growing that part of it as well, which has been really good.

Jeff Cranson 18:51

That's yeah, that's great. And uh you'll never go wrong with baseball metaphors on my podcast. So I figured stay with us. We'll have more on the other side of this important message.

How The Region’s Services Fit Together

MDOT Message 19:03

The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you that when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, person, or other object, it is a crash, not an accident. By reducing human error, we can prevent crashes and rebuild Michigan roads safely.

Jeff Cranson 19:17

Talk a little bit about the future. I mean, I think a lot of people probably don't know uh what you're already doing. I think after that 2016 ballot issue, many people, especially out state, kind of tuned out to the RTA and what it's doing. And like you said, in the meantime, you were playing small ball and and picking away at what you could do. So you've got to roll with the Q line and some other things. You talked about SMART a little bit, you talked about D dot, but kind of lay out what all of those services are and how you work to interweave them.

The Transit App And MyRide2 Concierge

Ben Stupka 19:49

Sure. So uh so at a at a very high level, the um there's kind of five larger services in our region. So there's D Dot, which is in the city of Detroit, there's SMART, which is basically the suburban metro Detroit area. Um, and they do serve within the city on a couple of routes as well. There's the Ride, which covers most of Ann Arbor, uh, Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. And then there's the Q line and the People Mover, which are kind of in the downtown. And then outside of that, there's kind of community, small community providers, townships, partnerships, Q partnerships at um at city level, you know, maybe like the city of Sterling Heights Senior Center has a couple of buses. So we have a pretty large ECUP system. Um so a couple of the key things that we've done recently to work, so what we do is we all work together and we talk about what makes sense for us to coordinate on, what's the best thing we can do. We, you know, and it might not be everything, but so we when we kind of come up with that idea and that concept collectively, um, that's what we use our master planning process to do. We say, all right, the RTA is going to take you know the lead on this one. And most of them will take kind of the early lead because we're small, we can move much more quickly. Um, you know, we can kind of get things up and running. So a really good example of something we've done recently is uh the transit app. Um, so this is a uh an app anybody can download. You can actually download it for free anywhere. Um, but we have in our region, so this covers all the providers I talked about, um, an upgraded version. So you can plan trips across all the providers. You can uh book trips on a couple of the flex services that are that uh run. Uh Smart runs some and the ride run some. You can pay for services, um, and you can get real-time information. So you come into our region, download the transit app. It's an upgraded version totally for free for anybody. Uh, one way to get information about anything you want to do in transit. So that's something we launched in November. Um we're already seeing you know 20, 30% increases in usage over the last uh couple of months. So it's been going really, really well. So that's just like an example. Um, another one that uh we don't promote as much, but I always like to say is that we partner with uh Ageways, which was formerly an area agency at Aging 1B, uh kind of quasi-governmental organization. Uh, they run a service in partnership with us called My Ride 2. Um, really cool models. You can call 1855 MyRide2 in any one of our four counties. You can go to myride2.com. If you're a senior, if you're a person with disability, if you're a caregiver and you want any kind of transportation option you can think of. Anything from smart buses or like the Q-line streetcar to non-emergency medical private services and anything in between. There's basically a concierge service that you can you can call and they'll help figure out, hey, what is your issue? What can we help you? What is a mobility option for you? So yeah, that's just a couple examples.

Jeff Cranson 22:47

Yeah, and the big challenge is education and making the people who could benefit from that aware, right? I mean, I Phoenix Mobility, I'm sure you're familiar with them and what they're doing in the first mile, last mile area. Um how do you get the word out so that the people that could actually benefit from this know about it?

Mobility For All And Funding Oversight

Ben Stupka 23:03

Yeah, I mean, that's the that's the challenge. That's why we do things like this. That's why we do things like, you know, just kind of making sure we're communicating clearly about some of those entry point things, like something like the transit app is one of those things where if people just know it exists, it's really easy to use. And at the very least, if you download it, if you're in Southeast Michigan, you download it and say you live in Troy, um, and you've never thought about take, take a look. And you might you just look, be like, oh, there's actually a lot of transit options I could take from here. I just never even thought about it. Um, I just didn't come up. And just getting people over that knowledge of what's there and got to give them multiple ways to get that knowledge. And then it's one of the hardest, most challenging things to do, and it's probably like this with anything, is getting people to take that first ride. Just take that first ride, just try it once. Um, that's again where the Q line and other services help. Um, Smart has been doing a lot of really good work. They did a really cool, uh, uh cool cool programming for like Valentine's Day. They did some shuttles downtown. Uh, they called it like Smart After Dark, but just getting people that to get back and forth. Um, we did a lot in the draft, the NFL draft. I know that was just an over weekend event, but I think we had like 200,000 transit riders in that couple of day period. There was crazy the interesting that. Yes. It was so it was, and a lot of those people were first-time riders, but it but it made sense, right? Because you couldn't really, really, really hard to access any other way. Um, and we were and we were able to put some special services again, smart, smart and d odd and others put some special services together to for that event. But it's really kind of you know, getting people, getting that first time to just just try it. Um, and then, you know, if it's just something that people start to see as a semi-viable option, maybe it's not something you do every day, but if you're like, oh, I could take the bus once or twice a week, um, you know, it's a it's a good option. If parking prices go up and all which they are, right? Um, you know, just having that option out there for people.

Jeff Cranson 25:09

So they didn't really think about this 40 years ago, but going to your point about um the elderly or people with disabilities and you know the imperative of mobility for all. Um does the RTA have a role in what the people mover is talking about and trying to make it more accessible?

Ben Stupka 25:28

Uh in terms of making the people mover more accessible? Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. So we um so uh we have a we have a couple roles. One of the key things that we do is we do uh we do a regional, it's called the Mobility for All Plan, is what we brand it as. Um, but it's uh it's a mandated plan where you have to provide uh strategies to help people with disabilities and seniors. Yeah, it's a federally mandated plan. It's actually called just for your audience, because I know they may actually, it's actually called the Coordinated Human Services Transportation Plan. But we don't tell because no one no one ever that's the FTA name for it. We don't we don't call it that though, because it no one would tune out mobility for all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we call it mobility for all. Um uh so we update that and then every two years we actually do a call for projects uh with some of the federal funding that flows through the RTA. Um, and we get that we get that funding out to community services, but also for um the people movers receive some funding to upgrade, you know, get ADA upgrades at their stations. Um uh the MyRai2 service I talked about before is funded through that. So we actually have an investment program. And I think one of the things for uh for folks who are listening that we didn't touch base on, but one of the key roles that the RTA has is that all the federal and state funding that comes to the region actually flows through the RTA. So we always are trying to balance kind of making sure we get that out to the providers and get that as close to the street as possible. That's you know job kind of job number one. But then also, you know, making sure when it's going, when it's going to the providers, what are they doing with it? Is it advancing a regional goal? Are we, you know, so we do have kind of that oversight ability um that to say, hey, look, can we make an adjustment here? Can we make an adjustment here? Could we kind of try this pilot? Can we try that pilot? Let's make sure we're working together. So we have a we have a little bit of a little bit of a stick. We don't, you know, we try and make it make it oh yeah, no, I mean as much as possible.

Motor City Myths And Talent Attraction

Jeff Cranson 27:33

But yeah, yeah, it's comparable to what MDOT does with the transit agencies across the state. So that makes a lot of sense. So um lastly, I want you to talk about your perceptions and research and what you've learned over the years um in talking to counterparts around the country, because it's widely believed. And I don't know if this is we've oversold this as the phenomena that that's the real reason that it was so difficult to establish transit, uh reliable transit in Detroit, is just because it's the motor city and there were powers that really wanted everybody to own their own car. I mean, there was an economic uh imperative there, right? And even though before it became motor city, it had a a pretty robust streetcar system with a lot of public transportation. But you know, when you think about other cities in the Midwest, um Cleveland obviously had a lot of auto production. Um, but when you talk to others that aren't from the Midwest, are they kind of shocked at how difficult it's been for a city that size to get this moving?

Ben Stupka 28:35

Yeah, I I would say that there's some surprise. I think people, again, they ascribe the motor city label and they and they have the same kind of perception you talked about. I would say that, you know, from my perspective, the you know, the automakers and others um you know see having good transit as a quality of life and job and talent attraction issue. I mean, they get it. They're they were supportive of us in 2016. I mean, they get it. You know, that's they need to attract talent to maintain their businesses, and they're looking at evolving their businesses, right? I mean, that's a huge thing. They're looking at what's the future of mobility, you know, mobility technology and all those things. So they hey know they need the brains that want to live here to help them do that. So um I think they t absolutely understand it. I don't think they see it as a competition thing in any way, shape, or form from my perspective. Obviously, that's maybe there's rose-colored glasses there, but that's no, I think that's evolved.

Jeff Cranson 29:32

I think you're right. I think that I think that for a lot of people it's about, you know, whether it's the train or a bus, it's the ability to do something else, you know, while you're commuting, so that you, you know, you're not glued to a steering wheel. And um, you know, everybody says their commute is 20 minutes no matter how long it really is. So I I've thought that that would be a huge factor for a a younger set of people who are, you know, very technologically plugged in and would say, you know, I don't mind giving up my car so that I can get stuff done.

Ben Stupka 30:02

Yeah, and and I would also say, I mean, there's um, you know, for younger folks, I mean, the the ability to own a home, uh, just affordability in general, we know is a is a huge issue across the board. Um, right. So more than ever. Yeah. More than ever. Uh and and uh particularly for for folks you know younger than me. Um the and and so just having those options, having them be affordable, it it's all part of you know being able to attract and retain, you know, retain people here in in this region. Yeah.

Closing Thoughts And Where To Find More

Jeff Cranson 30:36

Well, we could go on forever. You guys have a lot going on, and I'm really happy for everything that's happened and the progress. And I I think um I think your approach has been really good in saying, you know what, we're not gonna go for the grand slam again. We're gonna try to see what we can do on an incremental basis. And you've made made a lot of strides. So that's right. You can win, you know, you can win championships that way. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean Ty Cobb's era, that's all they did. So, yeah, thanks, Ben. I appreciate uh you taking time to talk about this. Yeah. I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Machine Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or BuzzSprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, and Jacke Salinas, who posts the podcast to various platforms and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.