How Do You Reinvent a Transit Agency? Inside SEPTA’s New Playbook

Hey, I'm Paul Comfort, and this is Transit Unplugged, America's leading public transportation podcast, where we talk to transit leaders from around the world, and they take us inside their operations and show us what it's like to run them and what they're working on. Today I'm excited to have with us my friend Scott Sauer. He's general manager of the sixth-largest transit system in America, SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He talks about the projects they're working on, the funding situation they find themselves in, new rail cars, uh, in the near future, hopefully, and so much more, how they're w- focused on safety and customer service, and of course, the nation's 250th anniversary. July 4, 1776, the founders of America, the framers of the Declaration of Independence, signed it there in Philadelphia at Independence Hall. We talk about that. We talk about the World Cup, what's going on right now as we're recording, and so much more.

Join us on this special episode where we dive into all things Philadelphia. Also, you'll notice behind me a brand-new setup in my office where we're recording podcasts from now that we've gone all video. I'm working on creating a better look for the background here on our podcast. Let me know what you think about it, and for now, let's jump into, this interview with Scott Sauer.

Scott, good to be with you there in Philadelphia on America's 250th anniversary. Couldn't be more appropriate Oh, it's an exciting time in Philadelphia. I mean, uh, we, we've been gearing up for for, for about four and, uh, um and you know, everybody's, everybody who's involved in anything here in Philly, uh, has had this date circled on their calendar for a long time. America's 250th, the World Cup, the baseball All-Star Game, there's just so much going on over about a 40-day stretch.

I mean, it's, it's really exciting to be part of it That is pretty cool, man. Yeah, so Independence Hall. I, actually the last time I was there in Philadelphia, we visited and toured that. that's where the actual Declaration of Independence was signed, right?

That's right. That's right. The actual Declaration of Independence, the actual Liberty Bell is there. growing up in Philadelphia, you know, you, you don't really take the time to, you know, wander around and notice the, all the histo- history that surrounds the city.

But, but when you go down there and you're part of it and you're, you're walking the, cobblestone streets and looking in some of the old historic buildings, it, it really does strike you how old this city is and how much an integral part of the formation of the country it was. you as now the general manager now, uh, for over a year now, and acting before that, uh, after Leslie, uh, Richards left, you've already started to build, uh, a great reputation in the industry as a, uh, phenomenal general manager who's come in and grabbed ahold of a tough situation, uh, and helped turn it and steer the ship in the direction the city wants to go and your board does.

But let's first talk a little bit about the agency itself, Scott. Give us a breakdown of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA as it's known there in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yeah, sure. I mean, we're, we're, uh, commonly referred to as the sixth largest transit agency in the country.

Uh, we are multimodal. We are one of very few that actually have all the d- various modes of surface transportation, and we run them all with our own folks. we have buses, trolley buses, or what we call trackless trolleys here in Philadelphia. we have subways, surface trolleys that also run underground, so, uh, so you know, one of the oldest trolley systems, uh, in the country.

Uh, we also have a paratransit service, uh, which we do contract out the operation of the paratransit service, but we manage it in-house. So, uh, you know, we, we cover a, a broad base of, modes and systems, and what, what somewhat makes us even more unique is that SEPTA was formed by the, an act of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and it was meant to absorb and take over all these defunct, uh, bankrupt privately owned transit agencies. And, and what that did for SEPTA is it actually made it even a bigger challenge to manage insomuch as no two rail systems within SEPTA are the same.

if you take our two subway lines, which are our, our main arteries, our north-south and our east-west lines, no two trains can run on each other's line. They have different track gauges, different power collection systems, Oh man different, platform heights. It's all, it, I couldn't, If I put this together, if I put SEPTA together as a business plan, a business model for a bank to invest in, everybody would laugh me out of here, 'cause it was ju- it's just im- so amazing to have put together a system of systems and now try to run it as a single entity.

It's really been, been something to do. And yet you've spent your whole career there learning it from the inside out, right? Tell us about that. Take us on your journey Yeah.

I, uh, I started as a trolley operator at the age of 19. was second generation. My father before me, uh, worked, uh, for SEPTA. He was, uh, he finally retired in 1995 with 30 years.

Uh, he star- actually started with Philadelphia Transportation Company, which was the predecessor to SEPTA. uh, so he started there, finished his 30 years at SEPTA in '95. I came into the company in 1990 as a teenager, and I operated trolleys for a short time. I also operated our Market-Frankford Line cars.

I went back to the trolleys for an even shorter time, and then became, started my journey through management. I was a transportation supervisor, a district dispatcher. I was a safety officer. I spent the middle 12 years of my career in the safety department.

So I went from a safety officer position up through the various levels within safety to eventually becoming the head of the safety division, uh, in 2013. Uh, went from there back to operations as the head of operations in 2017, became the COO, which me- well, so, which only meant that I absorbed more responsibility, the police department, the engineering forces, and, uh, I did that in 2022, and then eventually became the GM. and, you know, the most common question I get is, "Did you always wanna be GM when you started as a Yeah.

kid?" And the short answer to that is no. Yeah. No, I, I just wanted to get from one day to the next day.

I had no idea that I would one day run the organization. That's amazing. And, uh, and structure-wise, do you have a board, and how does all that work? Because you cover multiple jurisdictions, not just the city of Philadelphia, right?

Yeah, we do. We, uh, we have a 15-member board, uh, that is comprised of representatives of the five counties that SEPTA serves. That's Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery Counties. Uh, we also have a representative on our board that's appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania, and we also have representatives on the board each from the majority and minority parties, uh, in both the Senate and the House, uh, Ah.

In the general assembly in Harrisburg. That's interesting. I've never heard of that before. That's interesting yeah, so the state, the state, the, the governor's house has a, has a say, but so do all the, the, the, the parties in Harrisburg Yeah.

yeah all pitch in money? I mean, is ev- all those groups, uh, add into your budget? They do. Uh, so the state is the biggest, uh, obviously c- subsidizer of SEPTA.

they give us most of our operating and capital combined. each of the five counties has to contribute 15% of, uh, combined of what the state provides. Okay So, it's essentially the county contribution unlocks the state contribution. So if, if the county somehow could not fulfill that 15% obligation, the state would only provide that portion that matches the percentage up to the, that matches 15%.

So, the counties have to really kick in their share first, uh, but the state determines what that share is. Okay but that's both the state and the counties, and then of course the federal government, contributes mostly to our capital funding. Uh, so we get, state, federal, local, subsidies to run our operation, and then what's left comes either from the farebox or from non-farebox revenue And how's ridership doing? Ridership is, is really starting to climb now.

Uh, it really started to take off back in February, March, and we've had our highest ridership days, in six years all in the last couple months. And, and that's not just of course, due to the events. The events didn't j- they, they just started, uh, within the last, uh, week or so. really this goes back to when the weather broke from, from winter into Spring Yeah um, and we s- really started to see people migrate over.

We come off one of the most difficult years I can ima- I, I can remember in SEPTA's, uh, history, at least the history I've been part of. and I think that really, uh, hurt us on ridership, and only now, you know, from February on, are we really starting to recover the riders that we lost during those troubled year, du- during that troubled year. But now even starting to push us, higher than, than we had, uh, we had been. So, so both a good, a, a, a bad story last year, but quickly forming into a really positive story now That's great.

And like what kinda numbers are you talking about on a high day? So on a high day, we are now approaching about 870,000. Um, you know, and that, and that's a difference of about what we were doing about a million prior to 2020. we're, we're, we're getting a lot closer to being… Well, we're, we're certainly closer to being consistently above 800,000 on a daily basis, which gets us to about 80% of what our ridership was prior to 2020.

and if you had talked to us back in the, really down days of, uh, of 2020, 2021, we would have told you that to be t- to be 80% of our ridership again in five years, that was kind of the goal, right? That was what the industry was talking about. it took us a little bit longer than five years, but we're finally back to 80%, and growing. Uh, like I said, we're, we're seeing some high days approaching around 870.

So now the next milestone for us is 90%. We gotta get to 900k Yeah and, uh, so we, we know, we, we believe we can, we can do that in short, in a short amount of time Some of the headlines out of the industry over the last year have been financial issues there at SEPTA. Do you feel like you've turned a corner? Are you still, still having big challenges, or where are you at?

we had a structural deficit, we still do. Um, we were reporting, when I first took over as GM, we were reporting a $240 million structural deficit. We managed to get it down to 213 million through the course of austerity and cuts and management pay freezes. and we did that coming out of this year now.

Our fiscal year ends at the end of June, going into fiscal '27, beginning July 1st, we will report, uh, $192 million structural deficit. That is all, that, that 50 or $50 million reduction is all due to structural changes we made within SEPTA in the last 18 to 24 months. cause our subsidies really only changed slightly. and we still don't have that structural deficit filled.

that probably won't happen until the upcoming fiscal year, uh, and it has to happen in the General Assembly. That's all the problems, all, all the, the fight that we were having last year, was to fill that structural deficit. Uh, instead, the governor, what the governor's solution or what SEPTA's proposed solution to the governor finally was, is let us use our capital funds plug the operating deficit for the next two years, and this was year one. Starting July 1, that's year two.

So by this time next year, absent a solution from Harrisburg, will be having the same conversations we were having last year. and that would be very unfortunate because we are starting to turn a corner Yeah. Well, you've got a good story to tell now, it sounds like. That's great.

You know, I was mentioning our guest, uh, in - with you that our guest last week on the podcast was John Sisson from Delaware DART, and, uh, Lilia Montoya, who is, uh, his replacement after he's retiring. So tell us how you two guys integrate, because, uh, I actually rode a SEPTA train that was contracted to Delaware DART while I was there. We talked about it on the TV show we were filming. That's right.

John, John has been a great partner for SEPTA. I mean, uh, you know, uh, Delaware DOT is, is a great partner to SEPTA. They, they have actually purchased, when SEPTA bought their Silverliner V cars back in 2010 to 2012, the state of Delaware actually purchased cars, of their own that are labeled the State of Delaware. and they purchased from SEPTA, trips into Delaware down Okay south as Newark, Delaware.

So we, we go through four stations in Delaware, Claymont, Wilmington, uh, Churchmans Crossing, and Newark. so Delaware pays SEPTA to run that service, you know, down in, down through to Delaware. Yeah we, we get a great deal of, of, of customers that either are going from Delaware into Philly, but just as importantly, we're g- seeing, uh, travel from Philadelphia into Delaware. Uh, you know, Delaware, as you know, Delaware has a, great, uh, business, leading business in Yeah in Chase, JPMorgan Chase.

They are, th- so they see a lot of employees reverse commuting out of Pennsylvania into Delaware. so yeah, so John and his team, uh, they've been really great to work with. They worked with us on, on renovating, uh, well, actually, they did the renovation. We were just kind of a partner for them, to renovate Claymont Station recently.

It's a beautiful station. Um, you know, they really did a, a great job down there, and John's done a great job, and he's in the, the last, uh, stages of his time with, with Delaware, and we'll miss him, but really looking forward to working with Lilia Thanks for listening to the Transit Unplugged Podcast. We are so glad you're here. If you're enjoying this show, we know you'll love our other transit industry programs.

On Transit Unplugged TV, Paul Comfort explores the food, culture, and transit systems around the globe. You get to see everything. You'll love this show. And every week we also offer up the Transit Unplugged News Minute, where you can get the latest industry headlines in less than 60 seconds.

You can find out more at transitunplugged.com. Now back to Paul Comfort for this edition of the award-winning Transit Unplugged Podcast Something else that's happening right now, over my shoulder people can see the FIFA, uh, soccer ball, or football as they call it, uh, which is the FIFA World Cup, and Philadelphia is one of the 11 cities in the U.S.

Um, you just had a couple games. The day we're recording this, you're having a game, and you've got some more. Talk to us about the role of SEPTA in getting the tens of thousands of fans to those games. Yeah, it's, it's been really, really exciting.

Uh, you know, one thing SEPTA takes, uh, takes pride in is doing big things. Uh, you know, over the last decade we've supported, uh, uh, the World Meeting of Families, we've supported the Democrat National Convention, we've supported two Eagles Super Bowl parades. but this is the real, this is a real test for us. Uh, the un- this is unlike all those events where we're moving people from various locations to a central location, and then moving them out of that central location back where they came from.

the World Cup and the Semiquincentennial, and eventually the baseball All-Star Game make it so much different, particularly the World Cup. People are coming from all points to different locations, most of whom, of course, are going to the sports complex, which is great for us, but we also have a free fan fest for folks, uh, over near our art museum, eh, you know, in the park and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. There's people going to their local bars and restaurants. There's big watch parties, that people are attending.

So it's not moving people to one central location and then out again. It's moving people throughout the city, um, and even out into the suburbs to some extent. and you're right about the numbers. The numbers have just been incredible to watch.

I mean, to give you a comparison, a normal Eagles home game, we'll move about 15,000 fans through, uh, what is known as our NRG station. This is the station right adjacent to the Eagles football stadium where the World Cup is being played. about 15,000 on a normal Eagles home game. In the first game of the World Cup that we hosted, we moved, uh, almost 20,000.

then s- Friday night, we hosted Brazil and Haiti, two very big, very large followings, uh, with their teams. we're now coming to a number, and we still have to refine this, but we're, we're actually close to 30,000 that we moved, almost double what an Double. Eagles home game is. Yeah we, and we did it in about an hour and a half.

Uh, had it substantially clear in about an hour and a half. But, but you know, it, this doesn't happen easy. It's not just an Eagles game. Like, and, and we spent years preparing a plan that we felt we could move the maximum throughput as much as possible, as quickly as possible, as safely as possible using a lot of resources.

we have 30, 40 people on location and performing a variety of tasks. They're cleaning, they're, they're moving crowds. We have police. We have signal maintainers to make sure that the switches don't, don't fail unexpectedly.

Supervisors, our control center's activated. every day they huddle up and they make sure that the plan that they executed yesterday worked. They tweak it where it's possible, then they do it again. And they do, they've been doing that every day for the last 10 days, they're gonna do it again for 30 more days, while we host four more World Cup games, one today.

we host a big one on July 4th. We have a, it's what they call a knockout round game, so it's like two of your top clubs playing in a playoff game. We'll, we'll host that game on July 4th, which will also be the celebration of the nation's birthday, so we'll have all kinds of things going on in celebration of July 4th. then just when you think we couldn't do it again, we have the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 14th.

our fan fest will go until the end of the World Cup tournament, but July 14th is really the end of the events for us. Uh, we'll get a chance after July 19th to breathe again, take a vacation maybe if we have to. but this has been really exciting and I, and I, my team has really done a great job. they've really figured out a way to do this in a manner that, that really speaks very highly of SEPTA, speaks highly of the employees that work here, and most importantly, represents Philadelphia well Yeah.

SEPTA in a way then really becomes even a better ambassador for the city. It's great. I wanna shift, gears a little bit here and talk about some internal stuff at SEPTA, and there's a big trend obviously every transit agency and everybody's talking about AI, artificial intelligence, and the role it's playing in our lives, or in our transit agencies. Can you talk to us some about how SEPTA is, uh, integrating AI into your operations?

You know, we're taking a pretty careful approach right now. I mean, we're, we're a legacy agency that's, that's still using legacy equipment. Uh, you know, to give you some perspective, our, our rail fleet is the oldest in the nation, and we are, are, we are running 50-year-old Silverliners on our regional rail network. We're running 40-year-old streetcars, 40-year-old subway cars.

so AI right now is, it - we're being very cautious with it because we're trying to… We don't wanna retrofit old equipment that we might not have much longer. where we will take a leap is in replacement of these vehicles. So, for example, all these 50-year-old, 40-year-old cars that I've just mentioned, we're trying to replace them. We have, we already have two major car procurements out.

We'll have a third going sometime in the fall. and so what'll happen over the next five to 10 years is SEPTA will leap forward in technology, unlike anything that the agency has done ever in its history. We've never done three major rail car procurements. our bus fleet does really well, and there's AI tools that we're using on the bus fleet because it is more modern to, uh, detect failures before they occur, m-maintenance failures.

Uh, so we are using AI to inform our maintenance department on the bus side. On the rail side, you know, we're excited about changing out the fleet, which will bring h-a host of upgraded technologies, signal systems, fleet upgrades, where we'll be able to use maintenance pred-predictive technologies, AI, to help on the rail side as well. These are tools that many of our rail partners in the industry are already using to scan vehicles and look for infrastructure failures that we just haven't done at this point, but over the next five to 10 years is really where we'll make inroads there.

We do have some limited AI maintenance, uh, on the rail side. We're looking at overhead catenary, uh, interfaces, for example. Uh, SEPTA has had, had struggles at the end of last year with its trolley wire, so we're using cameras and AI technology on top of the cars to look at the interface between the trolley pole and the wire. so there's a lot of applications that we have yet to really dig into, a lot of that will change as we upgrade our technologies and our systems.

Even our back office systems, for example, our finance systems and our procurement systems are all slated for upgrades over the next two years, and all that will bring a host of other tools that we can use to make SEPTA more efficient and, and better prepared for the future So we've talked about some of the big wins today that SEPTA's having with the ridership increasing, handling tens of thousands of passengers for these special events. But I know there's, uh, smaller wins that maybe the public doesn't see, uh, that you as a GM see and that, that… You know, the reason I started this show, Scott, was that you know, 10, almost 10 years ago, I had just left being CEO in Baltimore, and I knew that the only time that we GMs ever get to talk in the media is usually when there's something bad happening, you know, a derailment or a strike or something.

But I wanted to give CEOs a chance to talk about some of the, some of the wins, some of, you know, c- uh, and, and share some of that because we are an industry that doesn't compete. We're an industry that, uh, cheers for each other when… So tell us something, some of the, the more quiet wins that you guys are having right now that you would think of Yeah so you know, so one, one thing that's very timely, and we're gonna present this to our board Thursday, is our five, our new five-year strategic business plan.

Okay so our, our, our old plan expires this year. The new one will, should go into effect, you know, it's starting in July. But, but the real win here is, uh, when I, when I became GM and I started floating the idea of writing a new strategic business plan, the vision that I gave the, the planning and strategy group is, I don't want this to be a strategic business plan written, with all due respect, by consultants for consultants. I want this to be an operational plan, something that the employees and managers actually help form.

This is not Scott Sauer's vision for the organization. This is SEPTA's vision for the organization, and it can only be a successful vision if everybody in the organization, top to bottom, believes in it. So the planning group really took that to heart, and they actually went out depot by depot, employee population by employee population, and asked them questions about what should SEPTA be focused on over the next five years? What are most important?

How does that resonate? They helped craft our mission, our mission statement, our vision, and, so now, given 1,500 comments given by employees, and I don't know how many dozens of workshops that were conducted by planning with managers and employees, we are now gonna present a strategic business plan that was you know, using, of course, consultant support, but crafted by employees of SEPTA, something that they'll be able to get behind, 'cause it's theirs. It's theirs. It's just something that the organization's gonna move, and, and why I bring that up as a, as a quiet win is Part of the goal and, and having worked my way up through the ranks is I never felt as a, as an operator that I even knew who the leadership was, let alone had a voice at the table.

And certainly I can't in… I can't invite, you know, 7,000 people to my, my team meetings every Monday morning, but what I can do is give them a sense that they're part of the decision-making process, and we do that through strategies like this, getting their voices heard on a strategic business plan. Once a month, I conduct my team meeting out in the field at one of the locations. So I bring the whole team out, we tour the location, we talk to employees. Management gives us a presentation on what they're doing and how they're doing it.

you know, and, and we get to spend some time with our employees. It's, it's one of the things that I really take very seriously is interacting as a leadership team, just to say, "Hey, how's it going? I'm Scott." It's, "Hey, how's it going?

What can I do to help you make your job better?" and I think that employees have really grabbed onto that and I consider that a big win that we got this strategic business plan done, Yeah using employee information That's really good, man. That doesn't normally happen. It's normally top-down, so that's, that's very exciting.

I'll be s- I'll be interested to see that when it comes out. I'm sure you'll have it on your website if people wanna look at it? absolutely be on the website. Yep, soon as the board votes on it Thursday, assuming that they have s- a- adopt it, it'll be ready to Yeah.

go That's pretty cool, man. Hey, let's talk about, uh, something else that everybody in the industry is talking about, which is safety, cleanliness, customer experience, customer confidence. What's happening in that world, and do you got any plans coming up? Yeah.

So, you know, the, um, so when I, again, when I took over r- that we, we immediately adopted what we call back to basics. and back to basics was safety, cleanliness, reliability, and the customer experience. Those are our big four. We have to get those right.

when you talk to customers about what they expect from transit, from public transit, Those are the things they want. they don't really worry about some of the other things that we've talked about as an industry over the last several years. If the train doesn't come when, the agency says it's going to come, or it's not clean, or worse, it's not safe, or even it's perceived not to be safe, that kills the product. It kill, it kills your, your ability to deliver that product to your customers because there's nothing you can do to change their mind.

What you have to do to change their mind is do it differently. It's gotta be safer, it's gotta be cleaner, and it's gotta be noticeable. more importantly, the train has to come on time, the bus has to come on time. And but if it's not, you gotta explain it.

with your customers. these are the really the, things that, that have to happen. So in those areas, what are we doing? Well, being safer means, for us means more police.

It means a, uh, the largest police department we've had in over a decade. It means the largest crime reductions we've had. We're, we're now safer. I like to use this, I used to hate to use this g- kind of approach to, to saying this.

We're safer statistically today than we were when people thought we were safe more than 10 years ago. you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of focus on the safety in public transit, but when you really peel back the o- the onion and look at the numbers, our safety numbers, at least at SEPTA, are better today than they were 10 years ago. Wow, Scott they're better than they were when people actually thought we were safe Yeah. You know, our, our cleaning effort is, is bigger and, and more robust than it's ever been.

More than 700 cleaners in our system. we're attacking our, our vehicle cleanliness in way, different ways than we ever have, looking for different tools, different ways to clean. I mean, I, I, it's, it's kinda funny, I know, and I tell people, I'm, I'm, I'm a transit nerd from way back, and, uh, you know, I sit on the weekends and I look up videos of how Tokyo Metro cleans their cars, and I'm sending it to my people saying, "I wanna do this," you know? And of course, after they scratch their head and try to figure out how to do it, they try to do it.

we're trying new things, different things to make the system cleaner, make it more reliable, more passenger information. We just introduced, real-time information at 10 of our bus stops using, uh, using tablets, you know, attached to the bus stop sign Oh, yeah. Yeah that give our customers information. You know, our, our app is more robust than it was before.

We have a ways to go, no doubt, but boy, we have really started to make progress in all these areas, in ways that we had never done before. Um, and we had to. We had to. The only way public transit is going to compete with the likes of rideshares and bikeshares, uh, i- is to be as good as, if not better than they are.

We have to introduce all the same tools that they do. We need GPS-equipped vehicles. We need, we need to be able to track our ride. We need to know that when a customer calls for it, it's gonna be there.

those are the things that we just have, we have to start thinking more like a private sector business competing for customers. That's our currency. That's our, that's our stock price is our number of customers you've got, you know, you're leading one of America's top transit systems. It's iconic legacy system.

What's your vision, let's say for five years from now? What do you hope, where do you think you'll be and hope you'll be? Yeah, so these five years I, I've kind of equated as these five years are the preparation for the next five years, right? I mentioned the three big rail car procurements, right?

That's, that's gonna transform the system, 'cause it's not just rail cars, it's signal systems, rail cars, it's infrastructure. Our trolley modernization program is the largest infrastructure project that SEPTA's ever undertaken. It's gonna transform the entire streetcar network. these are huge projects that will transform not just SEPTA, but the entire region.

So these five years that we're in now from th- this, this five-year strategic business plan that I'm introducing, is really the setup. we have to get our house in order with the tools that we have while introducing some new things along the way, but we have to prepare for this sudden change in fleet and infrastructure so that, you know, you, you, you get your stuff together that, that the, the things that you have and the tools that you have are working right, the processes that you have.

You have the right people in the right places. You have the right tools and equipment, the right way to talk about and communicate things. So when that new fleet comes, you're just ready to take off. you got all this new stuff now.

You've refined your processes, you've refined your people, and now you're ready to go. But it all comes back to basics. to use a baseball analogy, I can't turn a double play if I can't field a ground ball. So we spend these five years fielding ground balls, and by the time those, that new fleet arrives, we're ready to go.

and that's just moving ba- from basics to best in class. That's something that I promised the organization was my goal, for my tenure as GM, is we will, when I, when I leave here, I want SEPTA to be known as a best in class transit agency, Wow North America, but in the world. That's awesome, Scott. Well, it sounds like you're well on the way.

That's wonderful. All right, you ready for a lightning round to get to know you a little bit better? This'll be fun, hopefully. All right, so what's, what's your favorite book you've read recently?

So which in keeping with the World Cup theme, I read, uh, Leadership, uh, by Sir Alex Ferguson. He was the manager of Manchester United. Okay Managed the team for about almost 40 years, and, uh, was highly regarded as one of the leading minds in, uh, world football That sounds like a good one. what music is on your playlist during a stressful week like I'm sure you've been having lately?

Yeah, I, uh, I have a pretty diverse playlist. I listen to a little bit of everything, but my go-to is, uh, Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac All right. Yeah, love it. You could tell you and I are of similar, uh, eras.

if Minted in certain eras. a little younger is listening to this, they probably don't know what I'm talking Yeah, exactly. all right. What's a favorite hidden gem in Philadelphia?

Is there someplace you like to go or eat or something like that, that maybe people don't know about? I don't know if it's a hidden gem nor- n- or, but, but I, I really like to walk around the historic district, the, uh, the grassy areas in front of the Constitution Center and Independence Mall. It's, uh, it's, uh, it, it's … I wouldn't call it a quiet, serene area, but it certainly is a beautiful place to just kinda hang out on a, on a, on, you know, on a mild spring day. It's, uh, it's really nice out there Yeah.

And, uh, food-wise, I know Philly's known for their cheesesteaks. Is there any other thing that you really like there, or is that the iconic go-to meal for you, or I mean, Philly, I mean, the Philly stuff, obviously cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, water ice. You know, there's a lot Yeah qu- good stuff that, that, uh, that you can get that's quick, you know, easy to go. pizza's always good.

You know, it's … I know New York likes to claim their pizza. We got a lot of good pizza stops here, too. but yeah, I mean, there's, there's some really nice, uh, you know, more quaint little restaurants down in South Philadelphia that, that I like to take in. But, but yeah, pizza, you know, cheesesteaks.

Good cheesesteak is either, uh, Jim's South, in South Philly. Um, you know, uh, Delrossi's is good on South, in South Street. So a lot of, lot of really good. Everybody's got a favorite.

I will tell you, most native Philadelphians will not say J- uh, not say Pat's or Geno's. They, they, they're good, but they're, they're more touristy Yeah, I gotcha. I've had one of them myself there. Uh, what about pets?

You have any pets at home? I have two cats. I have been a cat person most of my life and, uh, I have two cats. I went a long time between cats, between having pets, and I have two cats now That's great.

and, uh, what's the best advice anyone's ever given you in leadership? listen, I've got a lot of great, uh, great advice over the years. I, I will say that I think, I think what, you know, m- what most people have, have given me, and I'll paraphrase it a little bit, is, be available to, to your people. You know?

Be, be out there. you know, management by walking around, everybody's kinda heard that, but it's intentional walking around. Like, you don't wanna just kinda wander. Yeah for things to fix, things to make better.

If you're out there often enough, and it's easy on transit, like the one thing I'll say to my leaders on transit is ride the system. Ride the system. Be a customer. that's how you're gonna learn what's, broken, what's needs to be fixed, or just what should be improved, 'cause you're gonna experience it like the customer experiences it That's great.

And final question, what's one word your team would use to describe your leadership style? intense uh, that's great I, say that only 'cause somebody said that to me, uh, recently. they Yeah. they said, "Man, Scott's really intense."

That's great and, and, and I like to think it's in a positive way. Like, I, I, I want people to I, I live and breathe this stuff. I mean, I, I've, I've been here almost 36 years and, and this is my life, and I love it, and I, I want nothing more than for SEPTA to be successful That's great. Yeah, you know, I, uh, I was talking to Holly Arnold about this one time recently about how when you're a CEO or a GM, it's like you have a spotlight, and you really can shine it on one thing at a time to really focus on it.

And so I think when that spotlight shines on you, you feel the intensity. You know, if you, if you're an employee there, yeah, because it is a heavy light, but you're trying to figure out, like you said, you're walking around with purpose, right? And, uh, and trying to get problems solved, and there's always enough of them, isn't it? It's a 24/7 job There's, uh, you know what?

The, the, the nice thing of, the, the really great thing about transit is, uh, no day, no two days are the same, and no d- no two problems are the same. That's right. Yeah. Well, Scott Sauer, thank you so much for being our guest today on the show and sharing with us some of the great things happening in Philadelphia, uh, not only during this week of our nation's 250th, uh, anniversary, but also in general, the great improvements, the back to basics, the enhancements, uh, focusing on safety and customer service.

Sounds like you got a game plan and you're executing it well. Thank you, my friend I appreciate that, Paul. Thank you So one of the good things I took away from this interview, one of the interesting things was, uh, how they went to the employees to draft up their strategic plan, which I think is great, innovative, unique. It ensures buy-in, and it comes from a heart of someone who grew up in the agency.

That's one of the cool things when you get a general manager who has, uh, spent their whole career, over 30 years he spent there, from, you know, frontline troops, being a, uh, operator as a teenager in the rail system, all the way up through the ranks, COO, and then, uh, general manager. So he understands and values the opinions of the employees, which I think is great. Um, you know, kind of the walk a mile in my shoes, uh, concept. He has walked a mile in the shoes of many of the types of employees they've got there at SEPTA, so that was great.

Also find it fascinating, uh, how that we were able to time it out so that this podcast from Philadelphia is aired during this week of our nation's independence celebration, 250 years. And so that's kinda cool. Um, we hope to continue to bring you great interviews like this all year long. Over the summer, we're gonna try a few new things.

We're gonna, uh, take some in-depth video interviews from some of our TV shows that we think are fantastic, uh, and bring them to you. We're also gonna do some best of shows, uh, and try some new fresh things, uh, over the summer that you'll notice, uh, on our podcast now that we've gone all video. Let us know, um, if you like the all video approach or any suggestions you might have. We appreciate it.

We're gonna go on-site to locations, uh, and film actually on-site, like I just did in Delaware, and bring that to you separate from any of the TV shows, just for the podcast. We're exploring new ways to bring you great stories because together we make transit stronger here on Transit Unplugged. I'm Paul Comfort, thanks for being with us Thank you for listening to this episode of Transit Unplugged, the world's number one transit executive podcast. I'm Julie Gates, executive producer of the podcast.

Many thanks to the team that makes this show happen: host and producer Paul Comfort, producer Chris O'Keefe, editor Patrick Emile, associate producer Cyndi Raskin. Transit Unplugged is being brought to you by Modaxo, passionate about moving the world's people. If you would enjoy behind-the-scenes insights and updates from the show, sign up for our weekly newsletter, which has links to can't-miss conversations with the biggest names in mobility. Head to transitunplugged.

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