2024 40 Under 40: Jessica Garcia

Since joining San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) as a summer intern nearly nine years ago, Jessica Garcia has proven herself as a flexible, collaborative and ultimately transformative leader. Her tenure has been marked by a series of major accomplishments that have reshaped service planning and delivery, particularly during the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and dramatically improved Muni’s performance and reliability.    

After advancing from intern to service planner, Garcia took over as the agency’s service planning manager during the height of the pandemic. Garcia spearheaded shutting down and restarting San Francisco’s rail system. During the course of three years, she broke down and rebuilt the entire service system multiple times, implementing innovative strategies to match service plans with available resources and adapt to evolving needs. 

Colleagues say Garcia’s approach is characterized by a keen focus on data-driven decision-making and service equity. She coordinated across the agency to pioneer new models for tracking and projecting operator hiring to better match service plans to operator availability. She led the charge in reforming how SFMTA measures and tracks crowding data to better reflect the customer experience, incorporating exact locations and duration of crowding and shifting crowding performance metrics from measuring two-hour windows to 15-minute increments.    

Garcia has played a pivotal role in launching key transit projects, including the Central Subway. Colleagues say her blueprint for testing protocols has revolutionized the way SFMTA prepares for new service launches, emphasizing exposure for personnel who will operate the services.  

She manages the Muni Service Equity Strategy, an agencywide commitment to right historic wrongs and prioritize transit dependent communities. The Muni Service Equity Strategy aims to identify and address high priority transit needs in neighborhoods that rely on Muni service the most with tangible solutions that can be implemented quickly (within one to two years) and deliver measurable improvements, including improvements to safety, connectivity to key destinations, reliability, frequency and crowding. The strategy established a performance baseline for Muni routes serving each Equity neighborhood, which is updated bi-annually.  

Is there a specific experience that led you to where you are today?  

Moving to San Francisco, Calif., was a pivotal experience that profoundly shaped both my personal and professional life. Growing up in California's Central Valley, I witnessed the rapid and often haphazard sprawl through agricultural lands during the housing boom, which fueled my frustration and curiosity about urban planning. I realized that the planning around me didn’t seem right and I wanted to understand the correct way to plan cities. 

I moved to San Francisco for college and everything about the city excited me. Since then, it has always been a goal of mine to work for the city of San Francisco but it wasn’t until I started an internship at the SFMTA that I discovered my interest in transit.  

Despite riding the system myself for almost a decade, I didn’t connect how transit directly impacts the lives of people who live and work here until I worked at the SFMTA. Knowing this is incredibly rewarding and motivates my work. 

What do you enjoy most about your job?  

What I enjoy most about my job is being a part of projects that help people who rely on transit the most. During my time at SFMTA, I’ve been lucky to be involved in a variety of projects and the best part is seeing them come to life.  

Whether it's new signage at a stop or service through a brand new subway, it’s always exciting to think about the part I played in it. The most rewarding part though is seeing how our riders use and interact with the projects I have helped plan. 

What’s the most challenging part of your job?  

The most challenging part of my job, and also something I love about it, is that every day is different and there is always a new problem to solve. Over time and with experience, I’ve become better at anticipating what might come but each project is unique and unexpected challenges always pop up.  

The solutions are never simple and usually involve coordinating with multiple teams to resolve. I love the challenge of problem-solving and working with others to break down complex problems but there are days when I just wish there was a simple solution. 

Accomplishment you’re most proud of and why? 

I’m most proud of the approach our team took during our post-COVID-19 recovery to match our service plans to operator availability. When I first started leading the Service Planning team in 2021, it quickly became clear how crucial it was to develop a service plan that was deliverable, as we were missing service due to operator shortages. This issue was exacerbated by COVID-19 but had also been a long-standing challenge for the SFMTA even before the pandemic. 

I wanted to understand the problem and how our team could set the agency up for success since I saw the service plan as the first step in successful service delivery. It took some trial and error but through collaboration with our teams in operations and human resources, we developed an operator availability tracking process that now directly informs our service plans.  

As a result, we are now delivering our scheduled service as promised for the first time in years and seeing positive results in our recent customer satisfaction surveys. It's been great to see how focusing on something at the micro level has had such a positive effect on how our riders are experiencing the system. 

What is an accomplishment you would like to work towards in your career?  

An accomplishment I would like to work towards is leading a team that fosters creativity, innovation and values each member’s strengths. I believe in creating an environment where everyone can contribute ideas freely and collaboratively and I hope to always empower those on my team. 

Best advice/tip/best practice to share from your area of expertise? 

Service planning involves understanding various facets of delivering transit service, from determining bus route feasibility to logistical details like operator restrooms. What has helped me so much in my career is being willing to learn at least a little bit about everything and to not be shy about asking questions. I’ve learned so much from the people that I work with who have decades of experience. By continuously learning, it has helped me develop more informed service plans and gain a deeper understanding of how our service planning decisions affect those who implement the service across our operations teams.