Infrastructure Technology Podcast discusses second chances and AI in transit

Key takeaways

• The Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) Second Chance Program helps returning residents and others with employment barriers gain one year of paid, supportive work experience, with a focus on long-term career development.
• The program has grown from 50 to 350 positions and includes technological resources, resume workshops, CDL prep and connections to both internal CTA roles and outside employment.
• The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Southern Nevada uses artificial intelligence (AI)-driven tools like Rekor and ZeroEyes to enhance traffic management, detect weapons in real time and reduce response times to incidents.
• AI-powered intersection analytics identified patterns of red-light running and jaywalking, helping RTC make data-informed decisions for improving roadway safety.

In this episode, the ITP team dives into the power of transformation—both human and technological. First, Brandon Lewis interviews Geisha Ester, former VP of training and workforce development at the CTA, about CTA’s Second Chance program. This initiative supports returning residents and others with employment barriers as they reenter the workforce and build lasting careers.

Next up, Harlee Hewitt speaks with MJ Maynard, CEO of the RTC of Southern Nevada, about how AI is reshaping transit safety. From predictive analytics to weapon detection and smart intersections, Maynard shares how the RTC is leveraging AI to enhance public safety and improve regional mobility.

This episode is all about opportunity, innovation and the human side of infrastructure and transit.

Here is a transcript from the episode.

BL: Hey there all you Infrastructure Technology Podcast listeners. This is Brandon Lewis, associate editor of Mass Transit magazine here, and in today's episode, I interview Geisha Ester, who was in charge of the Second Chance program with the Chicago Transit Authority. Now, Geisha is no longer with the CTA, but this interview was so powerful and so good and full of great content that we wanted you to listen to it in its entirety today on the ITP. With that, let's get into today's episode.

GJ: Welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins, senior managing editor of Roads and Bridges, and with me as always, my fellow co-hosts and co-producers, Brandon Lewis. He's the man, the myth, the legend from Mass Transit magazine, associate editor, and we have the jack of all trades. Harlee Hewitt, associate editor of Roads and Bridges. Harlee, can you think of a time when you were given a second chance? The more embarrassing the better.

HH: Okay. Well, I actually have a pretty embarrassing one. So, when I was pretty young, I actually,, despite all the sports talk that you guys do, and I don't know what you're talking about, I did used to play sports when I was growing up, as most people did. I played quite a few concurrently. I played softball. I was the pitcher. I played basketball. I was the center. But let's see, what else did I do? I did swimming, I did volleyball. I was very active and basically one time I tried out for my school's volleyball team. Actually, it was the second time I was trying out, so I'd already been on the team, and I just went in there that first time for my first tryout, and I flubbed it so bad. I was hitting my face on the floor, so I didn't get called back and then pretty much once they had decided the team, someone else dropped out and then I was the alternate. They called back, and that was my finest year. I had one of those years where, this was softball and volleyball where you're really good, and I was the homerun hitter on my softball team, for example. And then suddenly over the course of a few months, I devolved out of my talents and suddenly I couldn't hit the ball, and in volleyball, I was hitting my face on the ground. So I don't know, I was given a second chance, but was it a good choice? I'm not sure.

GJ: Brandon, what about you? When was the time that you were given a second chance?

BL: So since we're in the podcast industry now, since we are recording this podcast, I will go to a little bit of that industry, and I'll take you back a couple years ago when I was in college. This was actually in the middle of COVID, and so, I was at my student-ran radio station in Kent, Ohio, known as Black Squirrel Radio, which is now known as Black Squirrel Entertainment. And as practice in college, when you have seniors in leadership positions that graduate everybody, obviously there's a lot of turnover. There needs to be new people in new management, and I ran to be the general manager of our station. It was a very close interview process, back and forth. They did a rarity, which is where they pulled us in, that is to a second interview, which almost never happens. Unfortunately, I did not get the position. I was the second runner up, but the next semester I threw my ring in the hat again, and I ran against the same candidate, and I ended up winning. And so for those last five months of my college career, I did run Black Squirrel radio and had my own show and did everything, which is why you guys always say here on this podcast, why I always sound so elegant. It just comes natural to me. It's practice.

GJ: Oh my goodness. Well, my second chance story is pretty simple. I was freelancing for the Washington Post, and I handed in a story. It was a preview story. It was a preview story that I did abroad that year, as I did a dog race in Alaska, and it was awful, and I ended up having to interview new people all over again, and it was the first time I was working for the Washington Post, so I was so nervous. I think I had a panic attack after when I was writing it the first time, and I went. It was about dog sled racing, so I went way too far into the weeds on dog sled racing, and the editor was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Our readers don't even know what dog sled racing is. You need to back it up and explain to them in the first graph what is dog sled racing’. I was just like knee deep into the controversy that was surrounding that year's race, just diving in, and I had to rewrite the story, and the editor could have very easily just been like, ‘I'm not printing this. Get out of here, you're done’. And I was very lucky to get a second chance and do it over again. And why are we talking about second chances on a technology podcast in regards to mass transit and roads and bridges? Well, dear listeners, the answer to that question lies in our first guest, and Brandon Lewis is going to explain a little bit further about that guest and his interview with her. Brandon, take it away.

BL: Today, we're going to be talking about the Second Chance Program with the Chicago Transit Authority because Geisha Ester, who is the vice president of training and workforce development at the Chicago Transit Authority. She is one of the leaders of the Second Change Program. And this program, it helps better prepare people who are returning residents and others with barriers to employment to reenter the workforce. And so Ester, she does lead the operations and safety training for that along with career and leadership development initiatives for more than 10,000 employees at CTA, and this Second Chance program, as you'll see in my interview, it started out as a rail program, but now it has rail, bus and a facilities program. And this is not just for people to get back into the transit industry, this program is used to get people to work in whatever industry that they desire. People that were incarcerated can also apply for this program, so we dive into a lot in the weeds on what this program has done to get people with barriers to employment to reenter the workforce, and I can't wait for you guys to hear this interview.

GJ: Alright, well without further ado, let's dive into those weeds, and here is Brandon's interview.

BL: Welcome back to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I am Brandon Lewis, the associate editor of Mass Transit magazine. I am here today with Geisha Ester, the vice president of training and workforce development for the Chicago Transit Authority. She's one of the leaders of the Second Chance Program, which helps better prepare people who are returning residents and others with barriers to employment to reenter the workforce. Ester leads operations and safety training, along with career and leadership development initiatives for more than 10,000 employees. Geisha, welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.

GE: Thank you, Brandon. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Thank you for having me.

BL: Well, thank you, and as I said in the introduction today, we're going to be talking about the CTA Second Chance Program. So when it comes to this program, the program has been around for a long time, and how has the program grown since you have started in the role?

GE: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking that. We have grown leaps and bounds for our program. Many, many years ago, predating me, we started our program with just about 50 positions for returning residents, cleaning our trains, and now we offer 350 opportunities to residents of the city of Chicago. We started out just having a rail program. Now we have a rail program, a bus program and a facilities program, so we have grown in numbers, we have grown in size of our program, and we have also grown in the support that we offer our program participants. So I am really proud of CTA and the leading the charge in Second Chance initiatives and really being thoughtful around moving the program forward and continuing to invest in it.

BL: You mentioned the amount of growth in terms of support for the program. Could you dive into that a little more specifically, talk about the kinds of support that you've received.

GE: Sure, absolutely. So in addition to the increase in our numbers of opportunities for our participants, we have a team of workforce development professionals that are dedicated to the Second Chance Program. They're responsible for creating experiences for our participants where they gain the skills they need to really get a full-time permanent employment. So some of the things that we do is we have monthly workshops for our program participants where they learn skills that are transferable either at CTA or other places. For example, we help them with their resumes, so that they can be more employable. We help them with their interviewing skills. We do mock interviews with them. We help them with completing their resumes online. We also offer CDL, CLP prep training. The first step in becoming a permanent CTA bus servicer or a CTA bus operator is that you have to have a commercial learners permit to apply for the job, and some of our participants are interested in those roles, and so we work and partner with our local city college to offer a preparatory course that prepares them to take the CLP exam, and we also pay for the exam. So when we talk about support, we are really putting our dollars where our mouth is to support our program participants and really help become more employable to gain permanent employment.

BL: So when you talk about the barriers for the program, and I guess people that are eligible for the program, what are you specifically looking for?

GE: Sure. Our program accepts people with barriers to employment. Some of those barriers are people who are returning residents, people who are coming out of incarceration and may have job skills, some people who are experienced being homeless or unhoused, and then people who are survivors of domestic violence, so those are some of the big categories, but our goal is to help people who are having those barriers and sometimes those barriers are no work experience or low work experience contributed to things like they have been incarcerated for some time or that they have been dealing with domestic violence, or they've been unhoused for some time, so those are our top categories, but our goal is to help people gain the skills they need to be permanently employed.

BL: Once somebody is in the program, how long are they in that program for?

GE: Sure. Great question. So our program starts out with at least one year, and so people come into our program, and they have one year of work experience, one year of the professional development that I spoke earlier about, and then we are helping them to seek permanent employment. There is an opportunity for those who have kept a good work record, and if there's a slot available for them to do a second year and one of our other programs, but we are guaranteeing one year of work experience and employment.

BL: What would that other program be if they stayed on for another year?

GE: Sure. Yep. So I appreciate your question. So we really have two areas. We have our bus program, and we have our rail program, and so participants can enter, for example, enter our bus program and do their one year in our bus program if there's availability or a slot available in our rail program, and they have a good work record and have been doing all the things they need to do and there's a slot available, they can transfer into our rail program for one year as well.

BL: What if somebody is interested in bus, rail facility, all of the above, right off the bat? Can they sort of switch back and forth or do they have to pick one for the full year?

GE: No, they have one for the full year. They are separate unions we partner with. Our locals are local unions and so they are actually union members, and so they're only able to be in one program at a time.

BL: I got you. Now, when it comes to the amount of people that you allow in the program, is there a specific number per year? Is it sort of a wait list? Is there an application process? How does that sort of work?

GE: Sure, so we have 315 slots available, and it's on a rolling basis, so we have negotiated that with our unions, and that is our cap number 315. There are 200 slots in our bus program and 115 in our rail program, and so the way it happens is that we have direct interests where people have interests and they come in, and they complete an application and they go through the regular process of any other employee here at CTA. They interview, they go through our background and physical process and then they are onboarded in our program based on open slots, and I say it's on a rolling basis because remember our goal is for people to not necessarily stay in our program, it's for them to gain permanent employment. This is a stepping stone. The second chance program is a stepping stone to this permanent career, so some of our participants stay with us for eight months, six months, and they find permanent employment and then that slot becomes available for someone else who needs the experience.

BL: Now by permanent employment, do you start out by looking at specific CTA related employment or is it all over the transit industry or what type of employment are you working at?

GE: That's a great question. So we have negotiated with our unions that we have a 50/50 split for permanent positions in our bus servicer roles and our car servicer roles, so we have a built in intentional career path for program participants here at CTA, but that's not the only positions. It really is based on their career path and what they are interested in. And so remember I spoke earlier about we have a team that's dedicated to helping them with their career path and so they do career planning with them, and they make a decision. Our participants work in a variety of different jobs based on their skills, their experience and their interests. We have participants, former participants that are customer service assistants. They work at our kiosk helping our customers. We have former participants who drive our trains and drive our buses, who clean our buses, who clean our trains, who work in our administrative offices, who work in our safety department. You can just about name it, they are doing those shops as CTA, but not just as CTA. Some of our participants move on to employment and careers outside of CTA, outside of the transit industry itself, it really does depend on their interests and what they are interested in. As an example, we recently had a participant to accept a permanent position at one of the social service agencies, particularly the one that she utilized to get to our program. And so her passion was really into helping others that were returning home from incarceration, and she tells the story about how she gained confidence and consistency and work ethics here in our program, and she's going to utilize those skills to be of impacted at her new place of employment, so it really just doesn't matter about the path that the participant wants to take.

BL: Once somebody reaches employment. Is there a window of through the program, the CTA staff is still going to help this individual with anything they need past being in the program date?

GE: So really unofficially, we never go away. We are always here for our former program participants. Mostly when our participants leave our program, they're excited and ready to move on and sometimes we hear back from them and check in and say, ‘How's things going’? And then sometimes people are off and running and ready to start that next chapter in their lives. But many of our partners, our social service agencies are there to support our participants throughout their careers, but we're also here to support if they want to engage with us.

BL: Now, what happens if say, somebody graduates from the program, they receive a full-time position, but then something goes wrong, and they are out of that position rather quickly? Do you still work with them? Can they come back to the program? How does that work?

GE: No, they don't necessarily come back to the program and to be just very honest with you, most times we don't hear back from them if those things happen, but if they do, we connect them back with our agency partners who are equipped to help them seek employment to address what everything's led to, their termination or whatever or whatever resources they need to get back on their feet. So we partner with social service agencies throughout the city of Chicago that are really designed to assist our participants, and they're the experts in being able to provide that wraparound and supportive service.

BL: Now, what kinds of transferable skills are used throughout the program?

GE: Sure. Yeah. So our participants learn a variety of different things as they work here. One is about cleaning, obviously they learn about cleaning, they learn about dealing with chemicals. Obviously they learn about bloodborne pathogens. Some of our participants take that course, OSHA, 10 hour. The other transferable skill we talked about earlier, the commercial learners permit, which is a transferable recognized certification that they get, but also some of the skills they gain is about time management, right?! That's important in transit and that's really important in any job, but you're really learning and honing that skill in transit, but also things like conflict resolution and resume writing and interviewing skills and online applications, being able to do those things. So our goal is to make sure that when our participants graduate or leave our program, that they are work ready, that they have one transferable skills, technical skills like cleaning and understanding chemicals and bloodborne pathogens and hazardous communication, but also they have those, what people would call soft skills, what we call essential skills, time management, conflict resolution, communication skills. So our goal is to have a well-rounded holistic approach to the development of our program participants to help in their career path.

BL: Have you reached out to, obviously there's so many transit agencies and specifically in the state of Illinois with how big the Chicago region is itself, there's not only you guys at CTA, but there's Metro, there's Pace Suburban bus. Have you guys used your program and have discussions with them or partnered with any other agencies or state DOTs to see if you wanted to expand the program even more?

GE: Yeah, so I am a part of an initiative with our mayor here in the city of Chicago, and he has a focus on returning residents where we bring stakeholders, and as well as experts that are working in the city of Chicago with returning residents to leverage resources to further the resources in the city of Chicago. And so know that as a city, we're looking at how do we best serve our returning residents and where are all the resources that we can leverage as a collective for the city of Chicago. So that's happening in our city as it relates to the transit industry. We oftentimes have agencies that are contacting us, asking us, how do you do what you do? We want to replicate the program, and we always stand ready to partner with any agency that's looking to start a second chance program. We feel very strongly that we want to replicate this program across the country because we know that there are people who need this type of support and this type of program just to get them started, so I actually have two calls next week with two different transit agencies that are exploring if they could do something similar like a Second Chance Program, so I would say for anyone who's interested or just curious, CTA Chicago Transit Authority stands ready to partner and stands ready to share information, no need to reinvent the wheel when we have something that has been working that you can take in, modify and adjust for your agencies. So branded, absolutely. Agencies are interested in their calling for sure.

BL: Now, obviously this is the Infrastructure Technology podcast, and technology has changed and evolved, and as we know, is rapidly evolving. I know there's not a technically technological uses in the actual training program space, but how has the use of technology changed around the program? Is there any tools that you guys are using or anything that you did use virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, anything like that on the technology side?

GE: Sure, Brandon, I think you're right, right?! We're more of a hands-on position for this program, but technology has impacted everyone, especially post pandemic. And so our participants have learned very quickly how to utilize Zoom. At one point we were doing some of our orientations and some of our check-ins over Zoom, so they learn that skill. The other thing is as we've advanced as an agency, our participants are learning about computers and how to get into our proprietary systems to log in and log off of their jobs to find out which buses are theirs to clean, and so there is this technology piece that our participants are getting specific to the work that they are doing, for sure.

BL: Geisha Ester from the Chicago Transit Authority. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.

GE: Thank you for having me, Brandon. Have a great day.

GJ: Alright, welcome back. That was an excellent interview by Brandon Lewis, and next up, we have Harlee Hewitt's interview with MJ Maynard. Harlee, give us a little intro to that.

HH: Sure thing. So speaking of another transportation leader, we're going to be talking to MJ Maynard. So MJ is the chief executive officer of the Regional Transportation Commission, or the RTC, of Southern Nevada, and she has dedicated 17 years of her career there. She also serves on many national and also local industry boards, including--very impressive--she's the incoming vice chair of the American Public Transportation Association. So in our interview, we focus on some of the programs the RTC has come up with recently, most of which are driven by AI, and by the way, MJ mentions in here that the RTC is the only agency in the U.S. that houses all the functions of a transit agency under one roof, meaning they are the public transit provider, they are the roadway funding agency, they're the traffic manager for their region. They're also the metropolitan planning organization. They also manage the bike share system.
So they do a lot, but we're going to specifically, like I said, talk about AI and traffic management more like, so they have a weapons detection analytics program they just introduced. They have some stuff going on with intersections and making them more smart. So without further ado, let's just jump right in with MJ Maynard. 

HH: Welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. My name is Harlee Hewitt, associate editor of Roads and Bridges, and today, I'm happy to be with MJ Maynard, who serves as the chief executive officer of the Regional Transportation Commission, or the RTC, of Southern Nevada, where she has dedicated 17 years of her career. She's a trusted voice of the transportation industry, and she serves on numerous national and local industry boards, including as the American Public Transportation Association's incoming vice chair. Welcome MJ to the program and thank you for being here today.

MM: Thanks, Harlee. Great to be here.

HH: Well, I think MJ, a great place to start would just be to talk about the RTCs current outlook with AI and how you all are currently viewing it in the eyes of the agency.

MM: It's so funny when ChatGPT became a thing, I think in the first 24 hours there were a million downloads, but AI spent part of our everyday life in some form for a long time. If you use MapQuest or Google Drive to work, that's AI. If you talk to Siri, that's using AI. So I think it's been here, and it's improved the lives for people even of course outside of transportation. It certainly has a place here, and so I think that it's more, certainly more in the forefront now because of, again, ChatGPT and things like that. But for us it really is using the leverage that we have. What do I mean by that? At the RTC, we're the only agency in the U.S. that house all these functions under one roof, so we are the public transit provider. We are the roadway funding agency. We are the traffic manager for the entire region. We're the metropolitan planning organization, and then we oversee and operate the bike share system in downtown Las Vegas. And so as the traffic manager for the region, there is, again, when I talk about using leverage, if you go to Los Angeles County, you might have over 100  traffic management centers, right?! Very difficult to try and implement new technology in a space where you've got to coordinate so many agencies because we are the one agency that’s really easy to coordinate new technology and that our first foray into AI started a number of years ago when a company at the time called Way Care came to the RTC in our role as a traffic manager. He said, ‘Hey, you have a problem, and we think we have a solution", and that's really important because you can have technology companies come to you to sell you a product, almost wanting to create a problem to test it when maybe you don't have a problem or a challenge, and I think for us it was really important when they came to us that we understood exactly what it was they were trying to solve for. And so first and foremost, you need to understand and be more aware of what you don't know than what you know so that you have the ability to ask the right questions. And so with that being said, we decided to work very closely with this new, it was a new startup, and we didn't buy the whole whole cow. We decided we'd have just a glass of milk. We were going to start a little small just again to ensure that we were very clear of both sides what Way Care at the time wanted to really wanted to gain from partnering with us. What it could do for our agency, particularly as a public agency, how we spend tax dollars is always looked, it can be put under a microscope, and we have to be very transparent and accountable with taxpayer dollars, so it was interesting because the AI technology they brought to the RTC, and again, we sort of did in the small slice to see how it worked. It was exceptional, and what we enjoyed was that the Way Care team came in and they embedded themselves in our traffic manage division. We got to learn what we were doing, some things that they could add value in. And basically the technology uses artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, historical data to not only identify where accidents may occur, but a perfect example is there was an incident where somebody, a truck was going the wrong way on the I-15 here in Las Vegas. Because the predictive analytics, the artificial intelligence at that time, that portion of the freeway, the sensors, they anticipated maybe it was supposed to be 65 miles per hour. Instead, because you could see the wrong way driver, and he'd got out of his truck. The traffic came to not a complete stop, but slowed down considerably, and the sensors picked that up. It dinged an alert in our traffic management center. We were able to put our cameras on it, and we saw this before even the state police did and so a couple of things. One, it allows us to again, use our traffic management platform camera system again to connect the dots, but it also in terms of identifying where future accidents may occur, that's even working in conjunction with Nevada Highway Patrol to place them in areas that the artificial intelligence set accidents are more likely to occur. And what we saw was, this is back in 2017, we encumbered far more incidents that were occurring of 70 percent first quarter of the pilot, and we were more quickly able to respond, we being the Nevada State Police, up to 12 minutes faster, sometimes even being alerted before there was a 911 call. And again, time is of essence, if you've seen an accident on a freeway, many times the secondary tertiary crashes that caused the slowdowns in some of the terrible accidents or incidents that happened. So back in 2017, we thought, ‘Okay, this is working’. And again, we took to small slices, it was just a pilot program, but it was so successful that today it's part of our traffic management database and so we used our leverage where the traffic management for the region. We have the ability to test this new technology because we are this one platform, if you will, and it's worked out really well.

HH: Yeah. I'm interested now in a newer program that you have, which is your weapon detection analytics program on which you're partnering with ZeroEyes. So, if you could talk a little bit about AI's role in that and what the identified need was for that program.

MM: Sure. Safety is, I think everyone's priority in transportation. It's our number one priority. Public transit is one of the last public spaces we love and serves all, and public transit is really just this rolling microcosm of what happens in any urban city. And so if you’re in an urban environment, there's an increase in crime or crime is occurring, you've got your unhoused population, mental and drug addiction, things that are happening in your city, you are going to see that in your transit terminals. You're going to see that on your transit system. And so it's a very complicated problem. It's not necessarily a transit problem, but it's certainly an indication of what's happening in your community. And so we were introduced again through a vendor, the folks from ZeroEyes, and I'll tell you very impressively, all ex-military and law enforcement backgrounds. And they developed this technology where at all of our transit terminals, the AI, again, this is machine learning so that it can speed up. I don't even significantly, and that's probably not even right where what it would figure out than significantly. It can speed that learning curve and learn to identify what it is that you're, and in this case, what would a weapon look like? And so it's interesting because just last month, so the system's up and running, and just last month, we got an alert, our security team got an alert that there was somebody at our downtown transit terminal with a gun in their hand. Well, it turned out it was a young man with a water pistol that looked very much like a real gun. And so we were able not only to not overreact, we were able to identify what it was, and again, this is about letting not only the operators that operate the transit system, but the customers that take the transit system and just the community that we're serving, that we understand that our job is to be a partner in helping again, to identify how we can mitigate any instance, in this case, someone with a gun. We can be more proactive on what that looks like. There's a possibility of de-escalation or potentially saving the life. What's interesting here I want to note, is that there is, we call the ZeroEyes Control Center, and it's manned 24/7, and so, when that gun image showed up, it went straight there, and it went straight to our security team and to our bus operation center, so we had a lot of eyes on it right away. And again, it's that it's being proactive, and it's identifying and trying to mitigate something that could potentially hurt somebody, kill somebody or cause a lot of fear. And it was, again, we started with the pilot just to test it and now it's a program, and they've done a really good job.

HH: Another program that you have that's very prevalent with our audiences of Roads and Bridges is anything to do with intersections, so you have an advanced intersection analytics program that identifies high risk travel behavior, red light running near miss crash frequency again to detect those and try and be preventative about them. So how has that, if you could speak to that a little, how has that improved safety so far?

MM: Before I answer that, I do want to go back and say, one of the reasons that we were able to implement ZeroEyes is we had zested in our camera system, and that it's really important if you are not keeping up on the technical base that you have. Many times it's very implement new technology, so I know that there are a couple of transit systems right now. They're updating their camera systems in order to implement ZeroEyes, so I did want that you necessarily for that. Yeah, you can't necessarily introduce a new technology if you don't have the right base or the right infrastructure in place. As far as advanced intersection analytics, it is, again, we're so car centric here in Las Vegas. We have a terrible reputation in terms of the statistics for roadway crashes, pedestrian, pedestrian deaths, and it is not improving. It's a real problem here, and so again, we had heard about this technology we decided to do an RFI, request of information. We had a number of companies respond, and we decided to do a pilot. We identified eight intersections and this was, again, not just the RTC, but we did this, this is a very collaborative effort. We did this with all the local jurisdictions. So Clark County, city of Las Vegas, city of Georgia, Las Vegas, city of Henderson, etc., and the law enforcement. So we identified the eight intersections, and we chose three companies just to test again their technology. And boy, it was compelling what we saw, and you're right, so this is, we have 1600 signaled intersections here in Southern Nevada that we manage all of the equipment for the jurisdiction as the traffic manager, and it was, it was disturbing, quite frankly, to see the number of red light running that were occurring, the number of passengers that were jaywalking. So what does that look like on a screen? You would see green lines. So, you could see on the screen that saw the crosswalk where folks would normally cross from one quarter to the next. Instead, the technology caught a lot. So green lines everywhere, people, jaywalking blue lines showed cyclists and what they were doing, and of course, we were catching the near and misses, and we were catching all the red light running and what does that do? Well, first, it informs you've got good data because it's obviously using your camera system. We’re able to go to the jurisdiction. So, one as a transit system, is the jaywalking occurring because our transit stops from the wrong place? Is the near misses occurring, whether it's vehicle pedestrian or vehicle vehicle because of the geometry of the roads? Is there a potential redesign, any safety mitigation measures that you could put in that roadway? And it's a great way for law enforcement to receive the working group. So as part of this pilot, they had a monthly working group with the police departments here with the jurisdictions, the public works folks and RTC and determining, all, right?! So let's do some enforcement. The city Henderson, of course, at 30 days, a one intersection that was being tested there was over 1,400 red light runnings, so the city of Henderson police department did enforcement. But it is, the data isn't being used just for, okay, we got you. What does it mean again, why are people jaywalking? We've got really long blocks. Boulder Highway used to be a highway, now it's a busy transit system, and some of the data's helping to support why we're investing millions of dollars in re-imagining that roadway. So again, it's been very, very beneficial to our community.

HH: So I want to ask you, MJ, I want to get some insight from you, and again, from the RTCs eyes, about  other ways you might be using AI, and if there's any limitations embedded in that. For a lot of people the fear of AI is that it takes away jobs from humans, so do you feel that there's any limitation there that you're seeing in the transit sphere where AI may not be able to step up and be like a real pair of human eyes?

MM: I mean, I think it's still relatively new in the transit space at this point. All of the technology that we have implemented, not one person lost their job. It really, it's a tool for staff and many times public agencies, we are limited in the number of FTEs. You don't how many employees we have. We have to do sometimes do a lot with very low one. So that technology can be very beneficial. It is, I think in the transit space, you're going to find it helping with predictive analytics around maintenance, predictive maintenance. I think it's going to have an impact there for sure. And even something today, if you do ChatGPT before this interview, I could, okay, let me, what is Harlee Hewitt tell me, what should I say on a podcast? Ask me this question. Why didn't interesting? Some of the things come out of ChatGPT. You still have to be aware. You still have to do your homework, you still have to do your research, you still need to make sure you're asking the right questions and really understand what are you trying to solve for if you really don't have it. Part of what the private sector brings many times that expertise that you don't have, so I think in the traffic management space. We're going to continue to see, particularly as roadways are connected, whether it's fiber optics and the cameras and the data collection, I think there's, again, we've been using AI around that since 2017, and the transit space, I think it's up and coming, but again, many times as a transit system, it's a business that doesn't generate a profit. We're always thinking about what do we invest in versus how much money do we have to invest in just providing transit service, so it's always a consideration, but I do think it has a place in the maintenance department. But I do want, I will tell you, with the Rekor platform, we were able to integrate the GTFS, the transit feed into Rekor platform. So now that allows our traffic management center and our bus operations center to jointly view the location of buses and traffic incident into one comprehensive map. So again, we have the leverage of being both the traffic manager and the public transfer provider. We can use that same data platform, that AI, that informs what's occurring on your arterials much more quickly, so that we can either detour a bus or respond as a traffic manager. So I think it's more to come, but I do think that is again, that you're putting one foot from the other. It is, you have to figure out what it's you're trying to solve for, and I would say include your staff. One of the things that I really appreciated about Way Care back in the day, again, that is now Rekor. They came in and they embedded themselves. They got to understand what we were doing, how we were doing. They were able to provide a lot of really good insight into how we could solve a problem together because that's the benefit of work at the private sector. Again, they'll break a skill set to the table we may not have. So it's certainly including your staff. To me, it's staff occlusive rather than losing staff.

HH: Well MJ, I want to thank you for your insights today and really appreciate having you on.

MM: You were very welcome, Harlee. It was great talking to you.

HH: Thank, you.

GJ: Alright, welcome back. That was Harlee Hewitt’s interview with MJ Maynard. Brandon, what did you learn from that? What was your takeaway?

BL: So there were two biggest takeaways that I had. And when MJ said this, it kind of got me thinking, she said that really when you think about it, that AI has been part of everyday life for a long time, even though it just massively came up recently, right?! We're seeing the recent trends of every time you Google something, AI just randomly pops up and gives you a bunch of different answers but obviously that's been in trends. We've seen different technology use it, but it hasn't really been heavily promoted or used as much as it is now. And the other thing I took away, which again I thought was a very interesting and astute comment, was she said that when you really think about it, public transit is one of the last public spaces. With everything remote and people not going to the office as much, people shopping online outside of maybe events or what have you, public transit is really one of the only main place where you have to really congregate with a bunch of people in one space. So those were just two things that when you think about the way our world is changing and safety and security and all that aspect into it, I think that that's kind of where we're heading as a nation. 

GJ: Harlee, what do you think?

HH: Well, I think it's yet another, we just had an episode over the Cavnue Smart Corridor, and with RTCs weapon detection analytics and these things that they're trying to introduce where basically if you're on a specific area of road, then you're getting these notifications popping up, warning you in this case about weapons being on the road and being able to avoid folks if you so choose that you might see as dangerous. It's really interesting, and if you really sit back and think about it, it feels like it's something out of a movie or years ago that we were seeing in some kind of movie that was very technologically advanced. But just like we said last time, I think that this is going to become a fact of life. And like MJ said, it is being integrated deeply into all of these systems. So just that's the purpose of this podcast. We're keeping the pulse on it, and we'll keep reporting on it as it develops.

GJ: And what I'd like to see AI do is I'd like to see AI on these roads give us the opportunity to speak to people in other vehicles. I want to be able to punch a dashboard and punch in the license plate number of the car in front of me, and I want to be able to yell at that person. In the smart corridors of the future, that's what I want. Now, would that lead to more safety? Probably not. Would that lead to violence? Possibly, or could it lead to a better understanding and more empathy towards others? Who knows? And maybe it could lead to some meet cute rom-coms where it's just like, ‘Hey, you cut me off jerk”, and be like, ‘Hey, why don't we stop and grab a cup of coffee and talk it out’?

HH: The script is writing itself.

BL: Everybody born  in their early 1900s are just thinking in their grave somewhere, ‘What the heck are these people talking about?

GJ: Yep. Yeah. Well, I often wonder what Ben Franklin would think of America if he could come back to today.

HH: Would he be disappointed? Probably.

GJ: He was a great leader, and I think he would really like the way we celebrate Thanksgiving, that's for sure. Well, with that, we've gone way off topic, because of me, but two excellent interviews today by my co-hosts. I'm Gavin Jenkins, senior managing editor of Roads and Bridges, and for Brandon Lewis of Mass Transit and Harlee Hewitt of Roads and Bridges, we’d like to thank Endeavor Business Media, our parent company for publishing this. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.