Debra Johnson, the first woman to hold the top leadership post at RTD, and the first CEO since 1995 to be hired from the outside rather than promoted from within, will bring a fresh eye and a multi-city resume that’s relevant to RTD’s challenges.

On December 17th, TransitCenter held a ceremony recognizing this year’s Frequency Award winners. Here’s a list of the honorees, and a bit about why their work was so important: 

The Women Changing Transportation program is pleased to present the second installment of videos from our conversation series.

Before COVID-19 struck, LA Metro seemed to be turning a corner on bus service with the ambitious network redesign known as NextGen. But the new budget plan signals a return to the days when Metro regularly overlooked the bus riders who make the vast majority of trips on its services.

Millions of people across the country are at risk of losing access to good transit as the COVID pandemic grinds on and imposes an unprecedented fiscal crisis on the nation’s transit agencies.

At the final convening of the first year of the Women Changing Transportation program we asked the members of the cohort to reflect on their year together, the current state and future of transportation, and their experiences as women working in the field.

Transit equity goes far beyond quantitatively assessing how service is distributed, but that is the extent of most transit agencies’ equity work. This one-dimensional understanding has hampered the transit field from achieving equity — long before the tumult of 2020. 

When money is tight for transit agencies, the need to prioritize is even greater. For LA Metro, prioritizing what transit riders need would entail turning away from highway and rail projects in outlying areas, and toward investments that serve the many essential workers who continue to walk and rely on transit.