Deborah Stenoien
Vehicle Maintenance Superintendent, Non-Revenue Vehicles
King County Metro Transit
Seattle, WA
Leadership APTA Class of 2012

How many people does your agency employ? Between 5,000 and 6,000.

How long have you worked in the public transportation industry? 20 years.

How long have you been an APTA member?
Since 2011. I wish I’d joined sooner, but most of my career has been spent as a mechanic and APTA wasn’t really on the map for me until I was promoted to a management position.

What drew you to a career in public transportation?
My brother was a bus driver and he encouraged me to give transit a try. I’m glad he did. It’s important to me to do work that contributes to our community and I believe public transit to be a critical part of our infrastructure and our lives. I want to be involved in something where you give back and provide service to the community.

What have you found to be the most valuable APTA benefit or resource—that helps you do your job?
You mean besides Leadership APTA?

I use the APTA website a lot. There are so many resources where I can go in and find out about other agencies, people to contact, and published research materials. I can also look up past issues of Passenger Transport to read articles on items of interest. In short, APTA’s website is a portal I use to obtain information I need.

Another benefit? Leadership APTA! It’s a fantastic program. It’s been an unbelievably positive experience of professional growth and development for me—and fun at the same time!

Please explain why or how this has helped.
I’m involved in developing a maintenance staffing model—I’m part of two project teams: one regional and one for our agency. So to find information on this topic, one of the first places I went to look was APTA’s website. From there I found out about another website and downloaded a research paper on maintenance staffing done on several Florida transit agencies.  This was exactly what I was looking for—and I found this example through APTA.

Another example: As I continue work on my Leadership APTA project on social media, I searched past issues of Passenger Transport—and found stories that helped inform me on the people and the organizations involved in this topic.

What do you like most about your job?
The challenges and the variety of the tasks I have to do. Learning new things, such as procurement of non-revenue vehicles and the maintenance of the non-revenue fleet, is so very different from bus maintenance, the world I came from.

I’m also involved in a workforce development project for vehicle maintenance employees, focusing on career and leadership development. We’re providing a support network for those newly promoted into leadership positions, plus we are mentoring those people in our system who would like to be more competitive for future promotions.

What I think is a key element of what we’re doing is—it’s an all-volunteer program. We have no selection process; it’s completely open and equitable for employees to be in the career development program. It’s an opportunity for any employee who wants to take the next step in his or her career to learn what it takes to be successful. This program was a leap of faith for us; we didn’t really know what the interest level would be before we launched it. Our employees have been outstanding, both as mentors and as participants.

What is unique about your agency?
Our commitment to green technology and to the environment of the Puget Sound area. We were the first transit agency to procure and operate 60-foot hybrid coaches and we continue to increase the percentage of hybrid coaches in our fleet—both 40- and 60-foot coaches. Our non-revenue fleet is made up of about 12 percent hybrid or alternative fuel vehicles. This commitment to our environment is truly agency-wide: in the design and construction of new buildings, the things we procure or purchase, our vehicles, and our everyday operations. For example; we have a comprehensive recycling program. We recycle newspapers, scrap metals, consumables such as engine oil, batteries—even used trolley rope!

I’m also very proud of our commitment to safety at King County Metro Transit. Safety is a part of our work day, every day, whether it’s operating a vehicle in revenue service, making a repair on a coach, or working at a desktop computer. We continually look for ways to improve safety and we engage our employees to help us. Practicing safety at work is part of our culture.

Make sure you see Deborah Stenoien’s video, now that you've read this!