Deborah Y. Chin
Program Manager, Systems, Department of Capital Program Management
MTA New York City Transit
New York, NY
Member, Leadership APTA Class of 2012
  
How many people does your agency employ?
MTA New York City Transit (NYC Transit) employs about 45,000 people. That includes operators and engineers.

How long have you worked in the public transportation industry?
I’m marking 25 years this year.

How long have you been an APTA member?
I have been active in APTA off and on since 2007. I was in the Leadership APTA Class of 2012.

What drew you to a career in public transportation?
You could say I accidentally fell into working in public transit. In the late 1980s, I was employed in the defense industry in New York City. At that time, NYC Transit was undertaking its second capital program—which meant lots of jobs for engineers. I joined the agency, thinking I’d be here for a short time period, and I’ve worked here ever since.

When I worked in the defense industry, I was employed by a naval architecture and engineering firm that did a lot of work on U.S. Navy ships like aircraft carriers. What drew me toward public transportation was the fact that NYC Transit needed engineers to work on its capital program. I found that working with new systems and technologies was really interesting.

My job focused on helping to implement new technologies like signaling systems and communications-based train control. I worked on NYC Transit’s new rail control center, which centralizes all subway operations to a single point. I spent the last 15 years doing that for all the numbered subway lines and now, as a program manager, I plan to bring that same technology to all the lettered lines.

The rail control center also provides real-time train arrival information and sends it directly to subway system platforms—an obvious benefit for the public.

What have you found to be the most valuable APTA benefit or resource—that helps you do your job?
In my opinion, the most important member benefit is either the ability to contact APTA staff or the chance to network, reaching out to people at peer agencies. For example, say you’re looking for vendors who do a certain type of work. You can talk to people at other systems about what they’re looking at without having to begin the search from scratch. This way, public transit professionals can share their experiences. In a couple of weeks we’re hosting the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) at our rail control center because MARTA is undertaking a similar project.

Please explain why or how this has helped.
Most directly, the benefit comes from sharing lessons learned. When we run projects, we try to mitigate our risk. Sometimes we can share information about specific vendors: what functionalities come with what they’re selling, procurement strategies, how we could work with them to put out a project that implements new technologies.

More integrated systems require the owner—public transit agencies—to take a more active role in systems integration and areas about which they previously didn’t know much. While we still use consultants, we’re taking more of a leadership role internally to manage these projects. We don’t want the possibility of having to delay service; we want to minimize impact while implementing the best and most reliable technology.

What do you like most about your job?
I love coming to work every day. It’s working with the different people. It’s the challenges of seeing, trying to create projects and implementing them, then seeing the outcome of all our hard work. It may not seem that way when we’re working on a project day-to-day, but after four years when it’s completed, we can see the benefits.

What is unique about your agency (what would readers be surprised to learn)?
What I find interesting is that the New York City subway still operates 24-7. Many subway agencies shut down the system—at least for a couple of hours during the night—to do maintenance. NYC Transit is getting positive feedback from the public for its relatively FastTrack program to shut down individual lines for maintenance. Riders understand that if they want to see system benefits faster, we have to shut down the lines periodically to maintain or implement new technology. We’ve been getting a lot of support for that choice, both internally and from our riders.

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