Richard Kwasneski
Chairman of the Board
Pace Suburban Bus, Arlington Heights, IL
Member, APTA Transit Board Members Committee

How many people are employed at your agency?

There are 1,568 employees at Pace.

How long have you been involved in the public transportation industry?
I became involved in public transit when I joined the Pace Board of Directors in 2002.

How long have you been an APTA member?
My APTA membership also began in 2002 when I joined the Pace board.

What drew you to board service in public transportation?
Before I was appointed to the Pace board, I was the mayor and a village trustee for the Village of Lemont, in Chicago’s southwest suburbs. I enjoy public service and really enjoy watching all of the changes occurring in the transit industry.

There has been so much advancement in technology—it’s been particularly exciting because that’s an area in which Pace has invested heavily. We were one of the first transit agencies to implement a GPS-based Intelligent Transportation System, and we also developed multiple coordinated dial-a-ride projects in our service area through computerized dispatching.

Beyond all of that, however, it’s the service we provide to people. Attending public hearings and other outreach meetings and talking with our customers keeps me focused on the profound effect our service has on people’s lives. There are people who would not be able to work, attend school, or be a part of their community if they didn’t have Pace service.

What have you found to be the most valuable APTA benefit or resource? Which one helps you do your job?
Without a doubt, networking with other agencies has proven invaluable to Pace. We’ve been able to learn from the experience of other agencies to do everything from developing communications plans to implementing our Bus on Shoulders service on Interstate 55.

We did an extensive amount of research on hybrid and CNG-powered buses in order to make the best, most cost-effective decision for the agency. Any ­general manager or board member understands the tremendous amount of pressure involved in committing millions of public dollars to the purchase of buses that need to stay on the road for at least 12 years. Needless to say, we need to do it right. Learning from other agencies helped us make what we feel is the right decision.

Please explain why or how this has helped.
To answer that, here’s a quick story about how networking helped us get our Bus on Shoulders service to the implementation stage: By presenting an implementation plan based on the experience of Metro in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Cincinnati Metro, we were able to convince some skeptics and other stake­holders that this was a worthwhile effort that could be done safely.

It has been two years since our shoulder-riding program began and ridership has tripled to roughly 1,000 riders per day on the two routes. I don’t know if we could have gotten the project off the ground without being able to learn from, and point to, the successful operations of these other agencies we were able to easily reach through APTA.

What do you like most about your board service?
There are two things I talked before about—seeing first-hand how the service we provide has a positive impact on the lives of so many of our customers, whether it’s providing mobility for a person with a disability or helping everyday commuters save money versus driving. There’s a great feeling that comes from seeing how the work we do benefits our customers.
The other thing I enjoy is seeing how our employees rise to meet a wide variety of challenges. Pace is fortunate to have so many tremendously dedicated employees who have the experience and talent to manage unusual challenges, ranging from floods and blizzards to funding issues and more.

What is unique about your agency? What would readers be surprised to learn?
I think what tends to surprise people the most about Pace is the size of our agency. Although we’re a suburban agency and relatively small compared to our sister agency, the Chicago Transit Authority, we’re consistently among the 10 largest bus fleets in North America and have annual ridership totaling around 39-40 million despite not serving a central business district.

Our service area spans six counties and is roughly the size of the state of ­Connecticut. We are responsible for ADA paratransit operations in both Chicago and the suburbs and have been told that ours may be the largest paratransit operation in the world. We’re continuing to grow in terms of ridership, fleet size, and service levels and will continue to aggressively seek opportunities for continued positive change and growth.