Mobility Innovators

Jaspal Singh [00:41]:

Hello everyone. I’m so happy to welcome all listeners from around the world to Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovators Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their thought about the key changes in the sector, about the work, and what is the forecast for the future.

I’m very excited about my conversation with the special guest today. She has spent around 20 years in the public transportation sector and started her career as an engineer at STM Montreal. She’s currently the General Manager of OC Transpo, a public transport operator in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada.

OC Transpo currently operates 900 vehicles and 12.5 kilometers electric light trail system in the city. It also provides para transport service to the resident and has an expanding fleet of electric buses. She joined the position in October 2021 after spending 19 years at STM Montreal.

During her stint at STM, she managed different departments, including the planning section, and maintenance operation. She’s also the winner of the exceptional woman leadership prize for the large company awarded by the Federation of CBER of commerce in 2018.

I’m so happy to welcome Renée Amilcar General Manager, OC Transpo. It’s now time to listen and learn.

Hello, Renee. Thank you so much. Joining on this show. I’m really excited and looking forward to our conversation today.

Renée Amilcar [02:00]:

Hi Jaspal, thank you for having me.

Jaspal Singh [02:03]:

Thank you, Renée, and today I’ll be spending time getting to know more about you, your current role, and your thought on innovation in the mobility sector.

To begin with. I would like you to share some fun facts with our listeners. Also, are there any interesting facts about your career that are not on LinkedIn?

Renée Amilcar [02:21]:

Thank you again. Jaspal for having me and your podcast today.

I started my career as a respiratory assistant and very quickly I found that I could and I should do more. So I decided to go back to school when the time arrived to choose. It was difficult to choose between engineering and medicine. As I was been accepted in the engineering field at École Polytechnique, I finally decided to become an engineer. The rest is the story. As they say, engineering lends itself to so many different industries. And in 2002, I took an opportunity in the transportation industry, which handed hop being the starting point of a long and exciting carrier.

Jaspal Singh [03:09]:

Great. You’re doing great in this area and actually that’s, my follow-up question. You did your Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from Polytechnic Montreal, and after spending some time in Aeronautics and telecommunication industry, you did your MBA from the University of Sherbrook. After that, you joined STM Montreal in the bus planning and maintenance department. Later, you joined the bus operation department as Executive Director, and you did amazing work by growing the bus fleet by 15% during your tenure and defining the vision of electrification of the bus network by 2025. I would love to know more about that.

But after your long career at STM Montreal, you took another challenge of joining OC Transpo in October 2021 as a General Manager. So I have a two question for you.

 

• Generally, after MBA people join another profession like banking, consulting, some other white collar job, why do you choose to work with STM Montreal?
• What kept you motivated to work for 19 years with STM? It’s a long time. And the second question is why did you decide to join OC Transpo, when you were at a peak of your career at STM Montreal?

Renée Amilcar [04:17]:

You know and can be useful in many industries beyond banking and consulting at its core, a trended system is a business like any other, although we are accountable to the public in a way that most private business are not, we provide an important service with complex operations requiring good business knowledge and strong leadership. The skills gained from an MBA are very relevant and lend themselves to this type of industry. In many ways.

What I enjoyed most about my time at STM is that there was always new challenge and opportunities for progression in my career. It’s a wonderful organization becoming the GM at OC Transpo really felt like a natural next step in my career, I was ready for a new challenge, and I wanted to play a role in the many exciting developments in Ottawa, particularly with the upcoming stage two expansions in the east West and South end of Ottawa, including to the airport. I’m very excited to be part of the transformation here. As we expand our light rail system, increase our usage of electric buses, and look ahead to the future of transit.

Jaspal Singh [05:42]:

Yeah, that’s great. And I think all the great leaders look for a new challenge, they don’t look for a new position or new designation, but what they look for is where they can solve the real problem and real challenges. And I loved your answer.

And now I’d like to ask something which is close to my heart. And I know you are also doing that is women in a leadership role. When you join OC Transpo, it was the third time you became the first woman to hold a position of importance in the industry. You were the first woman appointed to the bus maintenance department of STM Montreal. You are the chair of the bus committee of the International Association of Public Transport. And then now you are the General Manager of OC Transpo. So we do see diversity at the bottom at the media level in the company, but the number became less and less at the top of the hierarchy, which is very sad. And another challenge is, that in the public transport industry, the major users are women. The majority of customers are women, but we don’t see them in data superposition.

What is your message to the other women’s colleagues? How can they break this glass ceiling? And how can we promote more women in the mobility sector?

Renée Amilcar [06:56]:

I’m a servant leader in advocate for studying and learning to me, it’s important to go to school and learn as much as you can. Having women in leadership positions helps to close the gender gap in this and many other industries. This provides women who are potential leaders with role models and examples of what their career trajectory could look like. It also shows women that they are part of an organization that values their contributions, equity, diversity, and inclusion are so important for me around all for our population is female. We should take every opportunity to share ideas. Often we think of men and women as opposite competing with each other. Yeah, I believe that it’s totally different. Two men gave me the opportunity to lead bus maintenance at STM, which led to me to my promotion to the Director of Bus Operations there, it was not common to do that. And they did the City Manager in Ottawa also made a change by hiring a diverse candidate was also woman at the general manager. So man for was it SPOC, which was a departure from previous hires. Men are very much partners with women in this journey toward inclusion. They play an important role as our supporters and our highs in today’s day and age, there is much more support for women.

Jaspal Singh [08:40]:

Well, thank you for your answer. And I fully agree with you. Learning is very important, and I love your point about the role of men also in promoting women entrepreneurship and leadership. And in fact, Mohamed from UITP, he’s a big advocate of diversity and inclusion. And in one of the sessions, he highlighted that if it’s a session on women equality, there should be more participant diverse participant, not only the women, but they should be more men in that room to discuss about that. So I love your answer that it’s important. They are not opposite. They need to work together and we are seeing the change. I mean, you are one of the example of that change, where we are seeing more and more women in the leadership role and helping to climb other great.

Jaspal Singh [09:26]:

Now my next question is about your role as a female chairperson of UITP Bus Committee and you were the first female chairperson of UITP bus division, which is quite too diverse. The bus division has more than 400 automation and operators from around the world. The committee is working on so many different topics – autonomous mobility, customer service, decarbonation, digitization, electric bus, network planning and so many other topics from around the world. You are working with these bus operators across the globe. Can you share some of the best practices learned from these operators and how can some of these learnings help operators in North America? Because I feel in North America, we have a good system, but we lack some of the initiatives, which can be learned from outside. But sometimes we are close and not eager to learn from outside, but can you share some of these learning, which you got from those working groups?

Renée Amilcar [10:21]:

Sure. you know, Jaspal before I became chair of the UITP bus vision, I was the president of the bus committee. I had this opportunity to travel to transit agencies throughout the world to see how many their systems operate in cities, such as Shenzhen and Morocco. We learned a lot. It’s important to visit other places and see for yourself. You cannot simply have people tell you it’s important to see when I visited China it brought a lot of ideas, which I saw with my own eyes and experienced for myself.

It was also helpful to see how people live and how they do things. It also gave me the chance to make connections with colleagues who I can reach out to. For me, we can learn from others by visiting them, going there, seeing their operations, and ask questions about why things are done a certain way in person and hands-on experience are very key. My vision for the electric buses came from UITP, but visiting Shenzhen was also very helpful as that it’s one of the first cities with entirely electric buses. They showed that it was possible and what it would look like in practice.

 

Jaspal Singh [11:52]:

Yeah, I fully agree with you visiting and seeing yourself. And I agree with you asking question, like how they implemented and why did they do these practices? I mean, Shenzhen is one of the best examples for electrification with 15,000 electric buses in just five- or six-years span. It’s really remarkable. And I think other cities are pulling too, but I love when you mentioned Morocco as well, one of the examples, and now you’ll be visiting some other city as part of your role as a chairperson of UITP. So I wish you great good success in the committee, but also, I hope you will bring a lot of new learning for the transit authority here in Canada.

So now shifting gears a bit

OC Transpo recently identifies seven priority initiative for 2022, which include

• Continuing response to COVID pandemic. It’s not over yet.
• And then enhancing the performance of Light Rail system. We will discuss in detail about that.
• And, and like you mentioned, the construction readiness of Stage-II of light rail train expansion
• Then para transport improvement
• Zero emission bus program
• Fare system improvement, that there is also discussion going on that.

One of the biggest challenges increasing ridership. So I would like to discuss the impact of COVID-19 and how the pandemic change the public transport sector in North America. There is a double challenge for public transport operator. And I would love to know more from you as a GM of heading organization is one the ridership, which is still 55 to 60% of the origin level in 2019. And secondly, the rising inflation there is an impact on the cost for the operation. So, I can imagine your job is not easy. It’s it must be full of challenges.

So what approach you are falling to bring back loss, ridership, and how are you evolving the long-term strategy of transport? You can’t, you can’t think of business as usual. You have to do something very different. So what are your long term plan?

Renée Amilcar [13:51]:

This is a nice question. I like this one, especially, you know, the daily routines of the average transit users have changed so much since the beginning of the pandemic before the pandemic ridership in on Ottawa’s transit system was among the highest per capita of any North American city. We had an average of 300,000 trips per day on our conventional buses, 160,000 on Light Rail and 3,000 on Para Transit in a city with the population of around 1 million people.

Pre-pandemic most transit users in Ottawa were downtown government workers and students. So Ottawa had a very high rate of remote workers during the pandemic. Many of which continue to work remotely at times almost half 47% of our residents worked from home.

Marketing will also be essential to our recovery. As we focus on the priorities of this next generation of transit users and highlight the many advantages of using public transport continue to work on sicker and sustainable service, how we can reach people working from home to meet their new and changing travel needs to adapt to their needs. This kind of initiative will do a lot to ensure that people are aware of what we offer such as sharing passes, credit card and mobile tech payment self-serve digital channels. And so more for ridership levels to recover, we should be open to new and alternative approaches to transit that allow customers to create a personalized combination of transportation mode to best serve their needs.

Jaspal Singh [15:57]:

Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know that Ottawa has such a high number of ridership and high per capital ridership in north America. It’s great to see that. And like you said, there was a cap audience of government workers and government employees, and the students. I love your line about how to cater to the need of next generation of passenger. You cannot think about doing the old stuff. You have to really go out of box and think about the need of these next generation of customers.

In fact, my next question is about that because throughout my research, one thing I found very consistent and common is that in your career, you always focus on customer experience. Even as a maintenance director and the bus operation director, you always focus on how to provide better buses and services to the customers and public transport agency should use technology and share real time information with the riders, like you mentioned using digital tool, self-service chaos providing mobile application to use those stuff and, and writers should able to book and pay for their trips smoothly because sometime there are a lot of challenge even to pay for the ticket.

Jaspal Singh [17:09]:

So also some of the transit authority, we need to remember that the, our employees are also our customers, so how to make their job easier and smooth. And I know during STM Montreal, you did a lot of digital initiative in the maintenance department.

What are the technology initiative are taken or plan by OC Transpo to improve customer experience? You mentioned some of them, but I would love to know a little more about what are those initiative and how you think it can help really the customer.

Renée Amilcar [17:40]:

Sure. We’re constantly working to improve the customer experience at OC Transpo, including introducing new and improved tools and technology to improve the experience for our customers. Some recent examples of this would be the introduction of the virtual queue at our downtown client service center and upgrades to the smart card readers on our fair gates to fare payment by credit card, mobile wallet, and tap, make payments seamless and convenient on a larger scale. It each activities such as our transition to battery electric buses will also have a positive impact on the customer experience by providing cleaner and quieter transit experience while reducing our environmental impact. Similarly, the stage two light rail expansion will help to reduce the number of transfers and travel time for many of our customers, which will significantly improve the customer experience for those that currently transfer to a bus to get to the destinations that will be served by the extensions.

Jaspal Singh [18:56]:

Great. I didn’t know that in transit agency as well, you can use this option of virtual query because generally you see in the bank, but first time I’m seeing example in transit system, but I think it’s a good tool because then people don’t need to waste time standing in a physical queue and waiting for their turn and they can just log in online and can be in a virtual queue. So thanks for sharing that and I agree with your point about the role of electric buses to improve customer experience.

And in fact, my next question is about that on the emission bus program that right now, OC Transpo is testing around four electric buses and looking to add 26 more electric buses by 2023.

 

Jaspal Singh [19:42]:

And there is a plan to have a total of 446. So it’s a large fleet by North America standard by 2027. But even before OC Transpo, you did a lot of work on electric Buse at STM. So you have a long experience in the operations of these electric buses.

What is your assessment of electric buses and what kind of changes will be required for the successful operation of electric buses? Because some of the cities are just replacing the fleet, but that’s not right. And I would love to know from your experience and how do you think technology will play a key role in the management and of electric buses?

Renée Amilcar [20:24]:

Globally, we are seeing a shift toward electric and zero emission vehicles, which extends far beyond transit. We have to commit to the reduction of greenhouse gases. If we want to limit the impacts of climate change and work to save our planet.

Jaspal Singh [20:41]:

Yeah

Renée Amilcar [20:42]:

Our customers, employees, and all of our stakeholders will be involved in this transformation. It’s not a project, it’s a transformation, we’ll need technology to manage battery levels and chargers. We’ll also need to transform our hires to be able to receive those buses and will need new skills and training for the people currently managing the diesel buses, project management will be important to make sure we capture everything.

Jaspal Singh [21:16]:

Yeah

Renée Amilcar [21:16]:

The planning of the service will also be different as we consider new factors, such a battery life and charging time.

Jaspal Singh [21:25]:

I agree with you the whole planning process need to change. And one of the key points you mentioned, which a lot of agencies miss is the new skills and employer require to manage this transition. And in fact, I remember when I spoke to people at Shenzhen Bus, they have to change 60% of their manpower. No, they didn’t replace them, but they reskill the 60% of their manpower from mechanical division to electrical, and body mechanic and other parts. So it’s a big change. And in fact that’s what I want to discuss more with you is because a lot of transit agencies in North America are facing a huge challenge with the staff and the driver. In fact, the report published by Transit Center highlight that 70% of transit agencies in the US are facing driver and staff shortage.

Jaspal Singh [22:15]:

And they’re taking a lot of major to address these challenges, but new challenge, you mentioned when you have these electric buses or the new technologies coming into the picture, you need a new kind of a talent and staff in the team. You need people with data analytics scale, you need people with project management scale. You need people with managing the high load of electricity, and electrification load scale. So, and also cyber security, but the challenge is you are not alone. So you’re competing with lot of other transit agencies, as well as a lot of other it companies for the same kind of a talent, the startups and other company, which are moving that shift and all. So is OC Transpo facing a similar challenge with staffing and how are you overcoming this challenge? And also I want to know, are you using this as an opportunity to restructure the whole organization? Are you creating new roles? Are you creating a new hierarchy? What kind of changes you’re bringing to the organization?

Renée Amilcar [23:19]:

In Canada and even more so in Quebec and Ontario, we’re seeing a significant staffing shortage. As we see more retirements and fewer workers willing to take public facing and frontline jobs. It’s not an easy job to be a bus driver, frequently working schedules that do not align with regular business hours. We also need them more on the weekend. Now, as people are able to do more on the weekend and our commuting less during the week in Ottawa, we are federally regulated and new federal regulations. As, as mandatory breaks have been introduced while these changes are incredible beneficial to employees, we now need more operators than before to provide the same level of service to our customers. We’ve done a lot more promotion of our job opportunities with a dedicated team running hiring campaign with marketing bus advertisement, information sessions, and outreach campaign.

Jaspal Singh [24:25]:

Okay.

Renée Amilcar [24:26]:

We need to change the way that we use to do things and work with what is available to us. This could mean providing additional training to help bus drivers with soft skills, such as customer service, to help more people succeed. Succession planning along with centralizing our core business functions play a big part in designing our long-term organization, organizational structure hybrid and flexible working models. Learning and developments, programs, mentoring, job shadowing, and leadership programs are important to our success rather than working harder. Our focus is on working more effectively to ensure we can provide a working environment that provides work class balance and job satisfaction.

Jaspal Singh [25:23]:

Right. I really like your line about rather than working harder, we should work more effectively, and technology can be the tool to do that, and making that succession plan, mentoring and connecting people, because like you said, it’s not easy to be a bus driver. It’s a very hard job and nobody want to do, especially the new generation. They are not excited to be a bus driver.

But how can you make a long-term plan where people are not just joined as a bus driver and retire as a bus driver, but they actually have a succession plan. So you work in the industry and then you get promoted within the automation or outside, and move to a better role in position over the period of line. So I really love your point and I think it’ll be a great lesson for other transit agencies, how to look driving as a profession, not just as a bus driver, but also a future customer care executive, or a managerial staff, or transit expert or advisor.

Jaspal Singh [26:24]:

So thanks for sharing that. Next point now, the biggest challenge in your hand – the Light Rail system. The electrical Light Rail system was launched in Ottawa 2019. However, the configuration line Phase-I, which is 12.5 kilometer long with the team station has faced a lot of challenges since the beginning even before you joined. So, I mean, there are some legacy issues you need to handle, and there are multiple stakeholders involved in the project. That’s the biggest challenge, you need to take everything, everybody along with you to do that. And now you are going to enhance the performance in 2022, as well as extension of Phase-II, which will add another 44 kms of re network and 24 news stations. And like you said it’ll help people to reduce the transfer and they can get from start A to B, they can get a full network, so they don’t need to do too many transfers. And in fact, in one of the studies mentioned that the 77% of resident in Ottawa will be living within five kilometers of radius, which is remarkable.

So can you share how the Phase-II development will be different from Phase-I? How will you address some of these challenges, which were there earlier and how you’re using technology and innovation to address some of these challenges?

Renée Amilcar [27:45]:

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to reach with the people about the LRT. It’s important to remember that when we launched Phase-I, this had never been done before here in Ottawa. On top of that, we use a PPP model with many stakeholders, which was challenging as well. We learned a lot in the last three years. And during the planning process, we will continue to improve with Phase-II. We have the benefits of insight; we know what worked well and what didn’t. We know what processes and practices need to be in place, what barriers we can expect and how to mitigate them? We’ve developed the training programs. And in many cases are just expanding on what we are already doing.

Jaspal Singh [28:42]:

Yeah

Renée Amilcar [28:43]:

We’ve also made many proactive changes to our process from reviews, audit, and lessons learned that have been documented since the launch of Line One. For example, we’ve made changes to the procurement process, adjusted the wording in the project agreement, kept project staff from Phase one involved in planning for Phase-II, among many other improvements. We have dedicated groups assigned to the rail construction project communications and engineering, and have increased our oversight, both internal and with third party reviewers to provide additional verification and certification of the quality and functionality of our systems.

We’ve also made technical improvements, such as gas switch heater. Yeah, new connectivity project, and operational changes such as new processes for system integration and extra trial running period. Lastly, would benefit from new innovations and improvements identified by our new Light Rail in cities in Canada and continue to apply industrial best practices will learn more.

Phase-II will change the balance of Light Rail and conventional Buses within our system. And it’ll also be different from a customer experience standpoint right now, most of our customers still need to take a bus and transfer to Light Rail to get to their destinations. Once, Phase-II is complete transfers will be less frequent and customers will be able to access the Light Rail System more directly. It will also provide opportunities to innovate. We provide local bus service.

Jaspal Singh [30:37]:

Yeah.

Renée Amilcar [30:38]:

One of the good things with LRT is that we are very high trained with our technology. We use the most advanced technology available to us. We will definitely continue to improve as the technology becomes more advanced.

Jaspal Singh [30:56]:

Great. Thanks for sharing that. And I look forward to visit soon and try out myself. But I think what you mentioned, I really like as a leader, your point about accepting that, okay, there were some challenges, but now we learned lessons from those, and we know how to improve rather than just saying, okay, there was challenges, and discussing time on the problem.

But what you are doing is spending more time on the solution and discussing how you’re making those changes and how you’re bringing new technology to improve some of the operation, and the trial run. So that’s more important. So spending more time in the trial this time and also working with the partners to make sure that no past mistakes are repeated. So I really love your answer because that’s how the leader should take forward the agenda.

And actually, that is my last question. I would like to learn from your management and leadership experience, what is your leadership strategy or mantra, and how is the role of leader changing in the new technological era?

Renée Amilcar [32:04]:

My mantra is people first. I’m very focused and people oriented and want to understand everything. So I can coach people without my co-managing. As a leader, I try to be authentic and open to change. It’s important to continuously learn and adapt. Most importantly, you must listen to your people. They are your experts and I rely so much on the insights from the incredible team of people working with me at OC Transpo every single day. The role of leaders in this new area of technology continues to evolve. There is so much uncertainty in the world right now. Yeah. And I think a big part of our role as leaders is to be a source of stability, to those who lead while building consensus and trust among our teams. It’s also to ensure we prioritize balance between the personal and professional lives in our teams.

Jaspal Singh [33:12]:

Yeah.

Renée Amilcar [33:13]:

We should strive to understand the point of view of others through direct and open communication. And we must have a clear vision for the world.

Jaspal Singh [33:25]:

Yeah, I agree with you. People first operate, always work. And like I said, you always focus on customer service and customer experience. And now also the people first within the team and bringing that transparency and bringing everybody together. There are so many good management lessons. So, thank you for sharing that.

So thank you Renée for sharing you know, we learn about your professional experience, your professional journey and all, but we have this Rapid-fire question round and the purpose of this question round, it’s learn about you as a person okay. And your personal side of thing. And we have these five questions you will need to answer them quickly. So whenever you’re ready, I will just start.

Renée Amilcar [34:08]:

Okay, go ahead.

Jaspal Singh [34:10]:

Okay. So now my first question is if you were not in the mobility or this transportation space, what other profession? You would’ve selected?

Renée Amilcar [34:18]:

Physician being a doctor. Yeah. Definitively being a doctor

Jaspal Singh [34:21]:

You’re still helping people. So I think the, the goal is same is just the different profession.

Renée Amilcar [34:28]:

Absolutely.

Jaspal Singh [34:29]:

Now you mentioned that you get an opportunity to travel around the world. You visited so many cities around the world, I would say, which is your favorite city in the world,

Renée Amilcar [34:41]:

Prague

Jaspal Singh [34:42]:

And any specific reason.

Renée Amilcar [34:44]:

It’s so nice. I don’t know. I really adopt this city. It’s very, very nice.

Jaspal Singh [34:51]:

I never been there, but I heard it’s a nice place. So probably that should be on my bucket list now.

Renée Amilcar [34:57]:

Yeah.

Jaspal Singh [34:58]:

As a person working in a transportation for so long, and I’m pretty sure whenever you visit a new city, you must be checking out the, the transit network of that city. So I would say, which city has the best transit network in the world?

Renée Amilcar [35:13]:

Tokyo because Tokyo, it’s amazing. Everything is clean, planned on time, on schedule everything.

Jaspal Singh [35:22]:

Yeah, it’s a favorite among many of the past guests and, and mine too. So Tokyo has best transit and it’s  not only a transit, it’s a lifeline of that city. I mean also the transit is lifeline for every city.

Now, the next question is, and maybe difficult for you because to pick one is always difficult. Who’s your favorite leader in mobility sector?

Renée Amilcar [35:46]:

At the time when inclusion, diversity and equity are top of mind for everyone Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary General of UITP is an excellent example of leader who is bold and has to believe in a defend place of women in the transport industry.

Jaspal Singh [36:06]:

Yeah, Mohamed is great. In fact, not many people know that he has this policy of Manel. So no UITP event or staff can participate in a session where there is no female speaker. So we have a strict policy, whatever is the session, whatever is the event. You have to have diversity and, and he do that. So thanks for that. And I think Mohamed will be happy to hear that.

Now my last question is if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Renée Amilcar [36:40]:

No disease

Jaspal Singh [36:41]:

No disease.

Renée Amilcar [36:42]:

Yeah.

Jaspal Singh [36:44]:

You want the world to be disease free? No, I agree. It’s a challenge and I think the COVID free world is another thing, you know, a lot of people want.

But thank you so much for, I thank you for your great insight. I really love this conversation with you and learn a lot from your experience.

Renée Amilcar [37:03]:

Thank you so much, Jaspal. It was a pleasure and I hope to see you again