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For over 30 years, Jeffrey Tumlin has helped governments and technology companies rethink transportation policy to promote local economies, cut greenhouse gas emissions, reduce traffic violence, advance equity, and make streets more joyful. After two decades consulting around the world at Nelson\Nygaard, he helped create and lead the Oakland Department of Transportation, then led the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) through the most challenging period in its 110-year history.
At SFMTA, COVID-related work-from-home resulted in nearly a 30% loss in agency revenues. COVID itself had dire impacts on the agency’s nearly 6,000 staff, all of whom were considered “essential” or “disaster service” workers, and the majority of whom were required to come to work every day. These tragedies, however, created opportunities to change the culture of the agency, helping staff see the deep meaningfulness of their work, rediscover the joy of fixing broken things, and hone their strategic risk-taking skills knowing that management had their backs. Despite the financial situation, this culture-change work allowed staff to improve their productivity and delivery, resulting in:
- More than 70% reduction in subway delays.
- Dramatic improvement in speed and reliability on main bus corridors, including up to 30% reductions in delay.
- What is believed to be the greatest divergence in transit ridership in the world, with downtown rail stations still at 35% of 2019 ridership due to work-from-home, while high-frequency bus corridors are seeing 140% of 2019 ridership weekdays, and up to 200% weekends.
- Nearly 50 miles of new or improved transit-only lanes and transit-priority corridors, built in-house by staff.
- Over 30 miles of “Slow Streets” for safe walking and biking, all of which were adopted by local neighborhoods. These were built in-house and with community organizations, and they continue to be expanded and improved upon.
- The highest public approval rating for the agency since data was first collected in 2001.
His projects have won awards from the U.S. General Services Administration, Institute of Transportation Engineers, American Planning Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Urban Land Institute. He is the author of Sustainable Transportation: Tools for Creating Healthy, Vibrant and Resilient Communities (Wiley, 2012).
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