Transit employees don’t often represent the overall labor force or reflect the rider demographics. Here’s what some Association members are doing to serve their regions with efforts to recruit and retain a diverse, local workforce.
By Arianna Smith
Managing Editor
Transit California
California transit agencies are serious about diversifying their workforce to strengthen their operations, rider experience, and employee satisfaction.
Even beyond the transit industry, proactive efforts to foster workforce diversity is widely recognized by employers, economists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other experts as making organizations more competent, creative, resilient, and growth-oriented. Organizations that are robustly inclusive of employee diversities in gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, country of origin, languages spoken, age, disability, and other lived experiences can have greater employee satisfaction and lower employee turnover. Diverse teams often make stronger decisions than non-diverse teams, focusing more on facts and inventing more innovative solutions to problems.
Further, transit employers who are concerned about workforce shortages can widen their applicant pool with concerted efforts to recruit diverse candidates. Ongoing transit labor shortages began before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns and continue to affect operations even as rider demand is returning to pre-pandemic levels; it’s incumbent upon transit agencies to expand efforts to attract a wide pool of potential workers, to retain those who they hire, and to encourage employees who are interested to seek promotions and advancement.
The California Transit Association as a whole, as well as individual member agencies, have been implementing initiatives to help address disparities and foster efforts to create a more diverse workforce.
Diversity concerns in the transit workforce
According to a 2024 report by the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), across the United States, “the transit workforce is not particularly representative of the US labor force in terms of either sex or race/ethnicity.” Where left unaddressed, this is leading to consequences for transit operators.
Women have been historically underrepresented across the transit industry, particularly in leadership and maintenance roles. A 2019 MTI report found that women represented just 15% of the transportation industry. A few types of positions approach gender parity (for example, bus drivers at 44%), most have women occupying less than one-quarter of positions (23% of transportation supervisors, 18% of engineering technicians, 15% of cleaners, 6% of first-line supervisors of mechanics, and just 1% of mechanics). In 2023, MTI found that men comprised the majority of workers for all transit job types except for administrative support (where women hold 66% of the jobs). According to a 2019 report, a major barrier to attracting women to the transportation career is the lack of female role models and mentors.
A concentration of older workers in the transit sector is another major issue: the transit workforce is aging faster than other essential industries, and by 2023, nearly 38% of transit workers were over the age of 55.
People of color are generally well represented in the transit workforce, but some races and ethnicities are over or underrepresented relative to their representation in the overall US labor force in particular job categories. People of color are the majority in all job types except for the high-wage earning category of officials and administrators. Additionally, according to MTI, “[white] workers are overrepresented as officials and administrators but also in skilled craft jobs. Asian workers are overrepresented as professionals, and Black workers are overrepresented in service and maintenance jobs. Black workers are underrepresented across most job categories except service and maintenance. Finally, Hispanic workers are underrepresented as officials and administrators.”
Fostering diversity in the transit workforce: agencies highlight successful efforts
At the Association’s 59th Annual Conference & Expo in late November 2024, presenters and attendees connected over concerns and ideas on efforts to attract, recruit, and retain a diverse, well-trained, satisfied, and stable workforce throughout the transit sector. Amongst 20 concurrent educational session panels, four addressed workforce diversity concerns; in these sessions, expert panelists showcased ways that agencies are working to expand the diversity in their workforce demographics.
In “Actions to Increase Demographic Diversity in Transit Maintenance,” experienced panelists described agency-level outreach initiatives to bring women and underrepresented people of color into the maintenance field, as well as to help them grow their careers.
Connie Raya, Director of Maintenance at Omnitrans in San Bernardino County, explained the benefit of her lived experience as a woman while developing her career in the male-dominated maintenance field: “Women tend to be more reliant on public transportation. As women in transit, we pay attention to detail, cleanliness, and safety. All while juggling our family responsibilities.” She described Omnitrans’ Maintenance Apprenticeship Program, launched in 2023, a multiyear program through a partnership with a local community college and the representative union where apprentices receive on-the-job, paid training with benefits. Omnitrans also implemented a culture initiative in 2022 to enhance inclusion amongst existing employees and to foster an attractive work environment to a diverse pool of applicants. Finally, their Students in Transit Youth Council is focusing on interesting young local residents in the transit career path; in its second year, leaders are focusing on recruiting female students.
In “Recruitment, Retention and Reinvention: Build a Diverse, Durable Transit Workforce,” Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Operations Manager Shannon Arms described the initiative she co-founded with a local union, Women Innovating Transit (WIT). In her presentation, she described how WIT “features a core team of women, all of whom bring invaluable experience as front-line workers. WIT is a resource to all employees who will advocate, educate, and elevate women and their allies in a transportation environment.” A former frontline worker herself, Arms attributed some of her success – and perseverance in the career field – to her women role models; now, WIT-trained mentors meet and discuss resolutions that women transit workers face – everything from specific safety issues, to rest room availability, to breast pumping facility availability, to maternity uniforms and much more. WIT is a signature VTA program lauded in multiple presentations for its successful work supporting, retaining, and encouraging women to seek promotions past entry level positions at transit agencies.
The panel “Innovative Ideas to Mitigate Operator Shortages and Enhance Operator Well-Being” featured Kevin Catlin, President and Managing Partner of Insight Strategies, who spoke to the need to foster a sense of psychological safety as a means to ensure that transit workplaces feel safe, secure, and comfortable for all employees. “By fostering psychological safety, organizations enable employees to report safety concerns, discuss operational challenges, and collaborate on solutions without fear of retribution. This not only enhances workplace morale, but also contributes to safer and more efficient operations.” He added, “Transit organizations that prioritize psychological safety are more attractive to potential hires, particularly younger workers who value mental health and well-being in the workplace.”
In the session “Selling Public Transit as a Career,” Association members heard from four transit leaders who are responsible for running agencies with medium-to-large sized workforces: Sharon Cooney, CEO of San Diego Metro Transit System (who also serves as Chair of the Association’s Executive Committee), Michelle Bouchard, Executive Director of Caltrain, Carolyn Gonot, General Manager/CEO of VTA, and Ken McDonald, President and CEO of Long Beach Transit. The panel became an important, visible forum for leaders who are women and people of color; they spoke of their own experiences working their way to the top of the public transit career, and they were able to explain high level challenges, opportunities, and successes in their operating regions.
The Association’s broader diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts moving forward
For several years, the Association has formally prioritized policies that support member efforts to foster workforce diversity and inclusion, contained within the recommendations of the Association’s 2021 IDEA Task Force report and Strategic Plan for 2023 to 2028, which identified needs areas of advocacy, member services, and organizational management and development (For more information on these efforts, see Transit California’s August 2024 article.) Additionally, the Association is centering equity in its coordinated efforts to push for recommendations that benefit transit agencies in the Transit Transformation Task Force’s upcoming report to the legislature, due in October 2025.
The Association recognizes that the coming change of the federal Presidential Administration and new Congress in January 2025 will result in changes of federal focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In response, the Association’s IDEA Task Force is currently communicating about how to continue to meet the Association’s and member agency commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Although the incoming federal Administration is likely, at the very least, to deprioritize such programs in its proposed transportation policy agenda, the Association will continue to honor its commitments. Association leadership is now working to strengthen connections with several DEI-focused transit organizations, including Latinos in Transit (LIT), Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS), and the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO).