Episode 36 - Dinero’ Washington - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

SporTran Chief Executive Officer, Dinero' Washington, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

0:52 1. Dinero', let’s start here today. Since 2015, you have served as the Chief Executive Officer of SporTran. If you could, please give everyone a basic overview - your annual budget, number of employees, hours of operation and areas served?

 

2:33 2. Public transit is an essential part of the local economy. Buses connect our citizens to employment.

 

Approximately how many riders does SporTran carry a year?

 

5:58 3. Under your leadership, SporTran went through a four year process to design a total restructure plan for the agency based on feedback from the riders. Since completing the project, SporTran is one of the few transit systems in America that has seen a growth in ridership.

 

How is SporTran different today from what it was when you started the restructure process?

 

13:32 4. I have heard it spoken about but know very little about it. Can you tell us about the downtown circulator?

 

15:29 5. In 2019, you wrote an article about the number of covered bus stops in our community. At the time, you stated there were over 800 bus stops in the City of Shreveport but only 100 were covered.

 

I believe the 2019 bond that failed included money to increase the number of covered bus stops.

 

What is the situation today? Is there still an overwhelming amount of bus stops that remain without shelter or cover?

 

18:03 6. Most people don’t know that SporTran was the first public transit agency in the state to deploy electric buses. I believe today that your fleet only consists of electric buses and alternative fuel-powered buses.

 

Is that correct? How many buses total are in your fleet? How many are electric and how many are CNG?

 

25:12 7. In doing my research on you, it is abundantly clear that you are very community minded. I came across this quote of yours:

 

“When you can transform your own community and bring things to light, that’s a great thing that you can always look back on and say, ‘Hey, one day my kids are going to be able to see this. I’m doing this for my grandkids’.”

 

How do we get more people to view this as a WE and not a ME community?