From General Manager Lesley Kandaras
In August, I kicked off my commitment to ride every Metro Transit route in my first year as General Manager. I started by riding the METRO A Line from the Rosedale Transit Center to the 46th Street Station and back.
Starting my journey to ride every route with the A Line is fitting. I moved from South Dakota to Minnesota to attend Hamline University, and as a carless college student regularly rode the 4 (and later the 84) on Snelling Avenue. I have so many memories riding through this corridor!
The trip also provided a chance to close out the summer like many other Minnesotans, with a visit to the Minnesota State Fair. As always, the A Line made it easy to get to the fairgrounds, and I had the opportunity to meet the State Fair's new CEO, who joined me for a few stops.
Thank you to everyone who rode with us to the fair and who stopped by our booth to connect with staff and learn more about our trip planning tools. Impressively, we provided almost a quarter-million rides on our State Fair Express buses!
Moving forward, I will continue using these rides as another way of hearing directly from customers, operators, and the many community partners we work with throughout the region.
Along with using transit to get to work, meetings and other activities, riding every route will provide valuable insight that informs our efforts to provide consistently positive experiences for our riders and staff.
So, I hope to see you out there soon. To see where I’ve gone and where I’ll go next, please visit metrotransit.org/ridewithlesley.
And please feel free to reach me any time at generalmanager@metrotransit.org – I’d love to hear more about what you’d like to see us focus on in the coming months and years.