TRANSIT SAFETY CULTURE: ACHIEVING RACIAL EQUITY, A CALL FOR ACTION IN THE TRANSIT INDUSTRY.

TRANSIT SAFETY CULTURE: ACHIEVING RACIAL EQUITY, A CALL FOR ACTION IN THE TRANSIT INDUSTRY

By

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LEVERN MCELVEEN, MPA

Introduction

Have you heard of Isabel Wilkerson? If not, please allow me to introduce her. Isabel Wilkerson is the author of the new book Caste, The Origin of Our Discontents. Isabel became the first woman of African American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Additionally, she has also won the National Humanities Medal. Her debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns, won several awards for journalism studies at Howard University. Here she became the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, The Hilltop. The book was chosen to be part of Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 book club. It is a must-read.

Isabel Wilkerson defines Caste in this manner. "Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, and human kindness to someone based on their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." America is like the caste systems of Nazi Germany and modern India. African Americans are considered lower in society's hierarchy. Subsequently, they are excluded from specific opportunities, included with certain negative labels, and considered impure.

A caste system has been in place for thousands of years within India. However, American society has also had a caste system since its inception. Caste systems essentially mean that being born into poverty significantly increases your chances of living in poverty for the entirety of your life. Similarly, if you are born into wealth, you will have more significant opportunities to create wealth.

These characteristics drive the worse social and economic outcomes for African Americans in education, housing, health, job opportunities, and wealth, the taboo surrounding interracial relationships, and many more social issues. Isabel Wilkerson explains why race is an arbitrary concept introduced based on racist ideas. We are all far more genetically similar than we think. Skin color has been arbitrarily used to form a caste system in America and parts of Europe. To better understand the concept of caste, Isabel Wilkerson uses an analogy of a house with deteriorating conditions.

 Isabel Wilkerson cites, "Structural problems will become gradually more challenging to fix the longer they are left unaddressed. The authors explain this point by using the analogy of inheriting an old house that needs considerable structural work. For example, suppose you notice a crack in the ceiling but decide to leave it, as you believe it is merely superficial cosmetic damage. Subsequently, this crack continues to grow until a specialist identifies damage to the integrity of the foundation of your home. These problems were caused by mistakes made by those building the house. However, this does not mean these structural problems are not your responsibility”.

 “You should identify these mistakes as wrong and remove them from the foundations. Otherwise, these problems will fester and become worse. As with this house, structural problems within your country are unlikely to be a direct cause of you. However, the author argues that this does not mean you should not take responsibility for these problems. You now live within this 'home' filled with structural issues. Significantly, if you keep passing the blame and avoiding these problems, they will only grow bigger. Then, it will be even more challenging for future generations to eradicate these structural problems”. 

America is now over three hundred years old. Hence, the structural problems apparent at the inception of the country are becoming increasingly influential. Specifically, Isabel Wilkerson talks about drastic income gaps, ongoing police violence, and issues with healthcare highlighted by the Coronavirus pandemic. Finally, Isabel Wilkerson ends the book by outlining principles that help to dismantle the pillars of casteism or systemic racism in America:

           ·        Make people aware of the presence of a caste system within the U.S.

·        Support people who have managed to break free from their subordinate castes.

·        See people as individuals with ideas in common rather than part of the homogeneous group. This should help prevent dehumanization.

·        Vote with an awareness of how the caste system is currently dominating politics.

 COVID-19 and the social unrest due to police brutality in our society today have only re-surfaced the presence of a caste system within America. For example, those within dominant castes have benefited from health-care insurance offered through their jobs. In comparison, those in lower castes have had to continue working with no healthcare coverage or suffer, reflecting the number of fatalities among African Americans and people of color deaths due to COVID-19. The statistics from the pandemic have shown it is disproportionately deadlier to marginalized communities. Additionally, caste also reflects the number of African Americans and people of color dying at the hands of police brutality in America.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

 The killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a White police officer, in Minneapolis last May became so much more than an individual act of violence. The case became a catalyst for worldwide protests about how Black people are treated by police, political leaders, and corporations. Within weeks of the killing, scores of organizations said they must do better by their Black employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Hire Black talent. Develop Black individual contributors into leaders. Treat them with respect. Listen to them. The jury is still out on their actions.

 Before Judge Peter Cahill announced the George Floyd murder verdict, people shouted they wanted to see justice, justice, justice. For so long, African Americans have seen multiple cases in the past that did not end in a guilty verdict. It was why so many African Americans were doubtful that the case would end up with a guilty verdict. However, Keith Ellison, the State Attorney for the state of Minnesota, cites, "We did not achieve justice from the verdict; we received accountability. We must continue to fight for change.”

During the trial, approximately 10 miles away, Duante White, a 13-year-old teenager, was killed. Wright's mother, Katie, however, later questioned whether even justice would be enough. "Unfortunately, there's never going to be justice for us," she told reporters Thursday. Would justice "bring our son home to us, knocking on the door with his big smile coming in the house, sitting down eating dinner with us, going out to lunch, playing with his one-year-old, almost-two-year-old son, giving them a kiss before he walks out the door," she added. "So, justice isn't even a word to me."

After the verdict was announced on April 20, 2021, and people rejoiced and shouted for joy in victory, on that same evening, the fatal police shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant, a Black teenager seen on video charging at two people with a knife, came within minutes of the verdict in George Floyd's killing — causing outrage by some over the continued use of lethal force by the Columbus, Ohio police. Officials with the Columbus Division of Police released footage of the shooting Tuesday night just hours after it happened, a departure from the protocol as the force faces immense scrutiny from the public following a series of recent high-profile police killings that have led to clashes. According to police accountability data, another newspaper article headline cites that Columbus police have killed the second-highest number of children of any local law-enforcement agency since 2013.

I am sick and tired of listening to people who want to make excuses to defend police behaviors in America. I know, and you know that there is something fundamentally wrong when African Americans are shot and killed for misdemeanors while young whites,’ such as Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, S.C., can involve themselves in a mass shooting of 9 citizens attending church, end up with no physical harm, and taken to Burger King by arresting officers because he was hungry. Do you think the reactions would be the same if a black had killed nine white churchgoers? Do you think the responses would have been the same if Black police were shooting and killing white citizens?

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Wednesday, one day after a jury found former city police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, that the Justice Department is launching a federal investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis. The department already has an open criminal investigation into Floyd's murder and whether federal civil rights laws were violated; Garland released a statement immediately after the Chauvin verdict confirming that the probe is "ongoing." But Garland's latest announcement signals the start of a broader inquiry into whether the Minneapolis Police Department operates in ways that violate residents' constitutional rights.

 What is going on in America is nothing more than a caste system at work in the police department across this nation. Police are shooting one black person after another! While much attention is being given to policing in America under a caste system, the transit industry is under that same caste system. The caste system cannot sustain itself in America; it cannot sustain itself in the transit industry. Because when leaders engage in discussions on racism in their system, there are benefits. These discussions will lead to stronger bonds between leaders and employees and a greater understanding of values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes across racial and political divides, which impact service delivery in every facet because one nation is a destiny.

Transit Industry Ethos: A Call for Action

Ethos is the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations. The ethos of the transit industry is evolving, requiring greater emphasis on developing and implementing a sustainable safety culture, which includes diversity, inclusion and fair treatment of employees, and high levels of trust, integrity, and responsiveness. These are critical drivers for employees' and customers' relationships and increase productivity and performance. The transit industry ethos must be changed. The current characteristics and make-up of the transit industry must change in the interest of employees and citizens. The business model must change. Transit leadership must change.

 For transit ethos to evolve into a new world order, transit leaders will be required to foster these changes with serious intent within a divided society, haunted by systemic racism and white supremacy that forms the caste system. Transit leaders must now confront the systemic structure of racism in transit. It is not just possible, but it must become a mandate and will be beneficial for the transit industry to uphold and embrace these core values while maintaining their mandates and purpose. 

 Coretta Pittman writes, "Unfortunately, in the history of race relations in America, black Americans' ethos ranks low among other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Often, their moral characters have been associated with a criminalized and sexualized ethos in visual and print culture. The assumption that black people lack a positive and respectable ethos is a historical and contemporary problem.

She cites, “To address the problem with ethos, she turned to Aristotle's Rhetoric to foreground an analysis of ethos. Then she examines Harriet Jacobs's slave narrative and the autobiography of Billie Holiday and Sister Souljah, respectively, to illustrate the difficulty they faced as they attempted to redefine an ethos of immorality to an ethos of respectability in their narratives. As each text demonstrates, acquiring a positive ethos becomes problematic given that a classical model such as Aristotle's excludes their lived realities and experiences as black women living in a slave and post-slavery society”.

 America, including the transit industry, can no longer ignore the racial disparities in the United States. Black Americans considerably trail whites in nearly every category of life: finance, housing, education, job opportunities, and contracting opportunities. Longstanding patterns and practices of racial discrimination and inequalities are to blame. James Baldwin cites, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." If the transit industry is to seek its ethos, it must rise and face its many vulnerabilities. The transit industry must own its vulnerabilities of the past and those of the present to pave a path forward for the benefit of one nation and stop flowing with the current flow. 

To this end, transit leaders at all levels of transit can no longer remain in silence. It is time for you to act. As one who has traveled across the transit industry, I have often seen a certain level of arrogance and entitlement exhibited by transit leaders regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) and safety culture. I have witnessed transit leaders that sought to tear employees down instead of lifting employees. Too many transit leaders feel that having a position of leadership and authority makes them all-knowing with absolutely no transit operations experience.

Many transit leaders feel superior to those in their employment or at so-called lower levels in the transit system, which is how a caste system works. Great transit leaders are not know-it-alls who continuously try to outshine everyone. Great transit leaders admit when they are wrong and genuinely want to learn from others. It is not about being the most intelligent person in the room; it is about building teams, addressing systems, and subsystems with the most intelligent people and supporting employees, and providing outstanding and quality service to the community served.

The transit industry must take serious steps to confront the many challenges faced by Black and people of color on the frontline and throughout the system. Transit leaders must ask themselves the question, how inclusive is my leadership? Having a few “culture-fit” African Americans on your team is not sufficient. The dynamics must be broader. In her article, How Inclusive is Your Leadership, Salwa Rahim-Dillard cites

America is housing a racially traumatized workforce. Many managers are ill-equipped to lead and connect with Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) employees. The physical traits, values, behaviors, and workplace identities of BIPOC employees continue to be compromised, minimized, and excluded. The reality is that professionalism has become the pseudonym for assimilation. Until white leaders become skilled at bridging (connecting with people different from them) and BIPOC leaders become skilled at bonding (connecting with people similar to them), BIPOC employees will not experience workplace inclusion.

During this period of uncertainties, transit leaders must have clarity of purpose and value that helps guide transit systems through their path to value creation and relevance. Transit leaders must reimagine their system's place in the community they serve, they also need to be clear and grounded about who they are as public leaders and agencies. Transit leaders must become better leaders. Research shows that 70% of leaders’ learning and development comes from challenging assignments that force leaders to learn new skills. The rest of that development usually involves hours of training seminars, working with coaches, and dedicating themselves to become more self-aware, mindful, and reflective.

 Transit Leadership

To succeed in the post-pandemic era, transit leaders need new skills and capabilities; transit leaders must be proficient across a comprehensive set of paradoxical characteristics, according to Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard (2021). First, transit leaders must be strategic executors, balancing purpose, vision, mission with execution. Second, transit leaders must be humble heroes, willing to make bold decisions while being great listeners and champions of inclusivity. Third, transit leaders must be tech-savvy humanists, adopting new technologies while understanding and caring for their people. Fourth, transit leaders must be traditioned innovators, s the mission and purpose of their companies while pushing innovation to the extreme. Fifth, transit leaders must be high-integrity politicians, willing to compromise, accrue support, and form coalitions while doing so with the utmost integrity. Finally, transit leaders must become globally-minded localists, expanding their reach while also looking for privileged insights into their customers (Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard, 2021).

Transit leaders must become more transparent to succeed in the post-pandemic era. Transparency can be easy to preach and hard to execute. Transit leaders can adopt a strategy of regular check-ins with all the employees to talk about the direction of the brand, the vision, and the values and give employees the chance to offer constructive feedback directly. Transit leaders should make it a point never to skip those meetings, even if there is nothing to discuss. Transit leaders must acknowledge that one of the ways they have failed employees is giving lip service to the idea of creating a supportive working environment but not backing it up. Transit leaders must make every effort to correct that by emphasizing work-life balance and expanding wellness programs.

Working in the transit industry can be a frustrating experience, perhaps, one of the rationales I was terminated after 45 years in the industry. A transit professional must balance his/her integrity with what is deemed the right thing to do and say and the right time to do it, regardless of outcomes. One of the root causes of my termination is, in my opinion, has been the metric-centric nature of sectoral oversight of the transit industry. The transit industry has used the same based metrics for years to measure transit service delivery success, such as miles traveled, the number of trips, and the number of vehicles placed in service. These measures prove to be antiquated during the COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter uprising. These are old measures that have been in place since the 80s. So is the case with project development. What are the metrics? Transit leaders need to own the transformation the transit industry needs to reach service delivery excellence in the future.

What is this got to do with anything, Levern, I hear you ask? By placing culture and people at the heart of leadership, transit leaders can begin to build an inclusive future now. Transit leaders need to develop new strategies around new metrics such as DE&I, employees, and the communities. Transit leaders need to embrace the idea of a sustainable safety culture and systemic changes that place the employees at the forefront of transit metrics and translate strategies into specific execution steps and see those executions through to the end. Finally, transit leaders need to make rapid operational decisions that help frontline workers deliver the path to service delivery excellence through a defined safety culture future. In many ways, the digital model of value creation may require even more vital execution skills than in the past since there is so much to do to push the limits of what is possible.

Gary Burnison cites, “We all have our aspirations—the next job, the next role, the title, the promotion, the money. Let us be real—that is how most people measure success. I would argue that “inspiring others” rarely makes the performance review, the KPI, or even the long list of accomplishments that we are sure will get us from here to there. But the biggest risk we face as leaders is going up the mountain and suddenly, halfway up, when we look behind there is nobody there. Ultimately, leadership is about inspiring others to believe. But if we do not believe it ourselves, why should anybody else? Our aspiration should truly be the inspiration of others. After all, what else should leaders aspire to? And yet, how often do we hear these words when others feel stuck and unmotivated? I am just not inspired”.

Transit leaders need to become highly inclusive and great listeners to understand new technologies and new ways of doing things that are different from how they did it before. At the same time, transit leaders also need to understand and care about people. They need to understand how technology impacts people's lives, and they need to help their people adapt to and adopt the many changes that technology will enforce. This means engaging people with a considerable degree of empathy and authenticity — allowing them to embrace the changes and co-own the transformation (Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard, 2021).

Transit leaders must find humility during this period of post-pandemic and the center of social unrest. This age calls for hero leaders who are willing to make bold decisions (like shedding certain business positions or staking out new ones) in times of uncertainty. At the same time, transit leaders need to have the humility to acknowledge what they do not know and to bring onboard people with potentially vastly different skills, backgrounds, and capabilities. Transit leaders need to be willing to learn from others who may have less leadership tenure but more relevant insights.

Finally, America has cancer in the body politic. Systemic racism is a cancer, and it is harming African Americans and people of color in the transit workplace. If we do not start facing up to the fact that the transit industry has, for centuries, been designed by, and for, a tiny slice of society to succeed while others suffer, then we are going to have ongoing issues. Making sure that the changes in the years to come is not just about trying to recruit a few African Americans and people of color for culture-fit—it must be about shifting priorities in service delivery and building a safety culture; it is about the pathway to transformation, support, networking, inclusive workplace, trust, integrity, and allowing authenticity so that employees and the community can contribute and progress in a genuinely inclusive environment.

Global Connection

In 2003, I participated in the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) International Study Mission to the Mediterranean Region to study Design, Construction, and Operations. We visited transit systems in Greece, Naples, Milan, and Rome, Italy. From that trip, participants were required to write a trip report. I was assigned to write the safety and security section of the report. My information was incorporated in the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), Research Result Digest 66, August 2004. I urge readers to research this report and others, which will confirm that systems in the Mediterranean Region were light years ahead of the U.S. Transit industry in 2003. These leaders know how to run transit systems.

 In 2017, I was a participant in the American Public Transit Association (APTA) International Transit Study Mission, March 29 through April 7, 2017, on Safety Culture, State of Good Repair, Innovative Operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo. I wrote a trip report on safety and security and submitted it to the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP); my article was published in July 2019 in the Professional Safety Journal (PSJ). The cost for this APTA study mission was $10,000. I paid for this trip from my funds because my transit system CEO refused to fund such a study. The CEO did not see the safety value in the investment, but I did. During a round table discussion on the trip, I discovered that transit systems pick up the cost for the remaining (24) participants in the study mission. Again, what we learned and observed from Asian Railways’ transit leaders as compared to the U.S. transit industry was priceless.

 I watched Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg’s appearance on the Joy Reid Show “Reid Out" on MSNBC on February 4, 2021. I was especially pleased when he asked, "why transit systems abroad are so much more effective and efficient than U.S. transit systems"? I, too, have asked the same question based on these 2 international transit study missions. Since that interview, I wrote to the Secretary expressing the need for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to recommend the development and implementation of a sustainable safety culture. Without strict requirements and mandates from the DOT or Congress, the transit industry will continue to ask for taxpayers' dollars to swim downstream as in the past. However, the transit industry can develop and implement a stainable transit safety culture by reaching abroad to the transit leaders that have mastered the process. Why is this so important?

Transit leaders should reach out to partners abroad because transit leaders in the digital age need to be deeply aware of and responsive to the situations and preferences of employees, individual customers, to the local communities and ecosystems in which transit systems operate. Employees, customers, partners, and institutions expect transit systems to be responsive to their specific needs, and transit leaders will undoubtedly have to adopt a locally conscious mindset. At the same time, transit leaders need to innovate and try out new things — faster than before. They need to have the courage to fail and allow others to fail as well. All this experimentation and innovation, however, must not be unbound — it must happen within the guardrails consistent with the company's purpose.

Again, Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg is endorsing this idea. He cites, “As the Biden administration begins promoting its infrastructure plan to members of Congress and the American public, Buttigieg stressed that the U.S. should look to the examples set by other countries." “The U.S. shouldn’t be too proud to learn from other countries, especially now that we’re out of the top 10 [ranked countries for infrastructure,]” he said. “I always want to see the U.S. No. 1.” Buttigieg said the U.S. should not fall behind its competitors or its allies, pointing to Japan, Spain, and China as countries with impressive high-speed train systems, which he said “can’t come soon enough” to the U.S. In addition to rebuilding the nation's roads, bridges, and other physical infrastructure, the Biden plan also seeks to tackle social inequality and address climate change.

The international transit study mission was discontinued at the FTA. However, in my opinion, this program needs to be reinstated and funded to continue to train transit professionals, especially safety professionals, so that a genuine and sincere transit safety culture can be developed in America. Technology today has erased many boundaries and distances — it is much easier now to reach partners and customers on the other side of the globe and collaborate with people from far apart. Almost by force, transit systems operating in the digital age need to think globally — even if only to gain access to insights and talent to serve local needs. This requires leaders who can think and engage globally, who will expose themselves to new thinking, and work with people from all around the world Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard, 2021).

Integrity

Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard cite, “In an ecosystem world where companies, institutions, and individuals must collaborate to create value, being able to accrue support, negotiate, form coalitions and partnerships, and overcome resistance is an essential leadership capability. Transit leaders need to make compromises, be flexible in tweaking their approach and go one step back to move two steps forward. However, this method of operating can only be successful if transit leaders establish trust and integrity as the bedrock of all their actions. Transit leaders must engage their frontline work and create psychological safety for them.

As Martha Beck says in her book, In The Way of Integrity, cites "Integrity is the cure for psychological suffering. Period.", Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Much of what plagues us—people-pleasing, staying in stale relationships, negative habits—all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly makes us feel whole. And integrity will be vital for managing the increasing regulatory scrutiny many companies are going to see. In a data-driven economy, integrity and trust are essential foundational conditions. These are values that cannot come from a computer — they require human leaders to make deliberate choices measured by their actions and words.

Having clarity of purpose and values helps guide transit leaders through their path to value creation and relevance during uncertainty. While transit leaders reimagine their system's place globally, they also need to be clear and grounded about who they are as a transit system moving billions of citizens. In addition, transit leaders need to be clear about the transit industry's reason for being — its purpose and values — to guide how they will uniquely create value in a way that engages others in their ecosystems and is relevant in the future, and what transit will look like 20, 30, and 50 years from now.

Dr. Martin L. King once cited, "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it". Transit leaders are exceptionally and basting in their glory of authority. Please enjoy!

Effective collaboration within ecosystems can only happen when the parties involved can trust one another, up, down, and across the industry. Employees and customers are willing to share privileged insights and participate in ecosystems only when they can trust how their data is used and how they are treated. Yet so many transit leaders, especially, African Americans, are silence and many are carrying the narrative for whites, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. I am amazed at the idea that so many people in transit sitting in a position of authority have failed to see the need for a sustainable transit safety culture. This blows my mind! 

Transit leaders do not see or feel the pains that frontline employees face daily. Transit leaders do not even ask the questions or conduct the necessary surveys to determine values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes in the transit environment. Transit systems across the industry have tremendous absenteeism rates, employee turnover rates, sick leave abuse, and pain and suffering by frontline employees. These values, norms, behavior, and attitudes are driven directly by the lack of psychological safety, the sense of belonging, having a voice, and being respected for what they do.

Trust

Amy C. Edmondson and Mark Mortensen article, What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace cites,

"Sorting out hybrid work arrangements will require managers to rethink and expand one of the strongest proven predictors of team effectiveness: psychological safety. When it comes to psychological safety, managers have traditionally focused on enabling candor and dissent concerning work content. The problem is, as the boundary between work and life becomes increasingly blurry, managers must make staffing, scheduling, and coordination decisions that consider employees' circumstances — a categorically different domain. Simply saying "just trust me" will not work. Instead, the authors suggest a series of five steps to create a culture of psychological safety that extends beyond the work content to include broader aspects of employees' experiences".

 Transit system leaders cannot innovate, respond to stakeholder needs, or run efficient operations unless the employees inside them have access to timely, relevant information. But, unfortunately, increasing transparency can be an uphill battle against human nature. The obstacles are numerous: macho transit executives who do not listen to their subordinates or punish them for bringing bad news; transit leaders who believe that information is power and hoard it; groupthink among transit team members who do not know how to disagree; transit boards that fail to question charismatic CEOs. I have seen most of this behavior exhibited across the industry.

 Amy Edmondson and Stephen Scott's article Unlocking diversity's promise: psychological safety, trust, and inclusion cites "Diversity of thought is often argued to be a significant benefit of any diversity initiative. Promoting a more diverse internal marketplace for ideas may ensure that a broader range of alternatives will be put forward within a collaborative group, but this will not ensure that the group will adopt superior ideas. Nor is it immediately clear why a more comprehensive range of opinions, promulgated, and considered among more diverse teams, should be expected to reduce conduct risk. Nevertheless, something is essential missing”.

 Psychological safety should be a core pillar of any transit system that wants to be successful. It is the underpinning concept of happiness at work and a feeling of satisfaction in what employees do. Without helping to fulfill the transit system's hierarchy of needs and making them feel psychologically safe to raise issues and pursue risk, we do not allow employees to reach their self-actualization and authentic selves. Feeling safe is about feeling valued.

 Nevertheless, transit leaders can take steps to nurture transparency in the industry. By being open and candid, admitting their errors, encouraging frontline employees to speak truth to power, and rewarding contrarians, executives can model the kind of conduct they want to see. Training employees to handle unpleasant conversations with grace also will break down barriers to honest communication. To avoid being blinded by biases, transits leaders can diversify their sources of information—an obvious measure that has rarely been taken. Perhaps the most significant lever for cultural change is the executive selection process—choosing leaders for their transparent behavior, not just their ability to compete or manage finance. And a few transit systems have even gone so far as to share all relevant information with every employee.

Trust must begin with the right mindset. Leadership can earn trust by showing commitment through their willingness to make a financial, personal, and emotional investment in the wellbeing of their employees. Leadership can also build trust by making small promises and delivering on them, preferably soon after they were made, particularly concerning an employee's personal life. Trust-building takes different paths, different amounts of time, and other sets of criteria (Javidan and Zaheer (2019).

When workplace trust is intact, the dynamic works well, and a safety culture can be sustained. When the trust is violated, the employee-manager relationship will suffer. Credibility is one of the critical characteristics of a manager that can build trust with employees. Employees rely on managers for accurate information regarding important topics such as pay, the delegation of job duties, promotions, benefits, and other related concerns.

 Accurate and timely information helps to develop credibility for the managers in the eyes of the employees. Misinformation destroys credibility, and the bond of trust can be broken. When employees no longer trust management, it will create a toxic and weak safety culture. So how do transit leaders, managers, and human resources professionals build trust across transit systems' culture and multiple sub-cultures? First, they must commit to the development and implementation of a sustainable safety culture.

 Accountability

 White supremacy and systemic racism live in the transit industry workplace simply because there is a lack of accountability. For an industry that receives billions of taxpayer dollars for operations, maintenances, and project development, accountability is nowhere to be found. Washington has failed America and the workers when one thinks about the multiple disparities in education, housing, employment, and transportation. Accountability lies at the heart of a healthy democracy. It is the foundation of trust in the Government. Without good accountability, there are risks that the extraordinary powers granted to ministers and officials can be misused or that resources can be wasted through inefficiency and poor management of public money.

 To advance racial equity and transit safety culture development and implementation, transit leaders must be held accountable. Transit leaders must be responsible to customers, employees, taxpayers, elected officials, and stakeholders. Accountability has been cited as one of the critical components of leadership failure. Agnew (2013) notes "accountability as essential in all facets of business today," particularly for creating a culture of safety. Unfortunately, "accountability too often is synonymous with blame and negative consequences."

When accidents and incidents occur in the transit industry, many transit leaders are quick to point the finger at employee error, rather than admit the accident or incident was caused by organizational failures and issues such as poor leadership, training and development, outdated policy and procedure, and faulty equipment, lack of racial equity, which reflect the absence of a defined safety culture.

Virginia Sharpe (cited in Agnew 2013) distinguishes what she calls "forward-looking accountability" and "backward-looking accountability." She cites:

"Forward-looking accountability acknowledges mistakes and the harm caused but, more importantly, it identifies changes that need to be made and assigns responsibility for making those changes. Accountability focuses on making changes – building safe habits and a safe physical environment – that will prevent a recurrence, not punishing those who made the mistake".

"Backward-looking accountability is about assigning blame, finding the individual who made a mistake, and delivering punishment. While sometimes this is the right thing to do, there are many downsides; blaming and punishment seldom result in a safer workplace".

President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here." Meaning he accepted accountabilities for all decisions of his administration. Truman's position exists in organizations today but, unfortunately, as the exception rather than the rule (Loew, 2014). A similar view is held by Michael Hyatt, "everyone wants to be a leader. However, few are prepared to accept the accountability that goes with it. But you cannot have one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin".

Safety culture development and implementation and racial equity success correlate directly to the level of accountability in a transit system. So, the question remains under examination, why has transit leadership failed to develop and implement a sustainable safety culture? The second question; is transit leadership being held accountable and by who for failing to create a safety culture? Finally, who is holding "who" responsible in the transit industry? Leaders must examine this question.

 Summary

 A caste system is racism influenced by structural factors—established laws, institutional patterns and practices, and cultural norms. Discrimination in the transit industry has many psychological sources—cognitive biases, personality characteristics, ideological worldviews, psychological insecurity, perceived threats, and a need for power and ego. Transit leaders must embed themselves in understanding these systemic structural factors to change the transit landscape.  

To address the structural issues and develop and implement sustainable transit safety, transit leaders must discontinue swimming downstream with the flow and become the salmon that swims upstream against the forces of structural racism. From this perspective, racism has less to do with what is in their hearts or minds and more to do with how their actions or inactions amplify or enable the systemic dynamics already exist in the transit environment.

 The problem of racism in the transit workplace can be effectively addressed, and sustainable safety culture can be built with the correct information, incentives, and the appropriate investment. Transit leaders may not change everything, but they must first face those things they can vary in their respective transit system. First, transit leaders must open their eyes and see what is going on around them in their system. Secondly, they must open their ears and begin to listen to frontline workers. Finally, transit leaders must develop an inclusive transit system to include the community, not simply on the mandated issue but also regular day-to-day service. 

During this period of uncertainties, transit leaders must have clarity of purpose and value that helps guide transit systems through the path to value creation and relevance. Transit leaders need to build on their strengths and expand their aperture to manage the complex systems they operate. Transit leaders need to examine their vulnerabilities. Transit leaders do not know it all and must turn to the rank and file for the input! Transit leaders must learn to listen to frontline workers and not only accept their inputs but ask questions.

 Transit leaders must start with being present and listening and admitting the transit systems failures of the past. Next, employee's values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes must be seen and heard. Employees want to feel that they belong in the workplace, and it is the leader’s role to make it happens. Finally, transit leaders can create a culture that allows workers to flourish by addressing racial inequity and developing and implementing a sustainable transit safety culture. 

Authenticity is about people being honest now. Employees need to bring their authentic selves to the workplace. Employees need to know that it is okay to be confirmed in the workplace (psychological safety). Employees need to hear leaders say, I do not have all the answers. It is about being okay with allowing workers who are smarter than you to respond. When transit leaders behave authentically, they permit other people to do the same thing.

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