For the short time he has been here, Brad Miller has ridden the bus quite a bit. As the new general manager of the Des Moines Regional Transit Authority, the new name for the expanded Metropolitan Transit Authority, he wants to meet as many of the riders as he can, as well as get familiar with the area. As he settles into his new home, this Penn State superfan (he grew up next door to Penn State football coach Joe Paterno) says he hopes he can bring his years of experience to the table and move Des Moines public transportation forward.

How did you get started in transportation?

I’m pretty much genetically predisposed to transportation. I was born in Ames, but I can’t say I’m a native of Iowa because I only spent the first year of my life here. My parents and I moved to State College, Pa., and that is where I grew up. My father was a professor of transportation at Penn State and was head of the transit authority there. So there are stories of me when I was three years old on my dad’s shoulders screwing in bus stop signs, I was a bus for Halloween a couple of times and my family vacations would be to ride trains. Everything transit.

So, you knew pretty early what you wanted to do?

After college, I didn’t want to go into my father’s footsteps. So I got on a course towards being a city manager. I went to Syracuse University and got my Master’s in public administration. I worked on Capitol Hill in D.C., and with the state Senate as well, and from that I knew I wanted to work in local government. But I couldn’t get a good job. Because my resume had all this transit experience on it, I kept getting better offers in transit. I ended up taking a position at a new agency in suburban Washington, D.C., that had just started up a commuter train called the Virginia Railway Express, and that was a fantastic experience and it got me hooked for life. We created a whole new bus system in the suburbs that obviously hadn’t existed before. Traffic there is terrible, so we had great ridership.

Where did you go from there?

I moved to Charlotte in 2000 where, again, I was part of a brand-new organization. Buses had been running in Charlotte for a long time, but in 1998, they passed a half-percent sales tax for transit in order to build a light rail line that is now under construction. When I came in, I was part of the initial team that had to design and route these new rail lines, as well as expand the bus system. So, that has just been a fantastic experience for me in the last six years. I got to oversee what is probably the fastest growing bus system in the United States, starting with around 290 buses to well over 400 now. Just like here in Des Moines, it had been pretty much a city-only bus system, and we expanded it out into the suburbs and the surrounding towns and counties.

What is the difference between the MTA and the RTA?

RTA now has membership from all 19 local communities, including Polk County. This is no longer a transit system just for Des Moines. They’re all a part of this new organization, so we are really starting fresh. Our first express service to Johnston will start Aug. 21. So service is expanding and everything is going pretty well. We will begin using our new logo and name, Des Moines Area Regional Transit (DART) in the fall.

What about Des Moines made you want to move here for the job?

First off, it was a great opportunity for me to come here and be the general manager. I promised myself I would never work for a transit agency that was stagnant or refused to grow and expand. So when I learned about the community and the transit authority here, I knew it was a perfect fit. We are definitely not stagnant. We are growing every day.

What are your goals as general manager?

I want to ensure public transportation is a key component to Des Moines’ future. All over the country, transit has proven it is critical to a community’s success. In the near future, we’ve got to get this new organization off the ground, from new bus stop signs to new paint on all the buses. I also want to really focus on building relationships within the community. A little further in the future, we want to build a transit hub in downtown, where instead of buses lining up in the bus-only area of Walnut Street, there would be a central transfer site. We’re just in the preliminary planning stage of that right now, trying to lock down a definite site. We had a transit center in Charlotte, and it worked out really well, with a lot of restaurants and shops opening inside the center. The customers love it. And it opened up this street that was always full of buses. It was a great thing for Charlotte, and I think it would be great for Des Moines, too.

So, what do you think of Des Moines so far?

Every single person I’ve met has been great. They’ve been very welcoming to me and my family. I told the staff on my first day that since my predecessor was here for 31 years, I’ve got a few more to go. This is a great place for me to raise my two children, and I think I’ll be here for a long time.

-Jason Hancock