Nearing the end of a 30-plus year career with the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority general manager Jeff Knueppel is retiring at the end of 2019. He spoke at length with Trains News Wire about the changes he’s seen and helped make at SEPTA, the importance of listening to employees, and how he sees his legacy at the nation’s sixth largest public transportation system.
Q. You’ve thought about retirement for the last couple of years. How does it feel, now that it’s here?
A. It’s very bittersweet. I look back and there’s been so much that’s been accomplished and I’m really going to miss the culture, the excitement. It’s an adrenaline junkie’s dream.
Q. What has changed at SEPTA in the last 30 years?
A. When I came here, we were just fighting to keep the place alive. We had a $5 billion backlog of replacing our assets.
I became chief engineer in 1999 at the age of 36. I inherited 1,200 people and an infrastructure that was not in good shape. We worked like crazy to get it safe and reliable. Now we’ve gotten some funding and we can plan and have a future.
We’ve seen incredible ridership growth since that time, and all the while we kept pecking away at the plant and did things to keep up with that ridership growth.
Q. What were some of your biggest challenges over the years?
A. Weather! We’ve had the four biggest snowstorms, Hurricane Floyd, washouts of entire bridges.
The other tough moment was the Silverliner V. We lost 120 rail cars with a fleet defect. [See “SEPTA’s Silverliner V fleet sidelined with defects,” Trains News Wire, July 5, 2016.] A lot of the other transit agencies came to our aid when I reached out to them. It was really tough on our customers.
Q. You spent a lot of time out on the line with employees. Why is that important?
A. I’ve shadowed nearly 40 employees. I always believed you had to go out and hear what was really going on. I wanted to model to the rest of my managers that we have to show them support. There’s a desire for the workforce to have their boss understand what they’re dealing with day-to-day and help them.
Q. Can you remember one time when you were in the field that stands out for you?
A. There’s seven outlying yards on the railroad where we do inspections and cleaning overnight. When I picked up operations, I came out and shadowed both an inspector and a cleaner and it was not good. The car cleaner had no water. The inspector had a flashlight so he could change brake shoes in the dark. I said, we’re going to fix this, so now we have lighting, we fixed up Lansdale and six other outlying yards with computers, new trailers, water, things for their tools. The emphasis on safety has been big.
Q. SEPTA was an early leader in implementation of positive train control.
A. We started pretty far back, and we’ve been running everywhere with our own trains since April 2016 and we finished with Amtrak on May 1, 2017. We also added passing sidings, put in new universal interlockings, things that have paid off in a big way. So not only did we get the safety benefit of PTC, we also worked on all of those branch lines and got much more operational flexibility for us.
Q. What are some of the challenges you see ahead for SEPTA and the transit industry?
A. The city is doing well, it’s adding population. I tell people now as I’m leaving, just don’t take for granted that this rail network can keep carrying more and more customers. If this region chooses to keep growing, then it’s got to make sure that it funds in projects that build capacity.
There’s more competition in our industry now, so you’ve got to pay attention to your customers. You’ve got to do a good job with your product, you’ve got to listen, you’ve got to react. People have higher and higher expectations, and they have more options for travel.
Q. What are you most proud of in your career?
A. What we accomplished as a team and the way the workforce responded to the mission that I gave them.
Q. How do you see your legacy at SEPTA?
A. I want to see SEPTA succeed into the future, so it was about creating an agency that can move and react and get things done and make things happen. One of the things I’ve done is make this company more agile. That was important to me, that this company be poised and ready for the future after I’m gone.
Q. What will you miss most?
A. In the beginning of my career, when I started working in the city, I was working night shift, day shift, weekends, it was a lot of long hours but the camaraderie and the can-do spirit and the smell of burnt steel and all those things will be with me my whole life.
Q. You were trained as a structural engineer and it seems you always considered yourself a railroader.
A. I’m very much into the history of railroads. I had my Trains Magazine as a kid. It’s important to understand the history of the railroads and what our industry has done for our country, and what it’s done to move our region forward. It’s something to know and to be proud of.
Walter: I think that he would be a better president than the current one that’s a you know who in the WH. I also wonder if he knew David Gunn who also worked for SEPTA. They sound alike. David was my boss when we both worked for the TA back in the 80’s.
”the smell of burnt steel and all those things will be with me my whole life.” Amen.
“There’s a desire for the workforce to have their boss understand what they’re dealing with day-to-day and help them.”
A leader who gets it.
Add to this that he’s a “true believer” and it’s no wonder SEPTA has done well.
Amtrak desperately needs him to reconsider retirement and work for them. What a great leader.
J ROBERT – Yes going out in the field and talking to the troops is the mark of a great leader whether military or government or corporate or anything else. That being said, if a CEO really wants to do something socially useful, he or she should try calling the organization’s customer no-service line.
Quote ( I’ve shadowed nearly 40 employees. I always believed you had to go out and hear what was really going on. I wanted to model to the rest of my managers that we have to show them support. There’s a desire for the workforce to have their boss understand what they’re dealing with day-to-day and help them.)End quote
That is a trait of a good leader. Would that more would do that.