October 13, 2020 | 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Topic: METRO Next
Speaker: Tom Lambert, President & CEO, METRO
Tom Lambert joined METRO in 1979, the first full year of operation. He started as a security investigator because the transit authority was so new, it didn’t even have a police department. Once the METRO Department of Public Safety was established, Lambert became METRO’s first chief of police and served in that position for many years before moving on to other leadership roles. These included chief administrative officer, executive vice president, and acting president and CEO. He became the permanent CEO in 2014.
It is an impressive career trajectory, and Lambert’s kindly, straightforward, listen-to-all-sides approach to management and problem solving has served him well throughout his entire career.
Today, Lambert leads a team of 4,000 people. Since becoming president and CEO, Lambert has made taking care of his customers and “delivering a quality product every day” his personal priority, as well as the priority of every single department and employee. With that in mind, Lambert often rides a METRO bus or rail car to chat with riders and find out how the Agency is doing.
Lambert has been a proactive executive, presiding over the region’s expansion of light rail, commuter and local bus service, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, Park & Ride service, and a variety of neighborhood pilot and shuttle programs. He oversaw the overhaul and redesign of the local fixed route bus system in 2015 and demonstrated the importance of METRO in the Houston TranStar partnership during Hurricane Harvey.
But the challenges for METRO and Lambert now extend far beyond daily service and emergency response. Area population and traffic density has Houston on track to surpass Chicago as the nation’s third largest city by 2025. By 2040, our population is expected to reach 10 million, a 50 percent increase - equivalent to adding the combined populations of San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi, and Arlington.
“It’s going to take everything we can do to manage mobility in the region,” says Lambert. “That means complete streets, better sidewalks, better access, cycling, walking, and more toll roads. Transit’s going to play an extremely important role in that.”
In 2017, Lambert established the METRO Office of Innovation to actively search out and pilot innovative transit solutions. Also in 2017, he convened 25 community meetings, during which METRO executives, employees, and board members solicited input for METRONext, the new transit plan that will take METRO, and its riders, safely and rapidly into the future.