Ginny Smith making progress as CTA executive director

Ginny Smith, the executive director of Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority (CTA), has a lot to oversee.

She manages a fleet of 48 vehicles and nearly as many drivers who take thousands of trips per week all across the county.

Smith hails from Madison County, so when she began work at CTA she needed to learn the layout of Cape Girardeau County’s roads.

“You also have to learn your drivers,” she said. “We have a great set of drivers, it’s just figuring out what shift and how long it takes to get people picked up.”

Smith has a history of managing drivers and deliveries, having started her transportation career with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. There, she dispatched commercial truck drivers across the country.

Designing routes was like completing a puzzle, she said, and she brought that ideal with her in her future endeavors.

In 2015, Smith joined the Southeast Missouri Transportation Service, which provides service to 21 counties. She rose through the ranks there for eight years before she saw an opportunity for additional growth and applied to become CTA’s new executive director.

Smith began her CTA position Dec. 31. Just three days later, she was also selected to join Missouri Public Transit Association’s board of directors, a position she holds concurrently with her CTA role.

Missouri is unique in that it has public transportation services available in every county, Smith added. She routinely works alongside the leadership of neighboring counties’ systems to get passengers where they need to go.

As executive director, Smith said she had increased ridership every month versus the same month last year. She has cut down on wait times for most days, including through the use of prescheduled medical rides.

Smith has also provided more customer support and oversaw the creation of rider guides for passengers to better understand the service.

“Some people don’t realize that we’re more than just medical transportation,” she said. “We can take you to go visit a friend, we can take you to the grocery store or out to eat.”

CTA can also transport people to work, and to aid in that capacity, a fixed-route bus system operates free of charge Monday to Friday.

In terms of demand and response service, Smith said hour changes had to be made, with some times being cut.

“We have found that our riders do a lot of their traveling from 5 a.m. to roughly around 8 to 9 most evenings, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to stay open until midnight ... when most of our trips were done at 10 o’clock,” she said.

Since the CTA has fewer drivers than vehicles, more staff needs to be available for times with the heaviest volume of riders. Not all drivers work full time.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. Smith said the fixed-route bus schedule could be expanded, for example, and she is always ready to hear community suggestions for improved services.

“We want to hear peoples’ ideas ... so we can work to create a system that is user-friendly and provides service for everyone,” she said.

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