Supervisor Spotlight: Highlighting those behind the scenes who keep us moving
It takes a lot of people to keep a transit system running smoothly across 150 routes and over 300,000 boardings a day.
Bus drivers are the most visible part of any transit system, but there are people behind the scenes who are just as vital in the day-to-day operation of King County Metro.
Their responsibilities range from training operators, planning the routes that run throughout the region, and literally being “traffic controllers” keeping track of the buses on their daily runs.
They are former bus drivers who are using their knowledge to guide current drivers. Some were interested in transit from a young age and are putting their backgrounds from other fields into good use.
They are the sometimes-invisible co-pilots that help you get where you need to go when you ride with Metro.
We’d like to introduce you to the staff that help keep the wheels on the bus going “round and round” every day.
Michael Shea Base Dispatcher/Planner
Michael’s career with Metro spans four decades. He served as Vice President and President of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 and is one of the last people left at Metro who drove the waterfront streetcar and the Monorail!
Michael now works as a planner, which is responsible for planning the next day’s work assignments due to absences. He works out of Metro’s South Base.
Michael’s career at Metro started in 1981 after six years in the Army as an intelligence analyst. While driving part-time for Metro, he was also in the Army reserves, and also pursuing a degree at Seattle Central Community College. He graduated with three associate degrees – Computer Programming, Business Administration, and General Education. His background in Computer Programming came in handy at Metro, where he used his knowledge and skill to help all the emerging technologies at the time.
One of the things he finds most fulfilling is taking care of everybody’s’ needs, and making sure that South Base is a functioning outfit. He goes to great lengths to ensure work is filled each day. Michael recalls a day when he had few operators at the base and he needed to fill the work assignments, he gave his shoes to an operator who showed up to work without shoes. He ended up working the rest of the day without shoes (albeit out of uniform) but did not mind because he filled the work.
Michael has been married for 42 years with one child and one great-grandchild
Michael’s advice to peers and operators is to “take responsibility for your job, and do not take shortcuts.”
Alan Spanne Communications Coordinator
As a kid, Alan knew he would have a career in transportation, it was just a question of which transit or railroad system. As a youth in the San Francisco Bay area, his idea of a good summer day was to get on a bus and go all over – sometimes ending up 75 miles away from home.
Alan is a Service Supervisor at Metro’s Transit Control Center, and his responsibilities include communicating and coordinating immediate responses from the Transit Control Center about day-to-day operations, as well as transit and public emergencies.
After graduating with a degree in Transportation Management from San Francisco State University, he worked in the freight business for a few years. When the company he worked for went out of business. Alan was visiting a friend and they talked about unfavorable business changes, and Alan was encouraged to put in an application to Metro. He’s been with Metro since 1989 and was an operator until 1999. During that time Alan qualified to drive Metro’s vintage trolley bus fleet.
Since becoming a first-line supervisor, Alan has been a familiar voice to operators. He admits that many operators will recognize his voice –since he is often on the radio with them– but they would not know what he looks like. Similarly, he remembers voices better than he remembers faces.
One of the things that keeps him motivated is hearing from operators who tell him about how he has helped them out of one situation or the other. While Alan might not remember every situation an operator may reference, just knowing that he was of help to someone keeps him going.
Career advice that Alan wants to share is: “In any workplace, you develop a reputation very quickly – whether you are lazy or hardworking, etc. Make sure your reputation is a positive one.”
Interested in becoming a part of Metro? Visit “Start your Metro career” to explore well-paying positions with full benefits and a pension in transit operations, trades, rail operations, customer information and countless other fields.