What do donairs have to do with transit?
Donairs have a secret sauce, and so does transit: Contracting
Donairs are the quintessential food in Halifax. They are hard to describe, like a Greek gyro, but also not. Like a donair has its own special sauce instead of tzatziki, a lot of agencies have their own secret sauce. We’ll get into Haligonians favorite late-night nosh in a bit, but first let’s talk about that transit secret sauce—contracting in transit.
Our episode this week was recorded while Paul was attending the NATA (North American Transit Alliance) meeting in Dallas where he sat down with Erick Van Wagenen, CEO of WeDriveU (formerly National Express). They talked about contracting in North America in general, but also dove into one of the most important parts of contracting: innovation.
Erick and Paul highlight WeDriveU’s entrepreneurial spirit and their ability to help their agency customers find new solutions to old problems by tapping into the vast knowledge across the company.
This is the thing about contracting many people might not realize. Beyond saving on operational costs—and letting agencies focus on running the transit system—contracting out is like having a transit operations Wikipedia at your disposal. All the major contracting companies leverage their depth and breadth of experience from around the world for their customers. Need best practices for rolling out zero emissions fleets? Covered. Need examples for deploying asset management in the garage? Here’s how a dozen other agencies did it.
Over the past six years, we’ve had the CEOs from many of the world’s largest contracting companies on the show and innovation comes up every time. Transit agencies already cooperate and share best practices amongst each other, but tapping into a world-wide network of experts takes it to the next level.
If you’d like a taste of the global depth, breadth, and perspective from transit contractors around the world, we made a playlist of all the interviews for you, in the meantime have a listen to Erick’s interview to learn about his nearly 20 year career in contracting and his new role as CEO.
Coming up next week on Transit Unplugged: Adam Leishman
London, New York City, Singapore, and Hong Kong rank as some of the biggest transit networks in the world. These systems serve millions of people each day and are in a management league of their own.
Our guest next week Adam Leishman has worked in three of the four cities—London, Singapore, and now Hong Kong—and next week you’ll hear Adam reflect on this experience and what it’s like running a bus company in a city where 9 out of every 10 trips are on transit. Throughout his discussion with Paul about global contracting and running transit in these amazing cities, Adam talks about some of the steps needed to truly encourage people to use transit more and cars less.
Adam himself hasn’t owned a car for eight years and relies on transit for the majority of his trips. Now how about that for commitment to transit!
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Just what is a donair?
The story goes something like this…
Greek immigrant Peter Gamoulakos opened a pizza shop called Velo’s Pizza in Bedford, Nova Scotia and tried to sell gyros. Unfortunately Haligonians didn’t take to spiced lamb and tzatziki, so Peter swapped beef for lamb made a sweet sauce from condensed milk, topped it with tomatoes and onions, and wrapped it all thick pita. And sometime between 1971 and 1973 the first donairs appeared at Velo’s and were an instant hit.
Since then, donairs have become one of those great late night foods and quick (though messy) lunches on the go. We thought you might like some more donair history to sink your teeth into, so here are a few posts about the history of the donair to whet your appetite:
- Atlantic Business
- Eat This Town Part 1 and Part 2
If Paul and Transit Unplugged TV visited your city, what would be the food to have him try? Let us know! Just reply to this email.
