Congratulations to the Spain National Football Team who defeated Argentina 1–0 today to claim its second World Cup title, bringing an extraordinary tournament to a close.

For Metro, it also marks the end of a 39-day journey that tested our plans, our system and our people. Over the course of eight matches and countless fan zones, we tried new approaches, adjusted along the way and learned more than we could have from any table top or simulation.

I have heard from several readers that the rose, thorn, bud post is a favorite, so for the last post in this World Cup series, it seemed fitting to offer my final reflections on the last 39 days. Or, in honor of Spain’s win, rosa (rose), espina (thorn), brote (bud).

Rose: Merging into one Metro

For those who don’t know the history, Metro was created in 1993 through a merger of two organizations with very different missions and cultures. The Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD) operated the region’s bus system and employed thousands of people responsible for keeping Los Angeles moving every day. The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission was a much smaller planning and funding agency helping to develop the region’s new rail system.

The merger brought those organizations together on paper. Bringing together their different histories, responsibilities and cultures took much longer. It took decades for the organization to gel, and distinctions lingered between headquarters and our operating divisions, between bus and rail, and between the people who planned and built the system and those who operated and maintained it every day. In my 15 years working at Metro, I’ve seen so many improvements to help those lines of cultural demarcation fade.

During the World Cup, I saw employees from across Metro stepping outside their usual roles to serve as MVP volunteers, everyone from accountants to IT to members of the senior leadership team. People who normally spend their days in offices stood in stations, helped riders find buses and trains, answered questions, and saw our system through the eyes of our customers and frontline employees, and what it takes to deliver that service every day.

It was so great to see the respect flowing in every direction. Frontline teams saw colleagues from across the organization show up ready to help. Headquarters employees gained a deeper appreciation for the skill, patience and judgment required to serve thousands of riders in a fast-moving environment.

One leader told me he arrived at work after the final match of our GETS service expecting his team to be exhausted from their volunteer assignments. Instead, they were energized and asked, “When is the next one?”

For the first time, I could see what the full promise of Metro’s creation was always meant to be as one Metro. Every part of the organization working together and valuing what each person brings to our mission. It made me feel like maybe, after more than 30 years, we finally completed that merger.

Thorn: Some challenges extend beyond Metro

The World Cup also made clear that Metro cannot reach its full potential through internal transformation alone. Our service operates within a larger transportation network, and some of the barriers our riders encounter require partnership and policy changes beyond our agency.

Bus lanes: Mixed-flow traffic, or buses sharing the same lanes as regular cars, slows things down and makes travel times less predictable, particularly during major events. Temporary bus lanes connecting transit hubs and venues could help us move more people quickly and reliably, and more permanent bus lanes throughout the region would improve everyday service while helping traffic move more efficiently for riders and drivers alike.

Using pricing to drive behavior: We also saw that pricing can influence travel behavior. At select park-and-ride locations, we used pricing as a tool and adjusted it when we weren’t seeing the behavior we expected. Those results give us valuable information about how pricing can help manage limited space and encourage better travel choices.

Integrated ticketing: Integrated ticketing remains another important opportunity. Fans should be able to purchase an event ticket and understand immediately how they’ll get there, what it will cost and what transportation options (like Metro!) are included. A simpler, more connected experience removes uncertainty and makes transit an easier choice.

These aren’t challenges Metro can solve by itself. Different jurisdictions, venues, event organizers and transportation partners all have a role to play. The World Cup gave us lots of data on what works and where we continue to have thorns. Our next task is figuring out how to advocate for and operationalize these lessons.

Bud: Carrying the moonshot forward

Finally, the World Cup was never the finish line for Metro’s transformation, it was always meant to be a proving ground. And we sure did prove a lot! We learned that we can move quickly, break through silos, listen to what the data tells us and change course when needed. We learned that employees throughout Metro want to be closer to our customers and to one another, and that a shared mission will always bring out the best energy and creativity that were already present across this organization. I’m proud of us and our merger.

Our next step is to take those lessons and apply them directly to improving everyday service. I’m talking about the willingness to experiment and adjust, the same collaboration across departments and divisions, the focus on welcoming every rider and making each journey feel easier.

I have truly appreciated all the feedback I’ve received from many of you after I launched this blogging experiment. This was a first for me and your support helped me share my perspective on how we have tackled some of these challenges along the way. I loved writing this every day, but even moonshots need a landing. I'll continue to share updates, just on a slightly slower orbit going forward.

A moonshot is often described by its destination, but I think its true value is in what people and organizations can become as they pursue it. Over these 39 days, Metro became more connected, more responsive and more unified. We caught a glimpse of everything this organization we’ve been working so hard on can become.

The tournament may be over, but our Metro moonshot continues. And don’t worry. Super Bowl LXI is right around the corner, so the football MVP jersey designs are already underway!

This has been a month full of proud moments for Metro, but some of the best lessons come from the moments that don’t start out that way. For example, one of the first emails we received after the opening World Cup match was not a compliment.

A customer took the time to write a thoughtful, detailed account of what had not gone smoothly during her trip to LA Stadium. She described dissatisfaction at the start of her trip, confusion finding the correct return shuttle, conflicting directions from staff, and how difficult parts of the experience had been for her father, who has mobility challenges.

When her email was forwarded to me, I noticed that many of the challenges she described were actually outside of Metro’s control. But from her perspective, it was all one journey, just as we intended it to feel, and she was right to hold us accountable for all of it.

From the beginning, our goal wasn’t to create the best Metro service, it was to create the best World Cup transit experience. Whether someone boarded a shuttle in a Metro service area or another part of the region, they shouldn’t have needed to know who operated which vehicle or owned which parking lot. They should have simply known how to get where they were going. That’s how customers think, and it’s how we have to think, too—remove the friction from each trip so it’s seamless.

Let me preface by saying I’m incredibly grateful and proud that our own team was proactive and brought the email forward in our internal debrief after the match that day. It gives me great confidence that my team embraced tracking down each element of the complaint, rather than passing portions of it back to the customer that are outside of Metro’s purview.

Our Customer Care team followed up with the rider directly. And I also wrote back personally. I told her that we view feedback as a gift at Metro. I acknowledged that we hadn’t met our own expectations for her experience, and I shared the improvements already underway to address her concerns.

Her response was gracious, but it also held us accountable. She thanked us for listening, told us she appreciated knowing her experience had been discussed during our post-match debrief and said she planned to ride again later in the tournament. She hoped she’d see those improvements for herself. I hoped to hear back from her.

As the tournament continued, we also began hearing from thousands of other riders. Our Customer Experience team is still completing its final analysis, so everything is still very preliminary. But by the midpoint of the tournament, our surveys were already showing something worth sharing.

Overall satisfaction was very high, roughly nine out of ten riders reported being satisfied with their World Cup transit experience. But the number our team was most excited about wasn’t overall satisfaction, it was the percentage of “very satisfied” customers. That distinction may sound like it matters more than it should, but for us, it’s everything. Because “satisfied” usually means you met someone’s expectations, but “very satisfied” means you exceeded them.

By the midpoint of the tournament, preliminary surveys showed that during previous major events like the Dodgers victory parades and the Rose Parade, roughly four in ten riders described themselves as very satisfied. During the World Cup, early numbers climbed to roughly seven in ten for riders using GETS. Even more encouraging, we saw a similar jump among riders using our regular Metro rail and bus service to get to watch parties, Fan Zones and station activations, which means something bigger was happening than people simply enjoying a dedicated shuttle. Again, this was the midpoint, but it suggests riders experienced Metro differently than they expected.

Nearly every category we measured received exceptionally strong marks, from interactions with Metro employees and cleanliness onboard our buses to ease of fare payment, trip planning and feelings around safety.

We saw the same trend in our social listening. Over the course of the tournament, thousands of posts and comments told the story of perceptions beginning to shift. Some of my favorite comments weren’t about buses or trains at all, they were about people. Riders talked about employees in their famous MVP jerseys who made it easy to find help. They praised operators who answered questions with a smile. They described Metro as easier than they expected and encouraged others to give it a try. One rider even shared that after discovering the D Line during the World Cup, they came back a few days later for the LACMA Art Parade because it was easier than driving. And by now, you know that made my heart sing!

Of course, not every comment was positive, nor should it have been. The feedback about rail reliability, crowding and station operations is every bit as important as the compliments. We don’t collect customer feedback to congratulate ourselves. We collect it because it helps us get better.

Which brings me back to that first customer complaint. She kept her promise and rode our World Cup GETS service again to another match. Afterward, our Customer Care team reached out once more. This time, her experience was completely different. She told us she immediately noticed Metro employees in their signature MVP bright pink jerseys, making them easy to identify when she needed help. She appreciated the visible security presence, the buses were clean and comfortable, and the operators were friendly and knowledgeable. Most importantly, she told us her father enjoyed the trip!

She was appreciative that we listened and told us she hoped to continue sharing ideas as Los Angeles prepares for future events like the Super Bowl and the 2028 Games. That may be the most meaningful feedback we received all month, not because everything went perfectly the first time, but because she gave us another opportunity, and we gave her a better experience.

Throughout this series, I’ve written about planning, technology, safety, operations and ridership. As a large organization, we experience those things as “workstreams.” But for a rider on their way to an event or an appointment or work or school? They experience one journey. They remember whether someone helped them, whether a facility is clean, whether the information was clear, if they felt safe, whether their needs were anticipated, and most importantly, whether they arrived where they needed to go. Most importantly for us? Will they do it again?

This customer did. And I’m grateful she gave our full team the chance to welcome her and her father back. That’s one of the clearest signs that we’re on the right track.

Earlier this week, I shared our June ridership numbers and the incredible year-over-year jump we saw, 2.4 million additional boardings. Today, we’re closing out the books on our Metro’s World Cup Games Enhanced Transit Service (GETS).

When we launched GETS, we knew we were taking on something we’d never done before. Fifteen shuttle routes, eight matches, hundreds of buses, thousands of employees, new technology, regional transit partners and months of planning. Now that the tournament is wrapping up, we can report the final numbers

Once the final numbers came in, the most interesting detail was where people actually boarded the service. Union Station was our busiest shuttle hub, followed by the LAX hotel corridor and LAX/Metro Transit Center. In other words, Metro wasn’t just moving people to a soccer match. We were connecting airports, hotels, regional rail, neighborhoods and one of the world’s biggest sporting events into a single transportation network.

That pattern held up across 212,865 total trips on World Cup GETS, our dedicated shuttle service serving LA Stadium.

We were also able to see how Open Payment numbers tracked across all eight matches. On FIFA match days, tap-to-pay usage ran about 92 percent higher than on the surrounding non-match days, meaning riders chose to simply tap a credit card, phone or watch instead of purchasing a fare card at a rate we’d never seen before. That surge helped us hit a real milestone: 500,000 Open Payment transactions during the seventh match. By the last match in LA, Open Payment had reached nearly 650,000 transactions. We also saw thousands of fans purchase our commemorative World Cup TAP cards, many of which have become souvenirs of the tournament as much as fare media.

Throughout this series, I’ve written a lot about technology, the customer experience and reducing barriers to transit. Those investments seem to be paying off. But the numbers I really want to understand require a bit of a deeper dive.

For example, how many of those riders were trying Metro for the first time? How many were visitors discovering Los Angeles through transit and how many were Angelenos who just decided to leave the car at home because Metro seemed like the easier option?

And the most important question of all: How many of them will ride again?

Those answers will take a little longer to uncover as we work through rider surveys and additional data. I’m guessing that ultimately they might tell a more important story. Because the success of GETS isn’t measured only by how many people rode during the World Cup. It’s measured by whether we earned their trust to ride Metro again.

As we’ve said throughout this series, our goal was never only to move people to a match. It was to introduce more people to what Metro can be. And that was the opportunity the World Cup gave us.

If even a small percentage of those riders decide Metro works for more than just a World Cup match, then the success of World Cup GETS lives beyond the tournament.

It will continue every morning someone chooses Metro to get to work, every weekend someone rides to dinner or a concert, and every time someone asks, “Hey, should we just go Metro?”

At about 3:40 a.m., a water main broke in West Hollywood, flooding our Division 7 bus yard, including the bus parking and storage area, maintenance shop and employee garage. Road closures limited access to the division, affecting service on more than a dozen bus lines and disrupting the work of the more than 700 transportation and maintenance employees based there who had to be shuttled to and from nearby parking throughout the disruption. Thankfully, no one was injured, but at one point the water level had gotten so high, several of our division employees had to take shelter on bus seats in one of the parked buses to get above the water level. Not the way anyone would want to start a morning, but if it had to happen, this seems like the crew to have on your team!

By midday, our incredible facilities maintenance crews had cleared nearly all of the water from the yard and full service was restored on all lines operating out of the division by 1:15 p.m., but cleanup and the inspection and damage assessment continues for the facility and its 220 buses.

We didn’t prepare for this exact emergency, but we did prepare our people to respond when the unexpected happens. Once it’s over, we’ll take a look at all the details and the response. That same instinct to respond first and examine honestly after, is what’s driving the next part of our World Cup process. Even with the final match still to be played on Sunday, Metro has already begun looking back at what just happened.

I’m asking the team to begin our after-action review while the experience is still fresh. In the past, we’ve been guilty at times of letting other priorities get in the way of our reviews and waiting weeks after a major event to start asking what worked and what didn’t. By then, the hardest moments become easier to explain away because details begin to fade and those small adjustments that made a big difference get harder to remember. I really don’t want that to happen this time.

Before we rush toward the next major event, I think we need to pause and really understand the one we’re just ending. That means asking all the right questions. Things like:

• What worked well?

• What surprised us?

• What worked better than expected?

• What didn’t work?

• Where did teams struggle?

• Did people have the resources they needed?

• Did information reach the right people at the right time?

• Were decisions made quickly enough?

• Was the workload sustainable?

• What should we keep doing tomorrow, even on a day with no major event on the calendar?

We have questions for every workstream leader to do some serious fact finding. But this isn’t about finding who to blame, it’s about finding what to keep. Our people made so many great decisions under real pressure, often without even knowing it in the moment. So we want to understand what made that possible and build more of it on purpose. Let’s figure out how our workstream structure helped people collaborate, what gave leaders the information they needed to move quickly, where staffing, procurement, technology and facilities support came together well, and how our teams managed to carry regular responsibilities and World Cup duties at the same time without things falling apart.

Most importantly, I want to make sure that if something worked really well during tournament operations, we don’t wait for another mega-event to put it to use. Maybe it’s a process that worked so well it should become part of everyday operations, or a tool we tested during the World Cup can help riders next week. It could be a meeting we no longer need or a decision that took too long because the right people weren’t in the room. The bottom line is this isn’t about producing a report that sits on a shelf, the real value is in what we decide to change now.

We’ve already heard stories about employees returning from MVP assignments with more energy. Some teams expected their people to be exhausted after working outside their normal roles. Instead, they asked when they could do it again. That’s the kind of lesson I don’t want us to lose because we’re too busy working on the next important project or planning the next big thing. It’s so easy to do if we aren’t intentional.

And we will make time to ask what all this means for the Super Bowl, the 2028 Games and every other major event coming to Los Angeles. But that’s the next phase. If we move too quickly to the “how do we scale this?” question, we may miss a more important one. What exactly happened here? Those aren’t questions we should answer from memory six months from now. We should answer them honestly while the work is still clear and vivid.

Experience doesn’t automatically become wisdom. It becomes wisdom when we stop long enough to examine it honestly, and this morning, Division 7 gave us another reminder of why that matters. Our teams had to adjust quickly, marshall all hands on deck, communicate clearly and keep service moving under conditions no one expected when the day began. The World Cup has required the same muscles on a much larger scale with preparation, coordination, adaptability and trust across teams to lean on.

Sunday’s final World Cup match will bring an absolutely incredible run to an end for Metro, and our examination of the work is officially underway. But before we ask what comes next, we owe it to ourselves to understand what just happened.

Throughout the World Cup, I’ve shared a lot of big numbers. More than 210,000 rides on GETS. More than one million uses of our Throne restrooms. More than 26 million Metro rides in June. But the number I’m proudest of isn’t the biggest.

It’s zero.

Zero safety incidents on Metro’s Games Enhanced Transit Service (GETS). Over eight matches, hundreds of thousands of people boarded GETS buses and traveled safely from all over the region to and from World Cup matches at LA Stadium. That happened because hundreds of Metro employees and our partners across Southern California spent more than a year preparing for something we hoped would never happen.

People often think public safety is about responding to emergencies. But after talking with our Police Chief Bill Scott, Deputy Chief Rob Gummer and Senior Executive Officer Mark Weimerskirch from our Department of Public Safety, I came away with a different conclusion. Public safety is really about preparation.

Rob told me that Metro conducts between 27 and 32 tabletop exercises every year, which is more than any other transit agency in the country, where most agencies conduct only one or two. For the World Cup, we added even more, bringing together Metro staff alongside local, state and federal partners to work through scenarios long before the first match kicked off. As Rob put it, “We’d rather be overprepared than underprepared.” And I couldn’t agree more.

Chief Scott echoed that same philosophy, saying the planning wasn’t simply about writing procedures, it was about building relationships before they were needed, understanding how dozens of agencies would communicate. Practicing difficult decisions before anyone had to make them under pressure was key.

Throughout the tournament, representatives from across Metro worked together inside our Emergency Security Operations Center, or ESOC. Rob described it as Metro’s “brain,” which is the perfect description. It’s where teams could see almost everything happening across the operation in one place. This includes security camera feeds, drone video, real-time bus locations through our SPARE platform, operations, ambassadors, homeless outreach,public safety and local, state and federal partners, all working from the same picture, so that if something changed, everyone could adjust together.

I’ve written previously about Metro’s recommendation to close Alameda Street during the Union Station Fan Zone to create a safer environment for the 49,000 fans that moved through the area in the four-day period. It wasn’t an easy decision and there were understandable concerns about traffic and congestion, but the team built its case using data and careful planning. By the end of the first day, Mark said several of their law enforcement partners came back and told him, “You were right. This was the right decision.” There were also zero safety incidents during the Union Station Fan Zone.

I share this feedback from these three leaders to emphasize that the World Cup hasn’t just simply been a successful operation from our perspective, it was also a learning lab with lots of firsts. The first Fan Zone helped us refine crowd flow, the first shuttle operations improved how we coordinated buses and public safety, and every exercise, match and adjustment made the next one better, which is exactly what we practiced for.

I am proud of what we’ve accomplished as we look over our results from the last month, and I’m reminded that changing operations for a large organization is extremely difficult, but changing perceptions is even harder. People decide whether they feel safe for different reasons. Sometimes it may be because of something they experienced personally, or it may be because of something they saw on television or read in a headline or heard from someone else. Either way, those feelings are real, and rebuilding confidence takes time.

We still have work to do, and we will always keep looking for new ways to make the system safer and more welcoming for everyone. The World Cup gave hundreds of thousands of people a chance to experience today’s Metro for themselves, not the Metro they may have read about years ago, but one that successfully supported the largest event our agency has ever undertaken, gave so many fans a positive experience, carried safely and proved what preparation, partnerships and teamwork can accomplish.

In fact, in the spirit of teamwork, Rob shared that there was a meeting this week to begin talking about how to bring what worked during the tournament into everyday operations. Things like how to strengthen communication, better integrate technology and keep breaking down silos so operations teams and public safety teams work even more closely together. After a major, incredibly stressful event, when you may expect that people will want to retreat back to their corners afterward, it’s pretty rewarding to think it brought teams closer and helped them find stronger working bonds. I’m not sure any organizational leader could ask for a better outcome than that.

To be clear, I don’t see “zero incidents” as any sort of finish line. I just see it as another proof point that years of investment in our people, our partnerships, our planning and our technology are making a difference.

As for perceptions, you can improve a system faster than you can improve its reputation. But if we keep improving the system, step by step, our goal is that eventually the reputation catches up.

Usually, when we talk about growing a region’s economy, we talk about things like attracting businesses, creating jobs, building housing or hosting major events. But we often leave out something that is an underpinning of those things. Transportation, and in particular, transit. Transit not only benefits the economy, it determines how much of an economic opportunity a region can actually realize.

A new employer doesn’t strengthen the economy if workers can’t reliably get there. A convention or sporting event doesn’t generate its full economic impact if visitors spend hours stuck in traffic or decide the trip isn’t worth it. A new rail line isn’t simply transportation infrastructure, it’s access to jobs, customers, education, healthcare and investment.

Transit also offers something a car in traffic can’t. It gives people time back. A rider can read, work, catch up on email or help a child with homework instead of watching brake lights. That’s a real commodity for a region’s economy and for the planet. Transit isn’t just about moving people. It’s about connecting people to opportunity, which in turn supports economic opportunity.

That’s why I was so excited to see Metro’s June ridership numbers. During the month, Metro provided more than 26 million rides. That’s an increase of more than 2.4 million rides, compared with June of last year. Our bus and rail systems each carried more than one million additional rides in a single month, compared with June 2025.

That’s a huge jump, and something worth celebrating. But what’s more exciting is the 2.4 million economic interactions additional rides actually represent. Whether it’s someone going to work, supporting a local business, checking into a hotel, heading to a doctor’s appointment, meeting friends for dinner or just experiencing Los Angeles. Every one of those rides is more than just a trip.

Just to put the numbers into perspective, 2.4 million riders is roughly the equivalent of filling SoFi Stadium 34 times over, in a single month, on top of everything Metro was already carrying.

Of course, we have to account for the fact that June included the FIFA World Cup, one of the largest sporting events on the planet, which we expected would bring new riders with it, and it did. We saw those visitors embrace our service, our World Cup TAP cards, Tap-to-Pay for the first time and discover Metro as an easy, affordable way to spend money in Los Angeles.

But I don’t think the World Cup tells the full story. It just accelerated something that was already happening. For starters, June was also the first full month of service for the D Line extension into Beverly Hills, one of the region’s densest job centers, and one of the first summer opportunities to see how riders would use the expanded A Line to Pomona, opening up new access between jobs and homes on opposite ends of the county. There were also major events like Anime Expo that brought thousands more people, and their spending, onto the system, and just as important, our everyday riders kept choosing Metro for the trips that keep the regional economy running, like commutes, errands, appointments, the ordinary economic life of a city. In most years, June brings a seasonal slowdown as schools let out for summer. This year it didn’t, which means that people aren’t riding Metro just because there happened to be a World Cup in town. They’re also riding it because more people are discovering that Metro works and it can connect them to opportunities they may not have considered before.

That kind of shift doesn’t happen overnight. And we believe that if we can offer one successful experience to a first-time rider, there will be another as trust grows. Because we see ridership as more than a transportation metric, we see it as a measure of confidence.

A confidence that has ripple effects well beyond transportation. It supports tourism, strengthens neighborhood businesses, helps employers attract workers, and gives families more choices, all while letting Los Angeles host global events that generate economic activity across the region. Every one of those rides starts as a simple transportation decision, but its impact travels much further.

The World Cup will eventually end, and ridership will naturally settle back from its tournament highs and that’s expected. The real opportunity isn’t to hold onto World Cup numbers forever, it’s to hold onto World Cup riders. If someone rode Metro for the first time to attend a match, or explore Los Angeles, and found it easier than they expected, that’s a relationship we have the chance to keep building. Every new rider represents more than another fare, they’re one more person choosing to participate in the economy through public transit.

So yes, I’m ecstatic about these ridership numbers. But for me, they’re more of a measure of our region’s economic vitality and potential for growth. June’s ridership wasn’t just a good month for Metro. It was a good month for the entire LA region.

Photo credit: Aurelia Ventura

Up until this weekend, the FIFA World Cup has made every day feel like a sprint at Metro, with one match rolling into the next, new challenges to take on, our teams adapting to them and then doing it all again a few days later just a little bit smoother. Of course, as I close out this week, it feels a little different.

As you know, our Games Enhanced Transit Service (GETS) has officially completed its final match service. But our World Cup work isn’t over because we still have another week of supporting fan zones, watch parties and the thousands of riders experiencing Los Angeles through Metro. It just marks the end of one of the biggest operational efforts we’ve ever undertaken as an agency.

Rose

With that in mind, this week’s rose belongs to everyone who helped us close out GETS.

Over eight matches, I saw our service levels on every front and from every member of the team get better and better. The difference between the first match and the final one was an evolution to behold. By the final match, the service felt almost routine, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay a complex operation. When something that took years of planning starts to look effortless, it usually means an enormous amount of work happened behind the scenes.

I’m especially proud that while we built and operated an entirely new World Cup transportation network, we never lost sight of our first responsibility, which is the people who depend on Metro every single day. The World Cup may have been the headline, but regular service was always the priority.

Tomorrow we’ll share a bit more on our June ridership numbers, and they tell an encouraging story. More people are choosing Metro, not just for the tournament, but across the system, which was exactly the outcome we were hoping this incredible opportunity would help create.

Thorn

My thorn this week is one I suspect will resonate with many of those reading this post.

A project of this scale naturally demands enormous attention, and GETS deserved it. But the rest of Metro daily activities didn’t pause to offer up space for it. Capital projects kept moving, as did our Board reports, recruitments, procurements, compliance and budget work, those things all still had deadlines that didn’t care about a fan zone or a soccer ball. And our employees kept showing up every day serving millions of riders who weren’t headed to a World Cup match.

The hard part of leadership most days isn’t deciding what matters most, it’s deciding what has to wait, and for how long, without letting it fall through the cracks. This tournament meant constant triage, not because the rest of the work became less important, but because every day required weighing immediate operational needs against commitments that will shape Metro long after the final whistle is blown. I won’t pretend that I haven’t struggled to find the right formula for balance, and it certainly wasn’t ever perfect. It rarely is. But continuing to try to get as close as you can to the right balance day after day is most of what the job actually is.

Bud

And finally, one of my favorite parts: the learning.

Over the coming weeks, our teams will begin formal after-action reviews, looking honestly at what worked, what didn’t and what surprised us. It’s too early to say exactly what changes, operational or otherwise, will come out of that process because we haven’t had a chance to conduct the full analysis yet, and I’d rather take the time to get it right than rush to come up with conclusions before we’ve earned them.

What I can say is that the reason we were excited to take on an event like the World Cup before the Super Bowl and the 2028 Games in the first place is because this is where you get the true teaching moments. You get ready for them by doing the work and running the paces, then sitting down afterward and being honest about what it taught you. That review is the real opportunity in front of us now, not just celebrating what we pulled off, but making sure we don’t have to learn the same lessons twice.

And that goes for me as well. I need to sit back when these 39 days are done and think about what I learned about managing competing priorities, and what resources I need in place to be better for my team the next time we’re facing a massive project like this.

But if I’m honest with myself, this whole tournament comes down to a kind of good news, bigger news, best news situation. The good news is we pulled off what some doubted we could, and that means more people will be riding Metro now. The bigger news, though, is that expectations for our service and performance will be higher going forward, because more people will be riding Metro now. And the best news of all? The moonshot feels a little less far away today. Because what I know for sure is that the culture of Metro has forever changed. This experience has made us prouder to be One Metro. And as a result, more people are choosing to go Metro now.

After Belgium’s 2-1 loss to Spain yesterday at LA Stadium, Los Angeles’ final World Cup match of the tournament is officially in the books. And so is our GETS service.

After weeks of planning, testing, adjusting and moving fans to and from World Cup matches, our Games Enhanced Transit Service completed its final run. For the last match, more than 70,000 fans filled LA Stadium and Metro and our partners supported 38,000 rides across the event footprint of the match, fan zones and watch parties. GETS carried 26,066 boardings between arrival and egress, 410 MVPs were deployed and there were zero safety incidents. What a strong way to close.

I want to say another heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped this service work. You didn’t just get match-goers there safely, you helped Metro and public transit win over new fans.

GETS has definitely been our largest effort of the tournament, but there were other small details that made a difference, too. Like our World Cup TAP cards.

Not every World Cup memory comes from the pitch. Some of those memories lives in an incredible Union Station Fan Zone experience, or a $1.75 ride in an official FIFA-wrapped bus heading to a global sporting event, or in a card sitting in your wallet, even if it’s a digital wallet.

For the World Cup, Metro created limited-edition TAP cards celebrating the tournament, with country team designs, FIFA-branded designs, a light-up card, and collector's boxes. We offered cards for 17 different countries, both for the teams playing in Inglewood and the teams with large fan bases here in our region, plus digital World Cup and match-up card designs for iPhone users adding TAP to Apple/ Android Wallet, like the Spain vs. Belgium design for LA's final match window.

I love these for a few reasons. First, our TAP and Finance team came up with the idea, months ago, that a fare card was worth this much attention. In other words, it was worth designing 17 country versions, a light-up edition and building a digital version for Apple Wallet. These are the kinds of decisions you make if you believe a small detail like a TAP card can shape how someone remembers the entire event. And these decisions start with an instinct that comes with deciding what’s worth the extra effort before anyone asks for it.

Next, they’re just fun. They’re bright, bold, colorful and completely in the spirit of the tournament. They’re the kind of thing you’d want to keep, not just use to pay a fare. They also made transit part of the event experience. A TAP card is usually purely practical as a way to get on the system. But during the World Cup, it doubled as a souvenir and a small piece of match day fans could carry home, and they’re a reminder that customer experience isn’t only about operations. It can also be about imagination and creativity.

And people responded. As of July 8, more than 32,000 World Cup commemorative TAP cards had been sold, generating nearly $430,000 in revenue.

But if you think about it, it’s not that surprising. Sports fans have always been into collectibles. Whether it’s jerseys, scarves, pins, programs or ticket stubs, these are the things that become markers of where you were and what you witnessed. For this World Cup, a limited-edition TAP card became part of that story.

For weeks, fans from around the world rode Metro to matches, fan zones and watch parties across Los Angeles County, and some of them took a little piece of it home with them. So to everyone who rode GETS, and everyone who helped deliver it: thank you.

And to everyone who picked up a World Cup TAP card along the way, hold onto it. It’s more than a fare card. It’s a piece of the summer when Los Angeles showed the world how it moves.

Today, Los Angeles hosted its final World Cup match of the tournament, which means our Games Enhanced Transit Service, or GETS, has now dropped off its last fans.

By the time the final shuttle completed service, Metro and our partners had provided somewhere in the neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of rides to soccer fans across Southern California.

That’s a number worth celebrating, for sure! But today, I also want to celebrate some of the people who made it possible.

Over the past week, I’ve talked a lot about MVPs. First, as a program that brought more of our employees into the field during the World Cup to help riders and support our frontline teams. Then, the MVP jerseys, which somehow became their own storyline. Today, with GETS service officially over, I want to talk about another group of MVPs: our World Cup GETS Operations & Maintenance Team.

These are our operators, mechanics, service attendants, supervisors, technicians, inventory/logistics teams, facilities maintenance teams, controllers, dispatchers, and everyone behind the scenes who made sure the buses showed up, the routes ran, the vehicles were ready, and fans got where they needed to go. These are the Metro All-Stars, and their assignment was not easy.

From the beginning, our challenge was daunting, but I knew we were up for it. We needed to provide full service for a global event without taking service away from the riders who rely on Metro every day because people still needed to get to work, school and medical appointments. The World Cup was a major moment for the region, but it couldn’t come at the expense of everyday riders, which meant we couldn’t simply pull buses out of regular service and call it a plan.

GETS needed its own fleet, its own operators, its own training, its own operating structure, all fitting into a larger regional network of Metro, regional transit partners and private contracted service providers. Essentially, we had to build a supplemental bus network for the World Cup while continuing to run the one Los Angeles already relies on. That’s the part most people will never see. They saw the shuttle arrive, the operator in the jersey, the bus wrapped and ready. They probably didn’t realize what it took to get there. So here’s a little background.

Building the fleet

Metro needed a fleet of roughly 300 additional buses to make it all work, according to Matt Dake, our Deputy Chief Operations Officer for Vehicle Maintenance and Engineering. Some came from Metro’s own fleet, some from regional transit partners, some through contracted service, and some through donations from other transit agencies as part of the work Metro was already doing to prepare for the 2028 Games.

Those donated buses had lived a full life serving other communities but bringing them up to Metro standards meant mechanical assessments, repairs, inspections, tires, preventive maintenance and a lot of cleaning. Of course, we can’t forget our awesome FIFA-branded bus wrap and technology, including the tablets used for the Spare platform. Even that sounds simpler than it was: the tablets needed mounts, the mounts needed wiring, and Safety, Operations, and Maintenance all had to coordinate to get it installed correctly. Because GETS was a regional effort, Metro also had to train partners and contractors on how to install, program and use the equipment.

That was just getting the fleet ready. Then came the daily work of keeping it that way. Interestingly, non-match days were the big days for the maintenance team, because that’s when buses get repaired, cleaned, inspected and prepared, so that when match day arrived, they were ready to roll.

One of the biggest wins was expanding the field equipment technician role, staff who respond to buses in the field when something needs attention. Metro temporarily added eight of those positions for the World Cup, placed strategically at park-and-ride locations and near the stadium, so they could make repairs or coordinate a replacement bus before riders were affected. Across the eight match days, Matt told me there were only two in-service interruptions he was aware of, and everything else got handled in real time, largely unnoticed.

This gets a little in the weeds, but it’s worth noting because it’s not something that happens every day when it comes to collective bargaining agreements. Because GETS was operated by Metro, regional transit partners and contract service providers, it wasn’t realistic for every location to depend solely on its own mechanics from its own agency. So, Metro worked on a mutual-aid agreement with ATU Local 1277 to allow for sharing of mechanics from other agencies when needed, something that typically wouldn’t be allowed under the existing negotiated contract. It required trust and a shared focus on the same goal, getting people to the match on time and showing what world-class transit service looks like in Los Angeles.

Finding the right operators

Edna Stanley, our Deputy Chief Operations Officer for Transit Service Delivery and the lead for GETS operations, told me Metro needed to recruit 100 operators for our portion of the service, but not just any 100. Representing Metro with a global audience was a special assignment and we wanted our best.

The opportunity was voluntary, posted across all 10 Metro bus divisions. Operators, represented by SMART, needed at least five years of experience, strong attendance, zero customer service complaints and a strong safety record. Driving a bus in Los Angeles isn’t easy on a normal day. Driving during a global tournament, with fans arriving from around the world and conditions changing by the hour, takes more.

Once they were chosen, operators were put through a battery of training classes, both FIFA-specific and large-scale event training. Everything from customer service, language assistance, crowd awareness and, of course, the new GETS network itself. And even though Metro directly operated only five of the 15 GETS routes, our operators trained on all 15. That turned out to be the right call because when demand surged at a hub or resources needed to be reallocated, operators could step in without navigating the system for the first time in the middle of a match day.

And just like the MVP’s jerseys, Metro GETS operators have their own World Cup jersey design, and our regional partners had jerseys of their own too, so riders could tell at a glance who to ask for help, no matter whose bus they were on. Operators have told us they love wearing them and are hoping they become permanent, and some riders have asked where they can buy one.

I continue to hear from so many supervisors who wondered whether there would be pushback from employees asked to take on extra work or unfamiliar assignments. Instead, I have heard again and again about how people have embraced it. When it was time to deliver, the Metro family showed up. It has been truly inspiring to watch.

So today, as GETS completed its final run, I want to say thank you to the operators who carried fans safely, the mechanics who got the buses ready, the service attendants and cleaning teams who kept the vehicles prepared, and the supervisors, dispatchers, technicians and inventory and facility maintenance teams who solved problems before most riders ever knew they existed. Thank you to our regional partners, contracted operators and labor partners who helped make this a true Southern California operation.

When people talk about MVPs, they usually mean the player who scored the goal or made the save. In transit, the MVPs are often the people who make sure the game can happen at all. Whether they were behind the wheel, under the hood, on the radio, or in the yard, they kept the GETS system moving.

And they made us all look good.

We spend a lot of time talking about infrastructure as tracks, buses, stations and technology. But reputation is infrastructure, too.

By now, the story of preparation paying off is probably familiar. I’ve written about the service plans, the buses, the technology, the accessibility features and the people who worked for months to make it possible.

But there’s another piece of preparation that determines whether any of that investment pays off. It’s making sure people know about it. Even more, it’s making sure they trust it enough to use it.

New services like GETS only work if fans know where to find them. Accessibility features like calming pods only help if the people who need them know they exist. Someone only discovers Metro is the easiest and most affordable way to get to a match if someone tells them. Otherwise, it’s like planning a great party and forgetting to send the invitation.

That was the job of our Marketing and Public Relations teams. Their assignment wasn’t just to promote Metro. It was to earn enough trust that people would choose it. And they understood the assignment.

In April, the team launched the “This Is How LA Moves” campaign to introduce people to Metro and the role it plays in the life of our region. It was informative, but it was also about the feeling of Los Angeles and our “vibes.” The campaign introduced riders from different neighborhoods, countries and abilities, and positioned Metro as part of all of it. For people who still think of LA only through old jokes about traffic, this was a story worth telling, and they told it in a very deliberate way.

The campaign reached people almost everywhere they might be planning a trip: Google searches, social media, streaming television, radio, outdoor advertising, community newsletters, influencers, you name it. This wasn’t a single announcement. It was a sustained drumbeat.

We all saw the headlines about how expensive attending the World Cup could be, but our team decided to tell a different story. Whatever fans might spend in the region during the tournament, getting to a match on Metro would cost just $1.75.

That kind of counter-narrative doesn’t happen by accident. Narratives don’t change on their own. Someone has to change them.

Without thoughtful voices consistently showing people the smarter, easier way to get around, the expensive-World-Cup story would have been the only one.

For an agency that’s spent years fighting two different versions of the same doubt, this work mattered. One narrative said Los Angeles is a car city and always will be, and the other said transit never really recovered after the pandemic. Both stories shaped how people have thought about Metro, and neither one was going to change on its own.

But our teams focused on marketing and public relations, housed within Customer Experience, have helped turn both of those narratives on their heads. Crime is down and ridership is up. When we ask riders directly, their confidence in the system is improving, too. None of those outcomes happened by accident, and neither did the shift in public perception that followed.

They also understood that different riders needed different experiences. Someone with sensory sensitivity may feel uncertain about navigating the crowds surrounding a global event. Learning through a story in Los Angeles Magazine that Metro had added calming spaces and other accessibility services could be the difference between staying home and feeling comfortable enough to make the trip.

Someone deciding whether to spend hundreds of dollars on stadium parking might see a search ad about GETS and realize there was a much easier option.

Reputation isn’t built through one big campaign. It’s built by giving the right people the right information at the right moment.

For the World Cup, photographers and videographers were positioned across GETS hubs, stations, fan zones and activations to capture the experience as it unfolded. That allowed us to tell our own story in real time instead of waiting for someone else to tell it for us.

Reuters recently reported on fans in “car-centric Los Angeles” embracing buses and trains during the World Cup. For us, that’s more than a headline. It’s evidence that perceptions are changing and not just for Angelenos, but for a global audience experiencing our region for the first time.

Even our collaboration with LA County’s Justice Care & Opportunities Department and West Coast Customs, featured on NBC4, became part of that larger story. A Metro bus became more than transportation. It became part of the celebration.

Marketing and public relations can bring someone to a station, bus stop, or a fan zone. After that, it’s up to our operations teams to deliver what we’ve promised. In other words, communications can’t make up for service that doesn’t work. But great service doesn’t reach its full potential if no one knows it exists or trusts it enough to try it.

Protecting that trust is part of running an agency like Metro. The growing ridership numbers from match to match and systemwide are telling me people aren’t just trying Metro, they’re coming back. And that’s the true mark of success.

We planned and built the service and our employees delivered it. Our Marketing and Public Relations teams made sure Los Angeles knew it was invited. The buses, stations and technology may be the infrastructure people can see. Reputation is the infrastructure they can’t. But you have to build both.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Throne Hits 1M Milestone

Metro’s Throne Restrooms reached one million lifetime uses on June 29 during the World Cup. And since then, nearly 40,000 more people have used them.

I am not sure anyone expected me to lead a post about technology with a restroom milestone, but it says a lot about how we’ve approached this tournament. Technology, for us, has never been just about apps and dashboards. It’s about solving real problems, whether that’s finding the right shuttle, tracking hundreds of buses run by multiple agencies at once, or finding a clean, accessible restroom for you or your family. (Our seniors love them BTW!)

During the World Cup, I think we’ve used technology in two ways. We’ve expanded tools we already had and piloted new ones under real-world pressure. This hasn’t just been your average event we’re operating. It’s more like a proving ground for lots of other mega-events we have coming our way, and a chance to learn what works before the stakes get even higher.

Air traffic control for buses

One of the best examples is Spare, a modern transit operations platform. Metro was already working with the Spare technology through Metro Micro, our on-demand rideshare service. For the World Cup, our Operations team took that existing relationship and scaled it into something far more complex.

By now you know that we’ve been able to operate our World Cup Games Enhanced Transit Service (GETS) thanks to a regional network of buses built from Metro buses, regional transit partners and charter buses, all moving fans to and from the stadium together. But that means different agencies, different routes, different staging locations and hundreds of buses moving at once.

Conan Cheung, our Chief Operations Officer, told me we needed eyes on the whole fleet and one technology platform to reach operators without asking every agency we were working with to swap radio systems or learn a new tool. So, Metro worked with Spare to adapt technology built for microtransit into something that could support fixed-route shuttle operations for a mega-event. This is where it gets super tech-y! The platform builds schedules, tracks buses on their routes, flags buses that have gone off route, monitors delays and lets a field supervisor or the control center reach operators by voice or text.

Match days can get pretty chaotic. More people than expected may show up at one hub or a street closure changes a route. Any number of things may cause a delay. Spare lets the control center see what’s happening at all times and adjust.

Edna Stanley, our Deputy Chief Operations Officer of Transit Service Delivery and the lead for the World Cup Control Center, told me that without Spare, or something like it, coordinating across every agency and private firm in GETS would have looked very different. She also made a point worth noting, which is that training and tabletop exercises only get you so far. At some point you have to watch the buses move and learn from the real operation.

The first few days had a steep learning curve and Spare had staff in the control center and in the field troubleshooting in real time, and the platform improved match by match. That’s what a pilot is supposed to do. The alternative would have been stitching together separate systems for operations, communications and reporting, with hundreds of operators juggling multiple logins in one of the highest-pressure environments we’ve ever managed. Technology should reduce friction, not add to it.

But we’re not done learning. In 2028, we won’t be talking about 300 buses. It will be a fleet of larger by potentially 1,700 buses, with many more partners. We’ll need to test at that scale and build in redundancy. The World Cup isn’t the final exam. It’s the practice run before a bigger test.

Spare helped us stretch an existing capability further, but other parts of our technology work have been about launching something new. Our new Metro app helps with easier trip planning, Tap to Pay has seen success at the fare gate, we are testing on-demand signal control to move buses through key corridors and temporary Metro Micro zones tied to GETS and Uber, including service from East LA/Boyle Heights to Union Station and from Hollywood/West Hollywood to Crenshaw/Expo.

Some of this is highly visible, and some of it customers will never notice. But all of it is part of the same goal to make Metro easier to use, manage and be better prepared for what’s ahead.

But what about those bathrooms?

Which brings me back to the Thrones, because that milestone might be the clearest reminder of what innovation is supposed to do.

Nothing beats the feeling of walking into a public space that smells as good as it looks! Through our Office of Strategic Innovation, Metro launched Throne Restrooms as a pilot program in October 2023 because riders and our bus operators asked for something basic. They wanted a fresh and clean Metro. They wanted more public bathrooms that were clean, safe, accessible and reliable. Before our launch with Throne, we had only had three public restrooms on our system. Today we have 64 of them across the system that are portable, touchless, ADA-compliant, solar-powered and reachable by cell phone.

It may not seem like a big deal until you’re traveling with kids, coming off a long train ride or navigating a crowded fan zone. During the World Cup, the Thrones have been especially busy at GETS locations, fan fest areas and station activations: over 800 people were served at Expo Park/USC across four Coliseum Fan Fest days, and more than 120 at Mariachi Plaza during the Mexico vs. Korea watch party, a 137 percent jump over average daily use there. At North Hollywood, when portable restrooms needed servicing ahead of a match, our MVPs redirected GETS riders to the Throne so customers had somewhere better to go.

So when we say technology takes the throne, yes, it’s a pun, but also, it’s a priority and a tool to make our system better. It means a restroom that’s actually clean. A tap that just works. A bus that shows up on time. That’s the real measure of all this technology. It’s not how impressive it looks, but how little you have to think about it. The best system is the one you never notice, until you really need it.

I have always said that in transit, we sometimes make people go on a scavenger hunt to figure out how to use our systems. Find this sign. Decode that symbol. Hope you are going the right way.

For regular riders, that can be frustrating. But for someone using the system for the first time, especially someone visiting from another country, traveling with family, navigating crowds, or trying to get to a World Cup match on time, it can feel overwhelming.

That’s why wayfinding was such an important part of our World Cup work at Metro. And not just digital wayfinding like apps, alerts and real-time information. I’m talking about what we call static wayfinding: the signs, fixtures, visual cues and physical markers that help people move through a crowded environment.

It may not sound glamorous, but it is one of the most important parts of the customer experience. When it works, people barely notice it. But when it doesn’t, they notice immediately.

For the World Cup, we knew our everyday approach would not be enough. We had fans coming from all over the world, many using Metro for the first time, moving through multiple hubs, shuttle locations, fan zones and stadium access points. There were different ways in and out, and different needs depending on where people were starting and where they were trying to go.

Yesterday, I shared my conversation with Jeff Zimm, our Executive Officer for Creative & Brand, about our human wayfinding work and our now famous jerseys, but we also talked about what we tried on the static front, what we learned and what might carry forward for everyday riders.

“We wanted to make a big gesture with the static wayfinding,” Jeff told me, “visually, but also functionally.”

That line captures what good wayfinding should do. It has to be visible without becoming decoration. It should feel welcoming without being confusing. It can bring energy and personality to the experience, but the basic job never changes: help people know where to go.

I’ve mentioned before that we are using the World Cup to test out ideas for future mega-events and one of those ideas was the Language Tower. The Language Tower was designed to solve a very specific challenge. How do we help a global audience move through our system when English or Spanish may not be their first language?

The goal was to create something accessible, multilingual and useful beyond FIFA’s baseline expectations. It was static wayfinding, but with an eye toward the future. Jeff talked about how a tower like that could eventually become more digital, more connected, solar-powered and capable of sharing real-time alerts.

Another example was the lifeguard chair. Yes, a lifeguard chair.

It may sound unexpected, but it made a lot of sense. In a large crowd, being at ground level can limit what you can see and how well people can see you. The chair gave our team an elevated point of visibility. It helped riders spot someone who could guide them and it helped our staff see where crowds were starting to clog. It created a visual anchor in a busy environment.

It was a fun idea with a serious job to do. I even took a turn in the chair.

In fact, some of our best ideas have combined creativity with utility. They may look simple from the outside, but underneath they are solving real operational problems. Jeff also made a point that applies far beyond wayfinding. “Plan ahead,” he said. “Start from 100,000 feet, and have the discipline to work it all the way down to the ground.”

It means understanding the full customer journey. It means getting ahead of procurement and funding before you are in a time crunch. It means accepting that the plan will change as the operation changes. And, most important, it means being nimble enough to adjust when the real world does not match the spreadsheet.

That is why the team did something I think was especially smart. They simulated the wayfinding experience at least three different times in the field—weeks before the start of the World Cup. They didn’t just look at a map or review a plan on a screen. They actually went out, placed the signage, walked the path and saw what worked. (How many times do you look down when you walk? I love to see wayfinding on the ground!)

The more you test it, the more you learn.

Jeff said his inspiration came, somewhat unexpectedly, from Top Gun. The idea was simple: the more you can practice before you are in the fight, the better you will be when the moment arrives.

By the end of our talk, my takeaways were this:

1. Make it easy.

2. Make it visible.

3. Test it in the real world for real people.

4. Build in room to adapt.

5. And most importantly, never assume the customer knows what we know.

When you work inside a large, complex organization, it’s easy to forget how much institutional knowledge we carry around in our heads. We know the station names. We know the transfer points. And so many acronyms, it’s not even funny.

So, I was incredibly proud to hear that FIFA called out our wayfinding work as one of the best in the entire host city network. Jeff said that is about as good as it gets, and I agree. It’s high praise, but it is also a reminder of what is possible when we give the customer experience the attention it deserves.

The clearer we make the system, the more welcoming it becomes. The more we test and improve, the more confident our riders become. And the more we think about wayfinding as part of the full journey, the better Metro will be.

But it all brings me back to the beginning. People should not have to go on a scavenger hunt to use Metro. Not during the World Cup or the Super Bowl or the 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games. Not even on a regular Tuesday.

One of the best things about having World Cup fans in Los Angeles is watching how they show up for their teams. The face paint. The scarves. The flags. The chants.

But nothing says World Cup quite like the jerseys. I’ve even fallen victim to jersey fever myself, snagging new ones when I come across a vibrant team color or favorite athlete.

They are everywhere, representing every kind of connection. Some are brand new and some look like they have been passed down. Some are for the country someone was born in and others are for the country their parents or grandparents came from. A jersey is never just a shirt. It is part of the magic of the tournament.

So when we launched our MVP program for the World Cup, we knew our team needed its own version of that. If fans were going to show up representing their teams, our employees needed to show up representing Team Metro.

And Team Metro came to play.

As I wrote last week, or the MVP program, Metro Values in Practice, brings employees who do not usually work in customer-facing roles into the field for major events. During the World Cup, that has meant supporting riders at shuttle locations, station activations and fan zones, working alongside our frontline teams, and seeing firsthand what it takes to keep Metro moving under pressure.

But today I want to talk about a surprise star of the World Cup MVP program we did not see coming: the jerseys.

The jerseys actually grew out of something bigger: our official Host Committee World Cup bus wrap. Jeff Zimm, our Executive Officer for Creative & Brand, told me they were designed together, not as separate projects. The idea was that the jersey would be a kind of human wayfinding, as bold and expressive as the buses and visually tied to them. Whether you spotted a wrapped bus or a staff member across a crowded platform, it all needed to feel like one cohesive LA welcome.

He told me the starting point was FIFA’s branding guidelines and the specific palette created for the Los Angeles Host Committee. Everything had to come together as one experience. The final jersey leaned all the way into that palette: coral, turquoise and, yes, bright pink. Bold, fun and unmistakable.

Those colors are not the typical Metro colors. We went the other way. Bright and a little louder, but still unmistakably Metro.

As Jeff described it, the goal was a seamless blend of flashy FIFA design and Metro’s own identity. At a major event, visibility does the real work so riders know who they can go to for help. Our people need to be easy to spot and the whole experience needs to feel intentional.

As it turns out, we were not alone in reaching for pink during the tournament. The Athletic reported that bright pink has taken over the World Cup pitch this summer, with Nike, Adidas, Puma and New Balance all releasing pink cleats for the tournament. Designers pointed to confidence and visibility, including how much the color pops against the green grass.

Which is exactly what we needed our MVPs to do--stand out and be seen. I knew how much I loved the jerseys, but I didn’t expect how much everyone else would love them.

Inside Metro, the jerseys became a quick source of pride. Employees were excited to wear them, even some of our staff who were not so sure about the pink at first are wearing them proudly now. MVPs started showing up not just as extra hands, but as a visible team with its own identity.

Then the public took notice. Riders and fans started complimenting the jerseys and asking where they could get one. On Reddit, people started trying to figure out where to buy one. One of our employees was even offered $400 for the jersey off her back and joked that if she had been wearing an undershirt, she might have taken the deal.

There has been so much interest, the design team is already thinking about Metro football jerseys for the Super Bowl LXI MVP Team. But they should know, I’ve already gotten requests for jersey personalization and matching pants.

Never underestimate the power of something that symbolizes being part of a team. When people feel part of something bigger than their individual role, they show up differently. That is exactly what I have seen with the MVP program. The jersey gave people something to rally around, but the pride behind it was already there. The shirt just made it visible.

So yes, I love that people want the jerseys. I love that they are bright pink. I love that they are a little louder than anyone expected. And I love that our employees wear them with pride. We are Team Metro.

By the way, Jeff also shared that Metro will likely not be able to sell the jersey due to licensing restrictions, so they will probably be a collector’s item. But as I like to tell people, if you want one, all you have to do is come work for Metro (and sign up for your MVP shift, of course).

This small island nation, playing in its first World Cup, pushed Argentina, the defending champion, to the edge. They forced extra time and made the world believe, even for a moment, that one of the tournament’s most improbable stories might keep going.

The Cape Verde story is such a perfect reminder that greatness doesn’t always appear the way people expect. It can look like a team no one picked to go far. Or a country carrying itself with pride on the world stage. It might even look like a 40-year-old goalkeeper standing tall against Argentina.

That goalkeeper, Vozinha, defended against one of the most talented teams in the world. And by the time Argentina finally edged out a 3-2 win, Cape Verde had already done something almost bigger than advancing. They had earned the world’s respect and admiration.

But I’m not completely surprised. A detail I read that made me love the story even more was that Vozinha is a former bus driver. Of course he’s amazing!

Anyone who’s spent time around transit knows bus operators are pressure players. They carry people through traffic, crowds, detours, delays, weather, long days, late nights and all the moments when everyone is counting on them to keep moving.

So this week, as I thought about our own team, I’m thinking about the people who carry us. Our team members who may never trend on social media, but who have made our ability to meet this moment possible.

With that in mind, I’m sharing this week’s Rose, Thorn & Bud.

Rose: I actually have two roses this week.

My first was something simple, but sometimes it’s the small things that “surprise and delight,” as we like to say at Metro. I shared here that I was searching for the right walk-up song for the coming fiscal year. I wasn’t necessarily asking for suggestions, but the blogosphere sure did deliver!

I got suggestions that ranged from inspiring to funny. I loved that people felt comfortable sharing ideas, and the responses brought some personality and fun into the process, a process I normally figure out on my own.

We need to be able to laugh together, celebrate each other and remember that behind every plan and every playbook are people giving their best to meet a moment none of us will ever forget.

The World Cup has required a lot of seriousness from our team. As you know if you’ve been following along, we have been focused on adapting plans. So many contingency plans. Which is why moments of lightness are also important to get through these heavy periods.

My second rose is a final shout out to the Metro team for the job well done at the LA Union Station Fan Zone experience last weekend. I talked last weekend about our partnerships and how important they were to pull off something so incredible, but without our Metro team’s determination, creativity and, in some cases, sheer force of will, it wouldn’t have been the best Fan Zone in LA.

Thorn: And speaking of heavy work periods, my thorn this week isn’t something that has gone wrong, but it is a challenge. The hours have been long and we are more than three weeks into the tournament. The signs of exhaustion are beginning to take a toll on our team.

No surprises here since we’ve been operating at an extraordinary pace the entire time, and the work has been constant. Even when there are no actual matches in Inglewood, we are still supporting Fan Zone efforts, station activations and other activities on top of our regular service and duties.

I know that sustained intensity has a cost. Over the past few days, I have found myself talking about wellness as much as readiness. Saying things like: Step away when you can. Check on your colleagues. Get some sleep. Hydrate!

We still have one major match remaining in Los Angeles and the margin for error gets smaller as the crowds get larger and the expectations grow. But no plan, playbook or operational success is possible without the people carrying it forward. My reminder, to myself and to the team, is that wellness is part of readiness, too.

Bud: My bud is just a carry on from the thorn. This week we are preparing for the final World Cup match in Los Angeles. It will be another high-stakes stress test for Metro and our regional partners. We will surely have a sold-out stadium, official fan zones and watch parties across the region. And one last opportunity to put every lesson from the past few weeks into overdrive.

At this point in the tournament, the work is no longer just about having a plan. I’d like to think we are reaching the “muscle memory” stage and that our communication, coordination and operations are at a high-water mark, despite some exhaustion.

We have shown that we can do hard things, even when people doubted.

And that brings me back to the Cape Verde team. Their tournament ended in extra time, but their story doesn’t end with the final whistle. They showed the world what resilience looks like. They reminded us that you never know who the hero will be.

The people carrying this moment for Metro are the heroes that make our system work. They are the reason fans arrive, celebrations feel possible and people make it home.

Because just like Vozinha, when the big moment arrives, the people who know how to carry others are often the ones most ready to meet it.

The Fourth of July celebrates our nation’s independence. But this year is not a typical holiday. Reaching our country’s 250th anniversary marks an incredible milestone in American history. And honoring it this year while the U.S. hosts the World Cup as a backdrop has brought something unique to the experience. The world is not only watching America, it is here with us as we celebrate.

For 23 days, the World Cup has given Los Angeles, and much of the country, a chance to see what connection looks like in real time. They call soccer “the beautiful game,” but for me that has another meaning now. It isn’t only about the matches, although they have been incredible. I’m talking about the beautiful way the games have helped us all move together. If the World Cup has taught me anything these past few weeks, it’s how much we depend on each other.

You can feel it on our buses and trains and in the fans who don’t share a language but somehow share directions, the strangers taking photos for each other or the families making their way to matches and watch parties and backyard tables.

Seeing America through our visitors’ eyes, especially as we ring in our 250^th birthday, has been a reminder of something that can be easy to lose track of sometimes. There is so much joy in simply coming together and remembering how much we have in common once we do.

During the Mexico and South Korea match, Koreatown and Downtown LA came alive with flags, families, food, music and watch parties that felt less like two teams competing and more like one city finding its rhythm.

Our national birthday has always carried more than one meaning. It’s a celebration of our country, and an invitation to keep working toward the country we hope to be. “A more perfect union” isn’t something any generation receives finished. It’s something we keep building.

What this summer has reminded me is that we are never building it alone. We can only build something great together.

That’s the part of “independence” I’ve been rethinking. Because we all depend on one another to move through the world. At Metro, it starts with Board policy, followed by planners, engineers, project managers, and more. We also depend on the operator who gets us home, the ambassador who points the way or a stranger who makes room to sit. For the World Cup, we’ve depended on so many public servants who planned for the crowds before they arrived and so many partners—federal, state, regional, labor, public safety and community, who made it all come together.

And that interdependence may be one of the clearest signs of our strength.

Don’t get me wrong, the work behind it isn’t glamorous. It’s early mornings and late nights, bus and train operators, mechanics, custodians, schedulers, controllers, security, and customer care teams solving problems on the spot. But the result is something beautiful. A more connected region united through shared moments and the simple act of moving together.

So wherever you’re headed this weekend, whether it’s a barbecue, a beach day, a fireworks show, an official Fan Zone, a watch party, a Dodgers game, an anime convention or just to get across town, the Metro TEAM will be there to carry you.

Because the best celebrations rarely happen alone. They happen in community, in motion and with people moving toward something together.

Happy Fourth of July!

As Los Angeles hosted its seventh match at LA Stadium, an Anime Expo and a Dodgers home game yesterday, Metro also crossed a milestone that says a lot about how people are choosing to move during this tournament.

Our new regional Open Payment system has already surpassed 500,000 customer transactions since our soft launch in mid-May, with 502,509 taps and counting.

Behind that milestone was a simple goal. We want to make it easier to ride our system. Whether someone is a daily rider, a first-time visitor heading to a World Cup match or someone traveling downtown for an anime convention, they can tap a credit card, debit card or mobile wallet already in their hand and go.

The best part is that early results show how quickly riders are responding. In the first six weeks (including the first five matches) after our soft launch, Metro recorded more than 403,000 credit and debit taps across the network, with 63 percent coming from mobile wallets. On those FIFA match days, credit and debit usage was approximately 81 percent higher than non-match days.

That’s seen most clearly in the stations people are using it the most: Union Station, 7th Street/Metro Center, LAX/Metro Transit Center, Downtown Santa Monica and Hollywood/Highland. We can also see it on bus routes like Routes 4, 10, and 33, which serve GETS shuttle locations and Downtown Santa Monica.

Implementing this technology has been a long time coming, in part because Metro wasn’t solely focused on implementing Open Payment for our own system. Since our fare payment system includes more than 20 other transit operators in LA County, the testing was more complex and took substantially longer to complete to ensure accuracy and security. And with the World Cup attracting international visitors, we also worked with some of our consulates to successfully test international credit cards before the soft launch.

This proven technology has been amazing to watch in action. Riders are adapting quickly, and our system is easier to use when we remove points of friction. In fact, over the last few weeks, I’ve observed on multiple occasions the sense of relief on riders’ faces when they were told, “Yes, you can just use your debit or credit card or digital wallet!” The dramatic jump in Open Payment use shows riders can and will use these tools when we make them available. It removes one more step between deciding to ride and getting people where they need to go.

When we say all hands on deck at Metro, we take it seriously. In fact, we created an official program to turn that idea into action.

Of our 13,000 employees, about 75 percent are already on the front lines every day, operating buses and trains, working in stations, yards and divisions and customer centers helping riders get where they need to go. They are the face of Metro for our customers. But during mega-events, when the system is busier, more crowded and under more pressure, we need even more friendly faces out there helping riders navigate the experience.

To guide our work over the next few years, in January 2025, I announced at an All Hands Meeting the following five value statements that were developed from the ground up through employee surveys, listening sessions, the Employee Advisory Body and the Senior Leadership Team:

• We All Deserve a Safe Metro

• Together, We Do Hard Things

• My Actions Matter

• We Put People First

• Proud to be One Metro

That is where our MVP, or Metro Values in Practice, program comes into play. The program requires non-contract employees to staff three designated mega-events, for a total of 24 hours per fiscal year.

Metro has long had departments, especially Operations and Customer Experience, step up during service changes, station openings and major events. What changed after our trip to Paris was the realization that for a true mega-event, we were going to have to raise our game and use every major event between now and the 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games as practice.

The other turning point came from one of our own debriefs after a major event here in Los Angeles—the Dodgers Championship Parade in 2025. Operationally, we had done well, but one of our senior leaders pointed out that they were still expected to join conference calls as if it were a typical workday. That comment made me realize that while some employees were out in the field managing crowds and responding in real time, much of the office staff didn’t fully appreciate what major event days actually required.

We didn’t just need more people in the field. We needed more of the organization to understand firsthand what it takes to support the system when the stakes are high. That’s what helped shape the program into what it is today.

The MVP program serves two purposes. First, it gives riders more support when Metro is under the greatest strain and visibility. Second, it gives employees who do not usually work in customer-facing roles the chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with the operators, custodians, station managers and other frontline teams who keep our system moving every day.

Dawn Jackson-Perkins, our Chief People Officer (CPO), explains that the goal was to help employees who normally sit at headquarters better understand how their work connects directly to the customer experience.

And for World Cup, we made sure not to just throw people into the field and hope for the best. Employees went through baseline and World Cup-specific training, including tabletop exercises, site visits and in-person sessions alongside Operations staff. Metro also created CPO leads so employees in the field would have HR support focused on breaks, wellness, policy questions and the employee experience while they served customers.

At the Union Station Fan Zone last week, I caught up with a few MVPs from our Vendor/Contract Management Rolling Stock team. In their day jobs, they help procure the buses and trains our system depends on. During the World Cup, they have been out at GETS shuttle locations, station activations and fan zones helping riders in real time.

They told me one of the best parts of the experience has been seeing the public actually use the equipment they spend their working lives buying and planning for. They also talked about how much they enjoyed meeting colleagues from departments they would not normally work with. Apparently, one of the first questions MVPs ask each other in the field is, “What department are you with?”

I was also struck by a reflection from Alexis Sernek, Senior HR Analyst in our Talent Acquisition Unit, who said her MVP shift became a full-circle moment. She often meets employees at the start of their Metro careers, but being out in the field helped her better understand the day-to-day reality that comes after the offer letter. She said one of the most meaningful parts of her shift was meeting custodians at the 7th/Metro Station and hearing their stories, their gratitude for working at Metro and their commitment even through double shifts.

That is the deeper value of this program. Yes, it is about staffing. Yes, it is about human wayfinding. Yes, it is about helping riders during our busiest moments. But it is also about building a culture.

Dawn told me she has seen firsthand how the MVP program has changed Metro’s culture. Employees who were skeptical at first now have a greater appreciation for what frontline work requires. They have built new relationships. Some have signed up for five or six 8-hour shifts even though only 24 hours are required per year. Operations teams are even requesting specific MVPs because they work so well together. Metro’s real-time post-shift surveys are tracking at about 88 percent satisfaction.

We now have about 1,700 employees signed up to participate, and during the World Cup we have had roughly 300 to 400 MVPs in the field each day.

I can’t claim that every part of this program has been perfect. It had its skeptics and required changes. We are already listening and adapting to get better. But that’s exactly why we started now and not in 2028.

It’s easy to talk about teamwork, service and One Metro in a conference room. It’s much harder, and much more meaningful, to build a culture where those values show up when the system is busiest, the pressure is highest and riders need us most.

It has become so much more than just extra staffing. It’s a way of reminding all of us that every role at Metro connects back to the customer. And when more of our employees get close to that reality, we become a stronger agency.

But during the World Cup, if you ask employees what they really love most, many of them will probably say the jerseys. But that’s a story for another day.

Yesterday, we held our final all-hands meeting of our fiscal year, which ends on June 30. It’s always a reflective moment to close out the year to think about all we’ve accomplished and where we started. All eyes are on the World Cup now, but barely two months ago we opened three new stations on the D Line and last September, we extended the A Line all the way to Pomona. Just two examples on a list of many things to be so incredibly proud of from this year.

But what’s more exciting is that it’s a time for new beginnings. So many things reset at once--the budget, the accounting and the expectations. And even in the middle of the World Cup, July 1 still makes me stop and think about what’s coming next.

We are still very much in the throes of matches, with two more still ahead in Los Angeles. And we are still learning, adjusting, documenting and getting better every day. But a new fiscal year has a way of pulling your eyes forward.

Once the World Cup is over, the Super Bowl will be just seven short months away. And this month, we’ll mark the two-year point until the opening of the 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games.

These events will be the topic of further discussion this fall when I join my transit colleagues from across the country in Chicago at American Public Transportation Association’s TRANSform conference. As the co-chair of the Mega-Events Task Force, I’ll be talking about what it means to prepare transit agencies and regions for this new era of mega-events.

Another personal ritual every year might surprise you and seem trivial, but at this point, it’s become my signature. So, it’s a tradition that must be carried on. Some people choose a word of the year. Some may have a vision board.

But me? I pick my new walk-up song for the year.

This tradition was something I started when I became CEO at Metrolink as a way to introduce myself to a new team. After watching a baseball game, I was inspired by the notion that the players could use a song not just to capture their personality, but also to hype the crowd. I decided to try it and the rest is history.

I brought the tradition with me when I came back to Metro as CEO and use the beginning of each fiscal year to decide what it will be. It may sound like a small thing, but a song can capture a feeling or a tone and, in an organization, it can say something about what kind of year you think you are walking into and how you want to show up for it.

Just to give you a sense of my choices since joining Metro, my walk-up songs have been:

FY22: “Outstanding” by the Gap Band
FY23: “Started from the Bottom” by Drake (the clean version)
FY24: “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead
FY25: “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar (the clean version)
FY26: “Optimistic” by Sounds of Blackness
FY27: TBD?

When I look back at that list, I am actually reminded of the challenges and opportunities and what I was trying to will into existence for our team and the system. Everything from confidence and resilience to grit and joy. Each one reflected something true about the moment.

And now here we are again. The start of a new fiscal year with new opportunities, new pressures and a new mega-event already coming into view. A team that has accomplished so much, learned a lot and who I want to inspire to continue on this wild moonshot ride with me.

So, what is the right song for this moment? I don’t have the answer yet. But I know what I want the song to capture. I want it to reflect possibility.

Because that is what I feel when I think about the next year. There is a lot ahead of us and there will be pressure, long days, hard calls and real challenges in front of us.

But there is also momentum.

We are an agency that knows more than we knew a year ago. We are a team that has been tested and is stronger. And there is something powerful about starting a new year not by asking whether we can meet the moment, but by asking how far we can go. And that’s what’s so great about a new year. It’s a chance to choose a mindset.

So today, I am thinking about the year behind us, the year in front of us and, yes, the next walk-up song. Because there are times when leadership is about the big decisions. And then there are times you just need to choose one track that inspires the next climb.

I’ve written a few times about the lessons our team brought home from Paris two summers ago. At the time of planning for the study trip, we had no idea how much that experience would prepare us for the World Cup here in Los Angeles.

As part of our trip during the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we were able to see the Paris transit operations in real time. We saw what worked, what took enormous effort behind the scenes and what only becomes clear when a global event is underway.

That trip changed the way I thought about our role for the World Cup and how we prepare for 2028.

You can read every after-action report, sit through every briefing and talk to every expert. All of those things are so important. There’s no substitute for seeing for yourself when people are standing in a station and crowds are moving, noticing the signs, how people ask for help, and understanding what it takes to keep a city moving while the world is watching.

That experience also shaped how I thought about accessibility, heat resilience, wayfinding, Fan Zones and the importance of making transit feel seamlessly connected to events.

It also reminded me of a simple lesson, which is that nobody gets ready for mega-events alone. Someone has to share what they learned. And then, when it is your turn, you have to do the same for someone else.

Last week, Metro got our chance to pay it forward.

We welcomed representatives from Saudi Arabia, Utah, USDOT, the City of Los Angeles, Southern California transit agencies, and other regional partners for an unofficial Observer Program. It was an inside look at how Metro prepared for and is operating during the World Cup.

Over several days, they heard from our teams who are leading 16 different workstreams, including GETS, fleet, speed and reliability, park-and-ride, safety and security, infrastructure, fare payment, customer information, signage and wayfinding, accessibility, communications, heat mitigation, station activations and, of course, the Metro MVP Program.

They toured my personal favorite event, our Union Station Fan Zone, stopped by the LAX/Metro Transit Center, saw our Emergency Security Operations Center and our GETS Operations Center, and watched how our teams monitor the system, respond in real time, coordinate across agencies and adjust as new information comes in.

We showed them the work—the real version. Because that’s what helped us in Paris. We didn’t need the perfect story. We needed to see what it took to make it all work and what surprises occur when thousands of people are moving through your system at once.

Those were the same lessons we tried to impart to our observers. We are still learning ourselves, which meant we could share both what we planned for that made a difference and what we couldn’t possibly know until we were in it.

At the Union Station Fan Zone, I had a chance to talk with Kome Ajise, the Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), about why being there in person mattered for his team.

SCAG will play a major role in developing crowd predictions and travel demand management for the 2028 Games, helping the region manage the movement of people, goods and services while keeping daily life functioning as normally as possible for Angelenos. Kome told me his team was documenting the things that matter, like wayfinding, accessible information and the details that will feed into their planning. He told me you have to think through important details before the people show up and crush the system. That’s the value of this program.

And it’s why I am proud of our team for being willing to open our doors with the reflection of gratitude from being on the receiving end of the unofficial Observer Program in Paris. It would have been easy to say we were too busy. But leadership is not only about showing people the finished, glossy product. Sometimes it’s also about letting people learn alongside you, even when it’s not perfect.

Saudi Arabia is preparing for the 2034 World Cup. Utah is preparing for the 2034 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Southern California is preparing for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Their events will not look exactly like ours. And they shouldn’t.

One of the reflections shared with me today was that part of what made our Fan Zone so special was that we leaned into “being LA.” We embraced the energy, amazing street food and diversity that makes this region feel distinct.

That will look different in Utah and in Saudi Arabia, which is exactly the point. The goal is not to recreate Los Angeles. It is to build an experience that feels true to your own place, your own people and your own moment.

Their systems, their cities and their challenges will be different. But the discipline will require the same tenets. You have to plan early, build trust before the pressure hits, test the operation, listen to riders and share what you learn.

Paris helped us see what was possible and now it’s our turn to help others see what they need to be ready for.

And when Los Angeles welcomes the world again in 2028, I know we will still be learning, still adjusting and still paying it forward.