As the Northwest Region’s commute trip reduction coordinator, Pam McInnes figures her social science degree couldn’t be more fitting.
“I tell people that’s what I do – I change behavior,” said McInnes, who has worked for WSDOT for 14 years, five years in her current position.
The need to change WSDOT employees’ commuting behavior has never been more crucial. With up to 19 days of lane closures on northbound Interstate 5 upon us, McInnes has led a major campaign to get vehicles off the road.
Transportation officials have been hammering home the point that drivers must change their habits to reduce traffic by more than half along the stretch of I-5 from Spokane Street to Interstate 90.
“I believe that if many of these newbie commuters go out for the first time and try this, they’re going to realize with a lot of other people trying it for the first time, that this is really how bad it’s going to be if we don’t change our behavior,” McInnes said.
Plus, they might just find that it’s more convenient, less expensive, and saves hours of their lives they used to spend sitting in traffic.
“People will switch,” she said.
In 1993, McInnes left her job as an assistant buyer for Nordstrom for a job working for the Washington State Ferries as a dock-side traffic attendant. She needed a change of pace from the high-stress, long hours she was putting in, and she thought the job looked like it might be good exercise.
She found that her career change also helped her commit more time to her family. McInnes and her husband Rock have two daughters, Alexandria, 19, and Arianna, 17.
In 2002, McInnes won a governor’s fellowship to work on the commute trip reduction program. Within two months of starting her internship, she was running the program. Since she started, the program has grown from 125 people to 647 people.
She said her job with ferries has helped her perspective.
“I came from the side of people commuting every day, and I was helping them commute. Now I’m helping them modify their behavior to get where they need to get to in a way that’s more efficient,” she said. “I’ve seen both sides.”
McInnes said she has been surprised by the radical shift in attitude among WSDOT employees toward commuting.
“There always was a resistance to me,” she said. “(Now) there is almost a respected value to it. … People say, ‘We love and respect the fact that we get this benefit.’ I get a lot of thank yous now.”
She said she doesn’t think that attitude would prevail now if it hadn’t come from the top.
“This program is about management support,” she said. “We make goals here. We do good things for the community.”
Featured Employee Listing