As a single mother, Mona Shafer needed a job with good pay and benefits. With a background in bookkeeping, she applied for a job with the Metropolitan Transit Commission’s Revenue Department tallying passenger counts turned in by bus operators. That job led to a 40-year career that also included time as a revenue balancer and janitor.

After starting in the Revenue Department, Mona moved to Payroll where she calculated drivers’ payroll records. During her 12 years in Finance, she continued to hold a part-time job as a janitor with another company. When an opportunity to become a janitor arose at MTC, she stopped working her other job. (“That would have been too much cleaning,” she said.) As a janitor, Shafer began as a floater, filling in for co-workers at nearly every support facility. The last five years of her career were spent at the Green Line’s Operations & Maintenance Facility in St. Paul.

Reflecting shortly before her retirement, Shafer said she took pride in her work and would miss some of the people she’d gotten to know through work. While four decades seems like a long time, she also said that the years went by quickly. “I remember watching other people retire, and in my mind thinking, ‘I have so much time to go,’” Shafer said. “But the 40 years flew by, it really did.”

At the time of her retirement, Shafer was the third-highest seniority janitor at Metro Transit. In retirement, Shafer planned to spend time traveling, gardening and enjoying the last chapter of life.

Gloria Hunt was running her own cleaning business when her mother-in-law suggested applying for a job as a bus operator. Growing up in Fridley, her only experience with transit was the occasional bus trip to downtown Minneapolis to visit her grandmother. But with kids at home, the benefits were appealing. Hunt also came from a family of motorheads, and had some experience driving large campers and motorhomes. So she applied, and was soon offered a job as a part-time operator out of the Ruter Garage. “She (my mother-in-law) thought it’d be a good fit and turned out she was right,” Hunt said. “I liked it from the very beginning.” Hunt enjoyed the work so much, in fact, that she made a 30-year career at Metro Transit.

In the beginning, Hunt maintained her cleaning business while working part-time as a bus operator. Eventually, she traded those long days for a full-time role at Nicollet Garage. But her schedule now challenged her in other ways – as a newer operator, Hunt worked many nights and weekends. Often, she was the last bus to pull in each night – ending her shift just before 3 a.m. Although the late nights could, at times, be tense, Hunt said regular customers would come to her defense. “I had a funny sort of relationship with them,” she said. “If anybody on the bus gave me a hard time, they were there to protect me. They’d say, ‘Leave her alone. She’s one of the good ones.’” That support, along with friendships at the garage, helped Hunt picture herself building a career in transit. “I had times where I thought, ‘How am I going to do this for the rest of my life?’” she said. “But the good days always made me feel better about the job, and I didn’t hang onto the bad stuff long. You just had to shrug it off.”

In 1997, Hunt took the next step in her career and became a part-time instructor – something she’d thought about when she’d gone through her own training seven years earlier. While she liked the idea of helping people, Hunt said she quickly realized that “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you can teach it.” “When I look back at when I first started teaching to now I wonder how anyone passed,” she said. “But it got better with time.” Hunt used what she was learning to help craft the department’s training manual – a guidebook that put lessons in an order that seemed to make the most sense for both teachers and students. In addition to teaching hundreds of new bus operators, Hunt spent many years conducting CDL tests for the state of Minnesota. “I think I’ve done that longer than anyone else in the state,” she said. “If I didn’t teach someone how to drive, there’s a good chance I may have tested them.”

Hunt retired in April 2020. In retirement, she planned to spend more time gardening, traveling and camping, and spending time with her children and grandchildren.

A numbers guy, Senior Rail Budget Analyst Steve Honigman did not have a transportation industry background when he joined the Metropolitan Council 30 years ago as a temporary budget analyst. That changed nine years later when he became a grants analyst in Metro Transit’s finance department.  Before retiring on April 6, Honigman reflected on his role in the financial aspects of helping Metro Transit start two light rail lines and begin construction of one extension and planning for another.       

Honigman created and implemented an electronic capital project budget reporting system for Metro Transit project managers to use in monitoring the budget status of their capital projects. This involved teaching himself certain aspects of Structured Query Language (SQL), a standard language for storing, manipulating and retrieving data in databases, and certain computer techniques for making the electronic reports available on the employee intranet site. A version updated by Metro Transit finance staff is in use today. His Council career highlights include serving on the General Ledger focus group for the PeopleSoft finance system implementation, developing a salary and benefit database application for use in budgeting salary and benefit expense and compiling the Uniform Operating Budget document.  

Honigman’s previous employment included public accounting at a CPA firm, finance positions at a home construction/mortgage banking company, the Rosemount/Apple Valley school district and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Honigman applied at the Council as a result of his networking activities during a job transition period. 

"I stayed with the job because I felt it was a secure position, and I had opportunities to branch out, working with the Council’s federal grants system, working on the financial aspects of the original Blue Line, the Central Corridor Light Rail Project (which became the Green Line) and the beginnings of the Blue Line Extension Project,’’ Honigman said. 

In retirement, Honigman planned to spend time finishing numerous home projects, salmon fishing in Alaska, volunteering and spending more time with family, including his wife of 53 years, Randi, and their three adult sons and six grandchildren.

After finishing school, John Howley thought he’d make a career as a probation officer. But after getting some experience in juvenile detention, he decided to take a different path and started in the call center at the Dayton-Hudson Corp. where he helped fulfill catalog orders. After four years at Dayton’s, Howley was drawn back into public service and took a supervisor job in the Transit Information Center, where representatives spent their days helping customers plan trips over the phone. “I always had interest in helping people,” Howleysaid. “That’s what attracted me to corrections, and this was another opportunity to do that. It was more than the salary and the benefits – it was meaningful work for an organization that provides an essential service.”

While the idea of serving the public was appealing, Howley wasn’t particularly familiar with transit before he joined what was then known as the Metropolitan Transit Commission. “I grew up in Minneapolis, and I knew my route, but unlike a lot of my co-workers I didn’t have a lot of knowledge and had a lot of catching up to do,” he said. During his 32-year tenure, though, Howley developed a keen sense for transit information and helped the department evolve well beyond its initial focus on phone-based trip planning.

When Howley began, customers had few places to turn other than the TIC. Representatives relied on paper maps and schedules, a time-consuming process that led to lengthy calls and long hold times. Automated information became available by phone in 1990 and online trip planning tools arrived a decade later. These new tools revolutionized the way representatives and customers planned their trips, but the transition wasn’t easy. “It was a big undertaking,” Howley recalled of the addition of online trip planning. “We had to get all the reps comfortable doing their job. At the same time, the building was being remodeled and we were moving the entire department. It was one of the most challenging times we had.”

During Howley’s tenure, Transit Information staff also took on responsibility for schedule displays and distribution, bus stop signs and the distribution of transit data to third-party developers. Toward the end of Howley’s career, more attention was being put toward improving real-time transit information. “The whole face of the department is really changing,” Howley said shortly before retiring in May 2020. “It’s expanding, it’s growing and it’s all very exciting. There’s a part of me that wishes I was starting now because there’s a lot of interesting work being done.”

Amid all the changes, Howley’s job satisfaction remained rooted in the thing that drew him to the job in the first place – human connections. In his 20 years as a supervisor and 12 years as a manager, Howley worked with hundreds of TIC representatives and supervisors, nearly all of whom started as representatives. While he was in management, Howley, the son of a lifelong union worker, said he also appreciated the role the ATU had in supporting members in the TIC. While he sacrificed many nights, weekends and holidays to be with the team, it was the camaraderie that came from that time together, he said, that he’d miss the most in retirement. “It’s been very satisfying to be a part of the team, and it’s really been a team effort all the way,” he said.

In retirement, Howley hoped to spend more time traveling, fishing and biking.

After several years with a company that repaired fiberglass barge covers in New Orleans, Bill Wilken decided it was time to come home to the Twin Cities. The experience he’d gained on the river came in helpful when he applied for a bus maintenance role at what was then known as the Metropolitan Transit Commission. After passing a test, he was hired as a cleaner and put to work sweeping buses and scrubbing wheels. In a difficult job market, he was happy to have the work. But the appeal went beyond a steady paycheck and good benefits. “I wanted to work somewhere that contributed to the public good,” Wilken said. And in his 43 years at Metro Transit, he contributed quite a bit.

While his career began in bus maintenance, Wilken wasn’t destined to become a mechanic. Instead, he enrolled in accounting classes and applied for a job as a clerk in a department responsible for managing newly introduced pre-paid fare programs. At the time, most customers paid each time they rode by dropping nickels and dimes into a mechanical farebox. He switched tracks at an opportune moment: over the coming decades, Wilken helped introduce several industry-leading changes that made it easier and more convenient for customers to pay their fares.

One of his earliest accomplishments was the establishment of Metro Transit stores in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul where customers could purchase fares in person. Wilken also led efforts to simplify the fare structure, expand fare sales to hundreds of area retailers, install electronic fare boxes and introduce the agency’s first prepaid magnetic fare products. In 1998, he participated in the launch of the Metropass program, which allowed employers to provide discounted, unlimited ride passes. His resume also includes the introduction of online sales and Go-To Cards, automatic fare cards that had become the dominant form of fare payment by the time he retired. “We really led the way for the industry,” Wilken said.

Wilken also played key roles in the openings of the METRO Blue Line (then known as the Hiawatha Line), METRO Green Line and the Northstar Commuter Rail Line, as well as countless large events, including the 2018 Super Bowl at U.S. Bank Stadium. Ticket booths, trained staff and careful planning helped ensure smooth operations even as thousands of event-goers turned to Metro Transit. “You get a little nervous anticipating all the things that could go wrong, then you load that last train, sit back and just go, ‘Ah…’” Wilken said.

While Wilken was a proud innovator, he also knew how to build and support a team. He became a supervisor in 1986 and hired numerous interns and several employees who’d go on to have long and successful careers of their own. He also worked closely with staff across the agency and local partners who went out of their way to express their confidence in Wilken’s work. Wilken’s achievements were recognized in 2016, when he received a Distinguished Career Award from the Minnesota Public Transportation Association.

Wilken retired in February 2020 with 43 years of service. In retirement, he planned to spend more time traveling, fixing up his house and focusing on his health. 

Growing up, Jack Berner walked or biked just about everywhere he went. Once he started working, though, he quickly developed a knack for driving. He spent three years delivering custom-made cabinets, drove a school bus while attending vocational school and distributed soda throughout the Twin Cities for nearly a decade. When the company he worked for went through a strike, Berner knew he couldn’t sit still in an office and looked for another chance to get behind the wheel. “My wife said, ‘I don’t care where you work as long as you come home every night,’” Berner remembered. “That eliminated a lot of the trucking jobs.” The criteria did not, however, prevent him from becoming a bus driver, which is how Berner ended up applying at what was then known as the Metropolitan Transit Commission. 

The first stop in Berner’s 31-year career at Metro Transit was at the Shingle Creek Garage, now the Ruter Garage. The transition from delivery truck to a 40-foot bus, he said, wasn’t too terribly difficult. “The bus was wider by about a half foot, so it took a few days to get used to the width,” he said. “By day three, I was driving with one hand.” (An instructor quickly reminded Berner not to be too confident, and to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.) While he had to wait for a full-time role, Berner knew even when he applied that he wanted to make this stop his last. “When I started here, I said, ‘I hope this is the last job I ever have to apply for.’”

Fifteen months after starting, Berner went full time and settled in at the Heywood Garage, where he spent the remainder of his career. At Heywood, Berner often worked 15-hour days and put in hundreds of hours of overtime a year. All that time on the road helped sharpen his driving skills. And it showed. Berner retired with a 26-year safe driving record and an impressive collection of Bus Roadeo titles. Berner competed in his first Bus Roadeo in 1997, finishing in the top ten overall and among that year’s top first-time participants. He would go on to compete in 22 more Metro Transit Roadeos, as well as several state and international Roadeos. Berner won 14 Metro Transit Roadeos and three state titles; his best finish in the international competition was fifth place. Out of all that success, his proudest achievement came in 2014, when he took first place and his son, Jason Berner, took second. “That was a pretty special moment,” he said.

Berner’s influence went beyond his own family, too. In 2004, he began working with newly hired operators as a relief instructor. He advised hundreds of operators over the next 15 years and took the work seriously. Even if the streets were empty, Berner made sure his students learned to take turns without crossing the centerline. “An inch here or an inch there makes a big difference,” Berner said. “I wanted them to have the confidence that they could drive in any situation.”

Berner retired in January 2020 with more than 31 years of service. In retirement, he planned to spend more time with his family, including his wife of 40 years, children and grandchildren. He also looked forward to traveling, biking, boating, and to picking up new hobbies like pickleball.