All Things Mass Transit, Pandemic Lessons, and Career Advice & Experiences with Thomas Abdallah

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Thomas Abdallah, Assistant Vice President and Chief Environmental Engineer for the MTA’s Construction and Development (MTA C&D) agency about All Things Mass Transit, Pandemic Lessons, and Career Advice & Experiences.   Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
4:39  Nic & Laura discuss useless knowledge of planes
9:39   Interview with Thomas Abdallah starts
9:51  All things mass transit
25:55  Pandemic lessons
39:12  Career advice & experiences

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Thomas Abdallah at https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-abdallah-p-e-leed-ap-77b59718/

Guest Bio:
Thomas Abdallah, P.E. LEED AP, ENV SP is the Vice President and Chief Environmental Engineer for the MTA’s Construction and Development (MTA C&D) agency. Thomas holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Rutgers University. He is responsible to provide expert environmental engineering services for all MTA capital projects, and ensures that all design and construction projects meet environmental requirements including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the NY State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). He is also a fierce champion of environmental sustainability issues and is responsible for MTA C&D’s certified ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS).

Thomas is also an Adjunct Professor in Columbia University’s Sustainability Management (SUMA) graduate program in the School of Professional Studies, and the Transportation curriculum lead at the Charles B. Rangel Infrastructure Workforce Initiative at the City College of New York CUNY. He is the proud author of the book(s) Sustainable Mass Transit: Challenges and Opportunities in Urban Public Transportation (1st Edition 2017 & 2nd Edition 2023 Elsevier) and has appeared in an episode of History Channel’s Modern Marvels – Moving America.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Nic  
Hello and Welcome to Epi, your favorite environmental enthusiast. And Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talked about man's useless knowledge of planes. We have Tom of dollar back on the show to talk all things mass transit. And finally, here are some fun facts about the Airbus A three at number one runway has had to be rebuilt to accommodate it. That's right folks. It's so big and take so long they had to build longer runways. Number two, the A 380 is the largest passenger aircraft ever made. I'm gonna keep doing it today. Let me stop. Yes, absolutely. Staffed by two dozen crew that's so many people. The A 380 wingspan is almost 80 meters and as American I have no idea what that means. So first class compartments, features showers Oh in the sky. How about that? That doesn't sound great to me. I don't know if I want to take a shower. And I want to be in that bathroom for as long as you know I don't want to do that anyways. What was I saying? Okay, they have 14 speech. There we go. Families

Laura  
in the zone don't even try. Yeah.

Nic  
Yeah, there's more than 43 million dining guests eat on a three a device every year. That's the most boring of these so far as a first class guests enjoy unlimited caviar. That seems like you're getting sad now. Okay.

Laura  
Caviar I would not want to go to the bathroom.

Nic  
Shortest flight you can take is under two hours and 15 minutes.

Laura  
Okay, now it's

Nic  
over. Yeah, maybe Rhonda with the caveat. All right, well, now it's not my favorite place that music

Laura  
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Nic  
Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. Go. Okay. So you know, Lawrence, you stub your toe before, right? You've done that on furniture on a number of things. And like sometimes you're like, man, it's been so long since I've stubbed my toe that I wish I could experience that feeling right now. Yeah. I started, start to consulting. What we do is find ways for you to experience that exact pain whenever and wherever you are. We will come to you with our patented technology to surprise you with book ends and furniture that you swear we moved in the night and maybe it did. Maybe that was us. And now you're stubbing your toe. You're welcome. We also have a new new product and the thing that you know wow, I don't know what I want my word so I'm just gonna power through it. And it's gonna be champagne. You know, it's whenever you hit your shins as well also incredibly painful for something that's that shouldn't do this to you. That's our new line or new line. So we got stubbed toe and shin splints. That's what we're after. That's what we're gonna do step toe consulting. Took us out of words at the end of that one, yes.

Laura  
Oh, yeah. You failed on that one. That was bad. So there you go.

Nic  
And If only someone had sponsored this, it wouldn't

Laura  
exist. We wouldn't be here. So we would not have to listen to that. I mean, I feel like I just dipped my toe right now. Just listen to that

Nic  
yeah, there you go. Verbal stuff. Next product actually so weird that you would say

Laura  
oh my god let's get to our segment

Nic  
all my fights out like I I just bizarre like literally like, sitting next to this woman and like I breathe in air. I was like, Why didn't I like cough during that so that I could stop coughing and like she's like

like, Yeah, okay. So yeah, you know, that's embarrassing. Like, how do you respond to that? No, I'm just an idiot. It's not that I'm sick. I'm sure I can't breathe correctly.

Laura  
You know how some of the I don't know if it's a certain type of plane probably you know this Nick, because dudes just know everything about planes for some reason. But when the air circulates when it's first starting up, like to back out of the gate or whatever, like exhaust fumes. At least it smells like exhaust is comes into the cabin. That makes me choke and cough every time and it doesn't seem to happen to anyone else, but that's what I'm coughing on the planet ever heard? Like, it's the exhaust fumes.

Nic  
Yeah, that's what Yeah, yeah, it does happen. It's literally like the refueling the plane right before if they're fueling it up and they remove the gas line. So it's just the vapors from like, yeah, I didn't know the answer. I still I was gonna say you see the same he did know. I should have been like

Laura  
What do you mean? Why would I know that? I just I don't know.

Nic  
Not all so anyways, my favorite plants that a 380

Laura  
which is that like a commercial plane and World War Two bomber I don't want to

Nic  
commercial. It's not all just commercial jet there is and it's just massive. That's really the only reason why it's just a huge, huge playing before jet engines and it looks like when it's taken off. Like it's not gonna make it. But it's like, Oh, God. It looks like a strain. And I don't know why. It's a cool play.

Laura  
See, I just don't understand why. Where did you learn this? Like there's no airplane magazines.

Nic  
That exists now? Well, I mean, they have like, all of the planes have brochures in them. And if you are, you know of a certain ilk and age you can look at them. And I mean, if you want to have useless dad facts for no reason, I couldn't even get excited. I have no kids. So this just doesn't make any sense. But I'm just like one day I'm going to just have all these facts and I was talking with someone yesterday. My favorite useless fact is that cheetahs do not have retractable claws, right? They just don't.

Laura  
They're already always ready to do

Nic  
they have dog feet so they are cats. With dog feet. And that is completely useless. But I said it this week at you know, leadership, you know, like with our great conversation. Like I'm gonna remember this forever. I'm like, good now someone else will have this you know?

Laura  
I'm going to remember this for my spirit animal talks. Right? I don't feel like your claws are never detracted. Maybe you're a cheater. You know, always ready to fall is ready.

Nic  
Yeah, but they're not trying to grab you either. They don't need to hold their attribute. That's their thing. So they don't need they can always be ready to go. Yeah.

Laura  
Sam, do you know useless plain facts?

Unknown Speaker  
No buy up here for that.

Laura  
Great answer.

Unknown Speaker  
Maybe when we move out of

Speaker 2  
the city will take up like pilot lessons. Like join a club or something. That's how Yes, that is how independent

Laura  
Nick is literally choking. How does coffee

Speaker 3  
well, when Laurie brought up just guys assuming they know about plane stuff. Yes.

Laura  
They'll be you'll be like a plane will be flying overhead and doesn't matter what man you're with. They're like that's a blah, blah blah.

Nic  
How do you know that? Yeah. That's an 8320 is not right out there. Yeah.

Laura  
I mean, many gallons of fuel and holds this many passengers and like I have you been

Nic  
introduced into the military. Why do I know these things? And I

Laura  
can't remember to take out the trash but I got this other information.

Nic  
Yes, that's 100% True. The room rate trash responsibilities is gone because it's been replaced with a

Laura  
different part of your brain.

Nic  
I'm sure I'm sure that's why. That's my reasoning anyway. too. Oh, that's awesome.

Laura  
Let's get to our interview. Yeah.

Nic  
Hello, welcome back to EPR. Today, we have Thomas Abdullah, the chief environmental engineer at MTA construction and development back on the show. Welcome back, Tom. Well, it's great to be back. Thanks. Yeah. So I mean, you know, what's been happening? What's new with you since you were last on the show?

Thomas Abdallah  
Well, yeah, I mean, seems a lot of things have been happening since the last time I came on. I published a second book was actually a sequel to my first book sustainable mass transit and I updated that. I've actually even gained in another job. I was always a I've been a professor at Columbia University's sustainability management program since 2013. But I'm also now a part of City College city. University of New York, doing a another gig on transportation in the Charles Randall workforce development. It's kind of a free program on the transportation curriculum, really. So I'm adding jobs. It's like

Nic  
you're supposed to ease into retirement and actually, so I definitely get into that your second book, but before we dive into that, specifically, how did you start getting into teaching what was the thing that led to led you to those universities in college?

Thomas Abdallah  
Yeah, I mean, I think I've always been a mentor. You know, I've always been somebody who's wanted to talk to young people about what I've learned as a practitioner. And I used to do guest lecturing by also mentor a lot of people at work. I have, you know, 80 people reporting to me at some point, I've had 116 people. So you know, I started hiring young people, entry levels, and, you know, you have to nurture them, and, you know, nurture them with teaching and examples. And, and so I think, you know, it was just sort of in the middle of my career and, you know, people would notice and they'd say, you know, you're such a leader. It's such a good mentor here. I just was doing this since sort of came natural. Yeah. So I just, you know, got invited to teach and I just took advantage of it. People, colleges and universities want to have practitioners as adjunct professors. I think that's, that is something that I always, I always preach to my colleagues. That is, and it's it's so rewarding, and it's so fascinating and keeps us sharp too, by the way.

Nic  
Oh, yeah, you have to bank definitely isn't the brightest minds. Yeah. That's really cool to hear. I'm really glad that you get to do that as something you know, I've thought about myself quite a bit, actually. So that's great to hear that but yeah, let's dive in. Let's dive into your new book. So we're talking about sustainable mass transit. So what's the what's the sequel? Why write a sequel? And you know, what's next? What's after that?

Thomas Abdallah  
So when I published my first book in 2017, and I really was to benefit. I really wanted to actually make people aware of the benefits of mass transit. I mean, that was my my thing. And optimize at that point. 30 year career. I was making it better. I was, you know, doing environmental mitigation towards making it more sustainable. So I wanted to do that was my motivation for the, for the book in itself. And I also wanted to pay homage to the transit world, the mass transit world and all over the world. I mean, in the United States, we call it well, at least in New York. We call it mass transit, in in Europe and other international places its transport but it's a fascinating industry, you know, going back really, to the you know, the early days of the locomotive and, you know, connecting our country together. So it's a really, it's, it was just one of the, you know, learning about not just the MTA where I work in New York, but you know, all over the country, mass transit agencies, both trains and buses and ferries and just just for me, a fascinating industry. And then what I saw was that that industry was really paying attention to the climate change and the issues with, you know, sustainability and making making it really a an essential part of rehabilitations and reconstructions and expansion and things like that. So that's why I wrote the first book. And then, five years later, you know, I would say that I check my numbers as the years went on, you know, I would Google what was my my standing in Amazon on certain days and it would go up and down a lot. And I get excited when I would, you know, go get to higher numbers or lower numbers, actually, you know, closer depending on what category they put you in. So I was wanting to do a second book. So I'll be transparent. You know, I actually approached my publisher, Elsevier. About two or three years after the book came, the first book came out I have another idea for another book and I said, I want to do a book about sustainability professionals. And they immediately pass they said, nah. We're more textbook oriented, and you know, that's what they do and they didn't see so I got a little discouraged. And then and then they approached me again, back, I think the original, my original publisher person was sort of moved on and then another one came in and this was after the pandemic and said, hey, you know what, this is a really important topic, and we'd like you to kind of invite me to do the second book. So yeah, so I asked him, I said, What is the sequel? What is it like Rocky to go back to the future? What am I doing? And I said, Really, what you do is you you know, I had 10 chapters in the book, and they usually want 30% more content in the second edition. So I said, Okay, that's good, easy math. I'll do three more chapters. And but they also said, you know, they want they want to revise mostly to revise all the chapters of the book. So I actually took advantage of that actually created four new chapters one is kind of a revised opening chapter. Yeah, and then I so I added four new chapters. One was sort of where we are at now with the sustainability going back to my first edition, right. And then the second, I wanted to include a whole chapter on mass transit response to COVID Because during the turning pandemic, there were essential workers health care. Workers, doctors, nurses, people who no one to the soup have been around, you know, the supermarkets. There's some people who still had to go to work and the mass transit industry, you have to go to work. They had to, you know, run the buses and the trains all over the country, all over the world. So I really wanted to pay homage to that that era. Yes. I still remember it was no gotcha series. And then I said, You know what, I'm going to put a chapter in that sustainability professionals chapter at least, that came in, look at that that mid chapter is kind of like sort of almost separate from the entire book. It's kind of like and I'm not saying I am absolutely saying that's true. It was kind of influenced by my relationship with the National Association of environmental professionals. It's just like, yeah, like there was, I love the whole idea of the, you know, that particular conference or Institute or whatever you want to call it and what you guys are doing. So it's actually kind of influenced by that as well. And then I said, Okay, let me add another chapter. Look into the future. Yeah. What what is the future look like? And mismas transit, so and then I revise all the other chapters and I actually, I think I went a little too far. I moved around a lot of pieces. I you know, it's almost like you get a second bite at the apple. So you kind of said, you know, after your first creation comes out in the set, I could have done this better or that section in here or there. And so, and the other thing that else would be one is they want every chapter to be different than from the first book, because they actually also sell individual chapters. So you know, these chapters can be purchased online and kind of separately. They don't have to be confused with the first edition so I had to even rename all the chapters and everything and I actually, I actually did a lot of moving. I remove things that I think didn't work from the first book and I, I kind of rearranged it a little bit. So honestly, it really is a completely different book, but it is, it is kind of the second edition.

Nic  
Gotcha. So it's not like George Lucas Star Wars. You more than that, right. So yeah. So okay, so what is what are the new elements? So what are some of the stuff that you add that you talked about? You may touch on a little bit? Yeah.

Thomas Abdallah  
So you know, one of the things I think the biggest the biggest sustainability thing that has proliferated since the book is electric buses, electric vehicles. And so, you know, across the country, electric buses have, you know, really blossomed in many, including here in New York and Philadelphia, and almost every transit agency has begun a transformation to the zero emission or you know, beginning with the electric bus, and even in California, they did research they were what they had pledged to do in 2016. They had already done like, well some agencies like I don't have, you know, a complete line while electric we're gonna have a complete fleet all electric and actually, they actually did it. So I was amazed that after five years, really a lot of transformation came in that in the in the electric plus space, and it's not an easy thing. I mean, the electric bus, buying the electric bus is the easy part. It's the energy the the infrastructure, the you know, the other parts, the batteries. It's a lot more to it so good for the transit agencies, and they really went out of their way and started transforming to really to reduce emissions. I think that that's the big thing, and I kind of predicted it in the first and the other thing was the there's a science in trains, we call regenerative braking, where as the training slows down, the polarity of the motor and the engine of the train actually reverses and becomes a generator and puts energy back into the third rail, right, and I'd written about that in 2016. And, but I've seen even more advancements in that area where the energy is not only going back into a third rail now it's going back into an energy battery, an energy system that's going to store the energy and even in some places like in mostly in European countries to Vienna comes to mind. They're actually putting the regenerative braking back into their power grid with reverse substations. So those are the two biggest areas. But I'll tell you one thing that I'm really proud of. When I was doing the first book I said, like, I have an idea like, if you can spin something you can create an you can create energy development derived using magnets around copper wire, you can, you know, create an electrical circuit. And I thought to myself, well, what spins in the transit system the turnstiles? Yeah, so I had, I had said, you know, that would be a great place now they only spent a few times but you know, you can kind of wind it up or whatever, you can figure it out. If you ever if you've ever gone to the gym, and you see that some of the bikes will have a like sort of a monitor in front of the bike was you doing like a little bite, but it won't work unless you keep pedaling, right? Yeah, I got the idea from that.

Nic  
Oh, that's really cool.

Thomas Abdallah  
So about, I don't know, three or four months ago, actually, in Paris, they were actually experimenting with, they actually had these little looked almost like wind turbines and their turnstiles, and they actually kind of piloted and experimented a little bit with that energy. So a lot of the things I you know, some of the things that I had thought of, actually, you know, come to fruition and you know, I even just this hasn't happened yet I haven't seen yet but I also wrote about where there's material that that's actually you step on it, it can actually create some electricity. And then I wrote about that in the first book. I'm waiting for that to happen sometime sometime soon. Now. That will happen.

Nic  
Really cheap, right? It's super easy.

Thomas Abdallah  
Yeah, you have to you know, create the whole idea with you know, energy efficiency is still really based around fourth grade science, you know, energy is never created or destroyed, or it just moves on from one place to place to another. And I think that's, you know, really, the future of sustainability and everything was trying to save our energy. We're trying to figure out how to use it, you know, waste energy and because it's never wasted. So that's really kind of the foundation of sustainability practices, really basic stuff, things

Nic  
like that. It's like the basics behind like a hydroelectric dam right. It's like, it's like, well, we've got all this water just falling down. You might as well use that energy for something. And so why not? Yeah. And so those are just really unique, practical examples of that. It's really incredible.

Thomas Abdallah  
Yeah. And it really just takes, say as an engineer, my position is you know, I'm not a scientist per se. But what I do is I try to look for sustainable science advance technologies and then bring them into capital construction projects, design and construction or pilot project. So I think that's when, you know, one of the jobs there's million jobs engineers but one of them is to, to find something advanced and bring it into like a major you'd like for instance, one of my projects that I did in New York, a bus people called the mother Clara Hill bus depot, I was trying to find some renewable energy to put in the redesign of the of the project was actually reconstruction actually demolish the old building and put up a new one. So I figured I'd go to the National Renewable app, which I believe is in go there. I would just Google it. in Golden, Colorado, is still looking for what's the latest in renewable energy and actually, they had said that they're building what was called a solar wall. And I was like, it was a solo. All right. So it's really just the metal wall that you put on the southern side while you're in the, you know, the northern hemisphere. You put on the southern side of the building and then in the winter time she was in the wintertime activity. When the sun shines on this metal wall, you put a little millions of holes in the wall, and you bring air through that metal heated metal wall, and that is, you know, sort of saves you heating energy. And so I brought that I actually I found that and I I brought it to one of our projects here in New York. Oh, yeah. So it's kind of like I have to practice what I preach. That's what I tell engineers do. Right? So yeah, sure. Some examples of it and I think, you know, that's, like a circle of life. You know, the, this is just going back, you know, 1000s of years, you know, where you takes scientific advances and, you know, create our world here and that's gonna continue that's why I love teaching by the way, but back to the teaching question, you know, you have to talk about history and whether any topic and being that my age now where everyone's younger than me and you know, I was there in 1989, whatever, when we started the hybrid Bus program, and so I proliferate and I was, you know, even sometimes when people ask me, you know, I was born in 1962. So actually remember the Beatles and I can actually tell you, I remember Ed Sullivan Show in blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it's kind of that aspect of being an elder statesman now, where the people who are really interested in learning, you got to understand your you got to know where we've all come from. So that's one thing I also can encourage people like, we have amassed all this memory. And let's now let's get it out there to the to the mainstream.

Nic  
Yeah. Oh, 100%. And that's kind of really fun. It's fun to see that and, you know, generationally, how things go I remember starting my career and like looking at my bosses, and I'm like, how do they know so much and they had 20 years on me right in the industry. And that's, that's why I get it now. Now that I have been in the industry for about 15 years, but it's like kind of one of those funny things where you're just like, oh, he just takes time. Exactly. We always want to learn everything right away. And it's just some stuff you you can't Yes, yes. So yeah, so you talked a bit about the pandemic, but I'm really curious actually. So we have, you know, some understanding of what the response was for the to the pandemic, kind of what happened afterwards, like what changed? What did the did the pandemic teach us anything about and,

Thomas Abdallah  
you know, one thing that I learned and again, you kind of have to be learning on the fly.

Nic  
Yeah. Yeah. Not surprised us. All right. Yeah. And

Thomas Abdallah  
you know, how germs proliferate, you know, in closed spaces. And, you know, one of those closed spaces is a subway or bus, you know, you know, vehicle and so, people would African during the pandemic, you know, should I get on the train? Should I get chicken on the house? And I was like, Well, I think there's nothing foolproof but a if everyone on the boss of the train is wearing a mask, that's great, but be more importantly, the ventilation system. So I learned a lot about ventilation systems, how they have to pretty much change the air every 10 minutes, whatever, they're there, they move it in a very quick fashion, and then filter it and and so I would say to people, if you get on a train and especially here in New York, and you don't feel the air conditioning, and you know, you know what it's not on like you're going out it'd be like, don't get on it because that means the pupils germs are going to be hovering, you know, around so that if you get in there, it kind of feels cool or you kind of feel the AC work and you feel that in the air being exchanged, then you were a little safer now getting, you know, being six feet apart was kind of difficult, especially on a train but you know, you do the best you can on on moving, you know away from people and for the most part and again, I only what you read and I do believe that I don't think mass transit was a super spreader by any stretch of the imagination. Again, nothing was nothing is foolproof. I remember taking a plane ride and you know, to tell you got to put a mask on but when you eat, you don't have to put the mask on. Well, well then what does that how's the germ isn't gonna say, you know? Yeah, right. So, and the other kind of misnomer most people understood but the mask, wearing a mask doesn't protect you, the mask. If I'm wearing a mask, it protects you from other people and then they wear a mask to protect me. It's like when a surgeon is performing surgery. You know, they're not putting a mask on. Because the patient is going to contaminate so it was really, you know, unless everyone was wearing a mask it was you know, again, good ideas, but I think it was almost unless everyone's doing it. Again, nothing was foolproof, but I you know, definitely I had people work for me that I was actually sitting here, like my, on my home during the pandemic that I had staff who were inspecting, you know, environmental projects. And, you know, I was kind of, I tried the best I could to educate them on you know, listen, almost think of him when you leave your home. You gotta you gotta be protected and kind of think of it that way and don't take anything for granted and try to be as safe and wash your hands and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of a scary to have people especially young people, you know, they they have to go out and spec construction jobs went on those were kind of essential things that went on. So, again, that's, you know, there were a lot of people who lost their lives during that period of time and made me March 2022 That year, you know, that was like a severe strain that we had were dealing with at that time and you know,
__________________________
Thomas Abdallah  
You know, I remembered I want to, I wanted to pay homage to the people who lost their lives actually going to work, because that was their job that was that was really kind of, you know, uplifting that the good of the human spirit that hey, this is my job, I have to drive a bus, I have to, you know, run the trains, I had to go to construction, this, this is what I do. You know, unfortunately, some, it was a sacrifice as many people as I want. Actually, part of my dedication of the book was to the people at MTA who lost their lives. 583 people lost their lives. COVID So as you know, as we're getting out of the pandemic, and you know, I don't know if we're out of it, you say no, right. It's

Nic  
the new normal, I think. Yeah.

Thomas Abdallah  
And I think that that has affected transit. I mean, here in New York City, we were used to having 6 million people take the train every day and now we're about 4 million and we're actually a we got 4 million we got about 67 You know, it's slowly over the years. It's been, you know, creeping up and again, I think the ventilation systems, same principle. I know I see a lot of people on the train and they you know, they don't let that don't touch anything they want to have a you know, they have like a napkin that, you know, wraps around the hole. I mean, you should and could do things like that. But I think the effect of on mass transit is now there's a lot of people working from home. Yeah, so there's, that's a complete, even if you go back to my first book about how I talked about the benefits of mass transit one of them is it builds cities, right? Mass Transit built New York City, because you could bring people into a central business district. Well, that's a paradigm that doesn't work anymore. I can work at home, I can work at home and I could do work in California I could do to work all around the world. So it's kind of a new paradigm. So it's like it's going to be it's going to be a while I think before we get complete backwards. I do think that you know, I was at a when I took the bus yesterday to work. Fridays in New York City is like dead. I mean, I don't mean doubt

Nic  
and I know what you mean. Well, that's robust, because more than

Thomas Abdallah  
most people are able to do in their Friday work from home or is usually a Friday or a Monday. I think so. So the whole thing is like shifted. But one thing I've seen people still driving I think the draw the driving level has returned to normal. You know, I I take the express bus here in Brooklyn, to Manhattan every day. And that's another thing I think I want to see in the future. I want to see more. Express buses. I want to see more bus rapid transit, I wanted to see more dedicated lanes, get the cars out of the lane for the buses, to take the people back and forth even in the communal world and stuff like that. So I take you know if you're familiar with New York City, I live in Bayridge Dyker Heights and I get on the bus, the Express bus and then it goes into an HOV lane on the BQ A, which is always packed always. In fact, I'm sitting on the in the HOV lane with the bus and it's you know, it's gone. The regular speed and I'm waving to other people on traffic. I'm there already so the car traffic has returned to where it was, I mean, traffic here in New York City is just you know, much like every other pack city like Washington, DC and Boston, its return so. So while some people are, you know, commuting, others that, you know, telecommuting and then you know others are you know I think more more people are returning with the car. So, again, same thing I want this book to promote the benefits of man's trans whites. It's kind of the best thing a city can implement to reduce the particles in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases and you know, one of the things about the COVID the pandemic during that period of time, when no one was going to work, the air quality was better. Yeah. And that was the direct correlation, the fact that people weren't driving so. So it still matters. It still matters that you know, and again, there are there there are some places here in America that you have to car like this, this show in that case, okay. Then let's let's see if we can proliferate electric vehicles, at least at minimally, they won't pollute as they travel around the neighborhood. I think that's one of the benefits of the electric bus, even though you know, you still have to produce it or use developed electricity. And you know, a lot of times it's fossil fuel, you know, usage anyway. But at least in areas where there there are people who have suffered with asthma, you can at least somehow reduce the that somehow you can reduce the amount of particles in the atmosphere and greenhouse gases. So I think that's that's the new normal now and we got to figure out ways to get people back into mass transit and begin to get convince other cities that don't even have mass transit to actually think about it. Oh, yeah.

Nic  
I mean, it's funny you just use part of the question for me because like, I think, you know, talking about New York, great mass transit DC pretty good mass transit, Raleigh, North Carolina, terrible mass transit, and this is my personal opinion, but we don't have a metro. We have buses, and they don't go everywhere. So there's some challenges, I think in different places. So how does, how does that work? Like, you know, I would love for Raleigh to get mass transit. It would be fantastic. Yeah,

Thomas Abdallah  
I think in the if you look at New York, Boston, Chicago, even to less than the Washington DC, that's like heavy rail, right? The subway tunnel here in New York, we have 350 miles of below ground subway tunnel. But there is lighter rail systems and that's really kind of it's a lot of that in Europe, you know, electric streetcars, some people call them where, you know, you're actually traveling above or above the ground and sometimes in tunnels, but still, I think there's also potential light rail systems. You know, I would suggest that for Raleigh, it's not nearly as expensive. I mean, it's not cheap, but I do think, you know, like, places, you know, like I was in Portland, Oregon. Their complete city system is a light rail system, and it's kind of like even the center of their system that rolls around it a little bit kind of is free and then if you want to go to suburban places you have to pay, but I think light rail systems could be something that a city that doesn't have a robust mass transit system should consider and something that called the bus rapid transit was kind of mentioning that earlier, where a bus has its own dedicated lane. I don't I don't mean like, like, even here in New York City, we have what's called select bus service, which means between 7am and 10am. That's a bus line only. Right But that's that bus rapid transit because that that means cars can still get into the into the lane. But Bus Rapid Transit is actually a lane that only buses travel in fact, cars can't even get there. Right. And I think that any city can figure out with their urban and transportation planning, ways of creating these bus rapid transit it's almost mimics you know, the train system. You know, you pay off to pay, you know, at a station source like a platform that is like mimics a train station or subway station, but it's a bus. Yeah. And you're the larger more of express bus works or an articulated bus, which is kind of like those buses. They almost look like an accordion. Yeah. But they actually go they don't go like this. They it's like a hinge but looks like an accordion. But, you know those larger capacity buses, and you know, obviously, hopefully, they're electric as we go forward and you know, create that opportunities to bring people in my opinion is like I own a car. I'm transparent. I have a car I drive. We went shopping this morning. I use a car, but I think getting up to go to work and coming back from work every man or every person should have the opportunity to take mass transit, to get to work to get home from work or get to school or get to the ball anymore or place. So I think that's what you know, again, going back like motivations for this kind of book is to like you know, those little little towns like yeah, you can actually put mass transit is going to be better for your city is going to be to better quality of life. And things have changed. You know, like right now. I know exactly where my bus is coming. We have apps for that right? Yeah. So in you know, in five minutes, the bus will be here or, you know, the you know, how many stops away it is even, you know, train systems, bus systems. I think that's changed dramatically over the last two decades. Where, you know, I think one one of the stress points of taking mass transit is well, what is this train called? And now, we know exactly where every train and we know where every bus is. So we can actually relay that information to people and they can actually time their day around when the buses or trains coming in. I think that's also another way to get people to say okay, maybe this is a good idea. They might leave my car in the in the garage and take the bus. So there's, you know, those are the kinds of things that that can be done.

Nic  
Yeah. Yeah. Which is absolutely fantastic. And it's so we could probably spend the rest of the show talking about just these things. But, you know, there's a couple other things I want to touch on too. We talked a little bit about professionals. We talked a little bit about how you work with students, and I kind of want to marry those a little bit. So can you kind of give me an idea on how environmental professionals can be great sustainability champions?

Thomas Abdallah  
Yeah. So I think first it starts with hard work, right. I mean, I think and passion and I think that's the one thing that I see from the students that I've mentored and and taught and they can come from any background. Yeah, sometimes to be an engineer. You don't have to be an architect. You don't have to be an environmental scientist. You can literally come from any educational or industry background because there's a sustainability elements in everything. Working in a restaurant, are you saving, you know, the recycling the composting of the other scraps? How dishes are washed, I mean, everything, every end of the airport, the aviation industry, every every industry has a sustainability element to it. So so they learn the basics of energy efficiency, air quality work, or there's some certain sciences you have to sort of understand your, you don't have to know everything. You don't have to know the refrigeration cycle and the thermodynamic sides, but you have to know sort of around those. A little bit of an understanding of that

Nic  
and have to be dangerous. Yeah, exactly. Right. And

Thomas Abdallah  
then you have to know your industry, right. So in my case, I had to I have to know the mass and transit industry, I have to know what environmental mitigations are unnecessary, where I have to understand how the trains transit system works, how electricity gets into the system. How we get energy to our trains, I have to know all that. So you have to have to know you know the basics of environmental sustainability and then the industry that you want to apply to. So you have to sort of be a steward of both. And you know, the industries are you know, why grant that transportation is wide range, right? Yeah. trains and buses, yep. Ferries, planes, you have monorails you have trucking, you have freight. So you can sort of be an expert on the industry agriculture, or you know, water or stuff like that, or you whatever it is you need. To know, the system that you're actually advising to help become more sustainable. And you have to listen to the people.

Nic  
That's like number one. Yeah, listening. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, listen,

Thomas Abdallah  
especially if we're going to be introducing new applications to our system. Well, I'm not going to be running that system. So the people who are running and they have great ideas, you know, maintainers, plumbers, carpenters, they know what they have to do. And so sometimes you listen to their ideas about what could be more sustainable in your your case, because you know, sitting here reading drawings, a little different than actually being in the actual area where you want to make some difference or listen to the people who are going to actually run your systems, especially if you're going to be introducing newest technologies like computers and stuff, not everybody is computer, you know, savant. And so there has to be, you know, basic training when it comes to introducing new technologies, because it's going to be the blue collar workers that are going to be doing it and so you have to you have to listen to them and listen to what they say and then tailor your new applications to make sure that they're capable of and they are, you know, mostly capable of doing it but you can't just say, hey, here's a computer terminals got like, Oh

Nic  
man, I mean, like, it's a great point. I remember having a project in DC, if you're familiar with Ward eight as the poorest district at the time. They were like, oh, yeah, 40% of the employees that are coming here are going to be using mass transit in the communities like, where's that data from? That's the first question they asked. Where's it from? Oh, that's, that's how many people currently commute namely, our Metro is a mile away from where you are going to put this building. So you don't have any other plan to get them from the metro to your place does not happen. And it was a great example of what you're just talking about. It's like, oh, yeah, this community knows exactly what what's here what they need. And, you know, ended up being a really great positive thing that came from it, but it was, yeah, the, you know, the community involvement is

Thomas Abdallah  
super important for that. Exactly. Especially in the environmental Well, right. I mean, yeah. 100% Yeah.

Nic  
And then ended up being a really great thing and ended up being you know, they got more transit basically to help with that. So, very, very cool stuff. I love talking through that. And I want to kind of dive in a little bit on your career too, because like, I don't want to sell your short so you, you've written the book, you've written another book. We talked a little bit about some of your other achievements, but what are the ones like for your career for your past? You know, you're a professor. What else do you have on a high board?

Thomas Abdallah  
Well, you know, I kind of did a little thinking about what, who I worked for in the, in my career, I worked for the MTA New York iconic institution. It goes back, you know, 100 years. In fact, yesterday was the anniversary of the New York City transit system from 1904 October 27. So it's called subway day. Yeah. So I work for Columbia University and other iconic institute of higher learning here and very, very famous and, and I also work for City College. This is, you know, again, these are Institute's that go back hundreds of years, you know, well, 100 years plus, below the campuses of Columbia and City College. They both like I work in a building at Columbia campus called Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton is the oldest building on campus. So it's really it's their unique structures, but I actually also work for the New York Daily News. When I was in the sixth grade. I was a paperboy.

Nic  
Oh my gosh, really fun. I,

Thomas Abdallah  
you know, started working when I was about 6/7 grade, 1212 13 years old, whoever. So I used to deliver the Daily News, that tabloid type paper here in New York City. And that was, I was an avid reader. Of the paper when I was very, very young, was mostly the sports pages, but still, it's another thing I try to tell people if you want to, you know, educate yourself, read about something you enjoy. Be more involved in things like that. So, so I wake up in the morning, 536 o'clock in the morning, and it'd be a bundle of newspapers and I would see the headline of the day either on the back page or the front page and you know, I would go to basically and within about five block radius as a 12. We will I was very popular. I was the only kid that had money and I used to buy pizza.

Nic  
Yeah.

Thomas Abdallah  
And then when I was in high school, and even into college, I worked for kind of a Brooklyn institute called sati. Importing is importing and exporting of Middle Eastern delicacies, spices and you know, all kinds of nuts and fruits and berries and all that kind of stuff and everything that you need to make middle eastern food which is you know, it's what I grew up on and and I worked in the, you know what I learned to some Sahadi family, brothers Charlie and Bobby and Richie and Charlie's wife, Audrey and the rest of their family. It was a family run business. Their work at that was like second to none as a 16 year old. I would work in their store and then when I got older, I worked in their warehouse and what I watched them do 12 hours a day, 16 hours a day weekends. Maybe they took Sunday off, I think and they were really and they knew their middle eastern delicacies too. They would they would go to trade shows and food shows and all that kind of stuff. And now they're having an empire here and in New York, expanding their brand into restaurants and everything. So I I kind of learned to work ethics when I came to MTA in 1987. And then I love working there. I've been there for 37 years practically. But not everybody had the great workout. And then I noticed that and I actually, you know tried to you know, show off sort of like you come in at nine o'clock you start working at nine o'clock. You work through the day, you know you get as much out of it as you can. I absolutely the same story that you had at the beginning. I would sit in meetings with project managers and hasn't been overall best. Like I'm a chemical engineer, and I've come jobs and environments engineer growing, you know, through college, there was civil engineers, electrical engineers, and we kind of together but separate Yeah, and then I would see these older engineers and they knew about electricity. They knew about civil concrete. They knew about H vac systems they knew I was like, and I realized that that's how I get there. Yeah, and I think I would also listen, I was very fortunate my growing up in the MTA at the very beginning. I was in like a seven or eight person office so I heard every conversation, everyone when I heard that. I heard the conversations that my bosses were having with their bosses and I kinda like sort of played along. Like their challenges. I'd say okay, well how would I solve that challenging or with limited knowledge that I knew at that time or, or even after it was over, I might ask why did you say what you said, when you got that problem? How did you solve that problem? So I was very lucky at the very beginning of my career that was in those days where not everyone was in like a solid cubicle by yourself. He sort of shared everything. Yeah, well, that's actually one of the things I remember is the 1987 people who smoked in the in the office

you know, there's cigarette smoke in the morning and then in the afternoon, there was there was a gentleman that had a pipe Oh, wow. The pipe smell was okay. I like kind

Nic  
of like yeah, totally different. Yeah. But does

Thomas Abdallah  
like a different world but I but I actually was able to listen to what they were saying. And really ask good questions. And you could tell right away who you want to talk to you who would be interested in talking to you not everybody wanted to you know, get away from me Okay,

Nic  
yeah, I'm gonna present

Thomas Abdallah  
you learn who's receptive and who's not. Yeah,

Nic  
but I mean like it probably in a way I think even being that way kind of also probably helped you become a good mentor to other people. Yeah, I don't know if you realize like, like me, but I remember having those exact same experiences and then being like, well, when I'm in a position to with this knowledge, all I want to do is share it. You know, and so I don't know how does that influence like, is that one of the reasons why you work with grad students?

Thomas Abdallah  
I think so. I think you learn from everyone. You learn from everyone. Above you below you. Same day you learn from every single person you learn from every consultant or you work with a learn what to do, you also learn what not to do, right. So yeah. There are it's just that learning, I think, yeah, absolutely. That's kind of what I saw and I you know, I remember the old days right you get chastised for stuff like I don't think it's a kind of illegal to chastise people the way they did about 35 years. Oh, gosh, yeah. And I want to be like, you know, this is I'm not gonna make like a you know, you can kind of like, make it feel a little smaller. Yeah. And then I was like, you know, I'm not gonna let that happened to my younger staff not gonna let that happen among them anyway. I'm not going to do that. So yeah, I definitely think you learn, you learn about what you think was the right thing to do. And then of course, you know, use your own feeling judgment on things, you know, everybody's different, right? So that's why they treat everybody I don't kinda like the term well treat everybody the same. Well, no, everybody's not the same. Treat treat people. They're all different thing. You know, when I teach a graduate course, these are people who are already professionals, and they're, they're in different audience than undergraduate students. They are just sort of forming they haven't fully cooked yet. Never education. It's more about education, so you deal with them in a different way. I've also spoken to high school kids as well. And the one thing I make myself I guess it don't talk down to them, Do not. They'll see that immediately. Yes, give them respect. Give them that and I think that's one of the things i i hope to pass on, as I think that I give everyone the respect that they deserve and give them credit, like young kids, you know, are really, really smart that sometimes you just have to get them out of the shell. You have to you know, bring them along a little bit.

Nic  
Yeah. And so absolutely great. Totally agree with you. I couldn't agree more, really. So I love that. I know we're getting close to time but we have one last thing I want to kind of we talked about at the beginning, but I want to bring it back to it. So the future mass transit. So what are our challenges ahead what's coming in the third edition

Thomas Abdallah  
Okay. Well, I think one of the things that I'm working on now that I didn't even even discuss in my first two books, I think it's not only the carbon footprint of your operations, but it's the carbon footprint of the materials that we're using, you know, the concrete, the steel leaving, like I'll just take an example wind turbines, right? Great Love wind turbines, create, you know, energies, just find the wind, right? Yeah. How much energy did it take to make that material? How much energy did it take to transport that material? So that's a fascinating thing for me that I'm just sort of getting involved. With, specifically around concrete and cement and concrete since from men, they're high energy users. And so how can we produce the amount of concrete that we need, especially for infrastructure without you know, using so much energy as well? I think also in terms of the energy used for the vehicles, hydrogen, I think, you know, that's another way that we can reduce the greenhouse gases and stuff. The only well, not the only issue one of the issues with hydrogen. It's the most abundant element on the planet, but it doesn't come as hydrogen you have to extract it from water or combusted from fossil fuels. So once you get the hydrogen or liquid hydrogen, you can actually put it in a fuel cell bus and then it goes without any emissions except for water vapor. Right? So just quickly did a one of my case studies. I had 20 case studies in the first book, I think I have 25 in the second book but some of them I updated and it was it was an at an agency in Illinois, in Champaign Urbana Champaign. And so they have to fuel cell hydrogen fuel cell buses, and so they have an electrolysis machine and MA Lin shop which is just basically extracting the hydrogen from the water. And you know, keep that takes electricity that takes energy to run, but that's being powered by solar panels. So it's kind of like a full circle, solar panels driving the electrolysis which puts the hydrogen into the bus and then the bus goes around. Without really without any impact to the environment. So that's, I think, and some Local Motors. There are some Local Motors in Germany, they Lower Saxony, Germany, I think they're using the hydrogen in their in their local motors. I think that's another future and yeah, you know, the thing is, we kind of talked about this at the, you know, the Ask Me Anything, yeah. You know, artificial intelligence and,

Unknown Speaker  
right.

Thomas Abdallah  
I think one of the things I'd say, I think, definitely there's going to be some attachment in the mass transit agency to, you know, our official intelligence, autonomous vehicles. I think that's definitely a future wouldn't be great. If you wake up in the morning, you know, shower, shave, get ready and then all of a sudden, the driverless car will take you to the bus stop where the train stop will take you into the and you'll never have to use open to be an electric autonomous vehicle. But I think that's the future. I think the we should not be afraid of it. We should not be afraid of autonomous vehicles artificial. I know. They're not ready yet. But I think the way Moe Corporation is running like, yeah, Phoenix in Phoenix and San Francisco, I believe whatever. Yeah, and it's one of the things I talked about in my my city college this fascination with the autonomous vehicles and actually have they want how do they work? Yeah. This is like, you know, than science to the nth degree. So those are things I think, the future and I think also connecting no going back to my original thing about electric buses need to be powered by you know, battery needs to be charged, right? And we have this regenerative braking in the subway system in the train system that have gone into an energy storage system. So I'm gonna marry the two together the energy that's going back into an energy storage system and then use that energy storage system to power the electric buses. So it's kind of like a kind of a full circle. Yeah, but thanks. So the one thing about the future, it's bright, and I think we can just look at it look at the past how we've technologically, you know, advanced over the years, right? Yeah, no, you and I are talking on a zoom. I never even heard it. Before. So things are changing. They change rapidly, and I have really, really high hopes and extremely optimistic. That's

Nic  
a really great, I love to hear that. I hate to let you go. But one last question. Is there anything else we missed? That you want to touch on before we do? Well,

Thomas Abdallah  
I think it was a great conversation. And I think I definitely, you know, have heard your podcasts with Laura and I think they're great. And I think these are the types of things that we have to communicate with each other right? So we have to do these types of things. Kind of gives back to the not only the younger generation, but the current gen Yeah, you know, we just have to communicate and you know, not be afraid of talking and asking questions. There's no such thing as a dumb question and just kind of put yourself out there and be the best person that you can be me, you everyone else, just do the best and work hard and if you work hard, be the best you can be good things will happen.

Nic  
100% I love that. Last but not least, where can people get in touch with you in case they do have a question for ya.

Thomas Abdallah  
Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Thomas of Dell on LinkedIn. My email address here in New York City is Thomas th o ma s dot Havdalah A B D a ll ah, at Mt a cd.org. They can get in touch with me and I love to have conversations with with everybody I'm especially on LinkedIn, where you know, I posted a lot of things I love listening to reading about and I learned a lot today and you're always learning, always,

Nic  
always 100% Couldn't agree more. All right. Thank you, Tom so much. It was great to have you on. All

Unknown Speaker  
right. Take care. Have a great day.

Nic  
That's our show. Thank you so much for joining us, Tom. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe. rate and review see everybody bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai