CXO Profiles - Nick Biggar, Greater Cleveland RTA

October 2026

If you want to understand the deep relationship Nick Biggar has with public transit, you can start with his family history. In what might be the ultimate fairy-tale beginning, Nick’s parents actually met while riding the Rapid in Cleveland. Fast forward a few decades, and their son is now the Senior Director of Customer Experience & Performance Management at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA).

Despite his transit origins, Nick’s professional entry into the industry wasn’t part of a grand master plan. He stumbled into GCRTA completely by accident while hunting for a job early in his career. Before joining the transit authority, Nick’s background was quite diverse, featuring a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Emory University, a Master’s in Public Administration from Ohio University, and stints with City Year and the Ohio State Treasurer. But when he landed an entry-level Operations Business Analyst role at GCRTA in April 2011, everything clicked, and he completely fell in love with public transit's mission.

Rising Through the Ranks

That accidental entry sparked a remarkable tenure with the organization that continues today. Over the years, Nick became a Swiss Army knife for GCRTA, migrating mostly through Operations Management in roles ranging from rail maintenance to budget analyst, and eventually Assistant Transportation Manager and Acting Director.

But it was his nearly seven-year run as District Director, starting in February 2018, where Nick truly showcased his operational chops. In this role, he directed a workforce of several hundred employees—including bus operators, mechanics, dispatchers, and facilities staff—ensuring the 24/7/365 delivery of transportation services across 23 bus routes on the east side of Greater Cleveland. He was accountable for everything from daily fleet availability to labor relations and budget execution.

Perhaps his most impressive operational legacy during this time was his cooperation with labor and management to launch a new operator mentoring program. Rolled out across four operating districts, this initiative resulted in a staggering 36% increase in the retention rate of new operators and a 30% decrease in absenteeism within just its first year. He also found time to earn a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a Transit Safety and Security Program (TSSP) certification.

Pioneering a New Era of Customer Experience

In December 2024, recognizing a growing trend across the transit industry and an internal need for a formal performance management strategy, GCRTA created a brand new Customer Experience (CX) department and tapped Nick to lead it.

Reporting directly to GCRTA’s General Manager and CEO, Nick and his team were tasked with a dual mandate: to deeply understand and improve the customer journey, while simultaneously administering GCRTA’s organizational performance strategy through a balanced scorecard system appropriately named "TRACTION".

Building a new department from scratch is never easy. Nick notes that their biggest challenges have been finding their "sea legs" as a new unit, resisting the urge to do too much all at once, and navigating financial uncertainty. To get the job done, Nick leads a lean, dedicated team consisting of three full-time CX and performance management employees, one year-long temporary fellow, and a ten-person Customer Care department which includes the call center and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) registrations.

Because the team is modest in size, its superpower is collaboration. "Much of what we do involves influencing our peers to see service through the eyes of GCRTA customers," Nick explains, noting that their work relies heavily on getting staff out of the office to ride the service, report issues, and ensure problems get fixed.

Four CX Activities

Nick is most proud of the widespread organizational buy-in to Customer Experience. In June 2025, the CX department launched four key initiatives to shift how GCRTA interacts with riders and improves the customer experience:

• The Gemba Process: Rooted in a Japanese business philosophy translating to "the real place," the Gemba program gets leadership and employees out of the office to experience transit services firsthand and report what they see. The results are astounding: GCRTA saw over 3,000 Gemba reports from employees in just the first year. To prove it’s not just a passing fad, division leaders have pledged to adopt a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to track Gemba participation levels.

• CX Site Visits: This is a variation on the Gemba initiative. Twice a month, an average of 20 cross-functional employees descend upon established rail and bus locations to hunt for customer-facing opportunities and operational tweaks. This cross-departmental squad identified over 600 action items in year one. To ensure accountability, a new organizational metric was added in 2026 specifically to measure the agency's success in remedying these identified issues.

  
  

  

  
  

• Employee Riders’ Council: Nick helped assemble a volunteer coalition of employees spanning over a dozen departments. These staff members regularly ride the system, acting as a powerful internal advocacy group. They meet monthly to dissect customer pain points and actively influence GCRTA's strategy.

• Customer Listening Posts: Borrowing best practices from peer agencies, the CX team partnered with GCRTA’s Marketing and Transit Police departments to set up informal, face-to-face feedback pop-ups at high-volume bus stops and Rapid stations.

Proximate Leadership and "CX Wisdom"

If you want to know how Nick manages to drive so much cross-departmental change, look to his leadership philosophy. He is a fierce advocate of "proximate leadership". Nick firmly believes in gaining direct, firsthand knowledge of the work he oversees, striving to be visible, dependable, and approachable so he can help his team overcome any barriers in their way.

Walk into his office, and you’ll find his secret sauce scribbled on a whiteboard. Nick curates lessons that guide his daily work. These include:

• "Done is better than perfect."

• "Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing."

• "People play differently when they are keeping score."

• "You can buy people's time but they have to volunteer their hearts and minds."

  
  

Beyond the Day Job

Even when he’s off the clock, Nick stays connected to his community and the transportation world. He serves as a board member for the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad and previously served as a non-voting board member on the Group Plan Commission, representing GCRTA to help develop signature public spaces in downtown Cleveland.

For other transit professionals looking to dip their toes into the Customer Experience waters, Nick offers a simple piece of advice: don't reinvent the wheel. "Lean into the knowledge and experience of industry peers," he suggests, pointing out that the transit industry is packed with brilliant people eager to share their coolest ideas.

Throughout his remarkable journey, Nick Biggar is proving that when you focus on the people—both the ones riding the bus and the ones driving it—everybody wins. After all, as another one of his favorite whiteboard quotes says: "Everybody is somebody."

Kudos to Nick and the whole Greater Cleveland RTA team for the programs they have put into place to sustain a focus on the customer!