New position: Executive director, Bay Area Commuter Services, Tampa. Previous position: Planner, Bay Area Commuter Services, Tampa
By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published May 12, 2003
Sandi Moody likes to say she "walks the talk."
As executive director of the Bay Area Commuter Services since January, her primary job is to sing the virtues of car pooling and other commuter conservation efforts. She encourages people to ride together, take public transportation and find alternatives to driving.
So at least once a week, she takes a bus to work from her home in east-central Tampa to her offices in the West Shore business district, "whenever the weather permits and I don't have a morning meeting," she said.
Moody had been interim executive director since September. And she has held a number of positions with Bay Area Commuter Services (BACS) in two separate stints with the nonprofit organization, first from 1993 to 1997 as customer service manager, then since 2000 as planner and now executive director.
Her job now is "trying to get people to change their travel behaviors, from traveling alone to doing something else," she said. "But it's not just about changing travel behavior for the general commuter public but also making good choices when we are developing and redeveloping to make these changes easier."
This requires Moody to work with a number of different governmental agencies and their metropolitan planning organizations. She also oversees a staff of 12.
Her new title and responsibilities require her to "do a lot more networking," she said. And convincing people to change their commuting habits is dependent on world and economic patterns. "Until people feel the pinch at the pump, they aren't ready to do other things," Moody said. "But nobody wants to be in gridlock or stay in traffic over an hour."
Among the suggestions BACS offers, in addition to car pooling, are shifts in work hours, a ride-share matching service and educational programs.
In between her two sessions of employment at BACS, Moody was transportation director for the West Shore Alliance, a business organization to promote the West Shore area of Tampa, "kind of like a minichamber of commerce."
BACS publishes a newspaper, Tampa Bay Commuter, designed to promote commuting alternatives. It include personal ads by people who are looking for others who work near them to share a ride with, Moody said.
Before joining BACS initially in 1993, Moody was in a different field as a sales trainer for a Tennessee photography company, from 1986 to 1993. The company transferred Moody to Tampa, and she fell in love with the area.
"I drove around Hillsborough County, looked around and said, "This is it. This is where I'm supposed to be.' "
When the structure of the photography company began to change, she started looking for other work that would allow her to stay in the bay area, and a friend told her about BACS.
Moody, 49, attended Cleveland State Community College in Cleveland, Tenn., majoring in office and business administration.
She is vice president of the local chapter of the Women in Transportation Seminar, president of the southeastern chapter of the Association for Commuter Transportation and on the board of directors of the Association for Commuter Transportation.
Moody is passionate about her role to make the Tampa Bay area more commuter-friendly. "Most people come to Florida for a reason," she said. "They don't come here to sit in traffic. They often move away from where they're from because of the traffic problem.
"It's only going to grow worse as we grow," she said. "And you can't pave over everything.
"As long as there are people and as long as there are automobiles, there will always be work for us (BACS) to do," she said.
Moody also is passionate about singing. She has been singing three nights a week at a local club, the City Side Lounge, for nearly 17 years. The club recently relocated from Neptune Street to Henderson Boulevard, she said, and her new singing schedule hasn't been established.
But Moody said she will continue to perform at the City Side, offering songs "all over the scale, (but) I don't do opera or rap."
She is a single parent with one grown child and a second granddaughter due May 21.
