UTA Regional General Manager Mary DeLaMare-Schaefer might be a new employee, but she already has thousands of hours of experience. The American Fork resident been a UTA rider for nearly a decade, using express buses and more recently, FrontRunner, to travel from her home in American Fork to her office in Salt Lake City.
“As a consumer, I have strong opinions on what I think works and doesn’t work,” DeLaMare-Schaefer said. “I’ve been watching the transformation of this organization, and I want to be part of that transformation.”
As regional general manager of UTA’s Timpanogos Business Unit, she will supervise Utah County operations, evaluate the area’s transportation needs and determine how to best use UTA resources to serve the population.
“I’m interested in learning what our community’s needs and desires are around transportation issues,” she said. “We have to understand our community’s needs, and they have to understand what we’re doing.”
Listening and working with the community is a natural fit for DeLaMare-Schaefer, who served as deputy director of Salt Lake City’s community and economic development department for nine years. During that time, she worked to improve liquor laws, build relationships with community councils and gather support from civic leaders to fund new homeless facilities.
DeLaMare-Schaefer describes herself as someone who likes to “make things and fix things,” both in her personal and professional life. The mother of four enjoys gardening, sewing and canning. She’s also an avid GREENbike rider who has logged more than 1,400 GREENbike miles and even has a bike named in her honor.
One of the things she hopes to fix is what she sees as a lack of transit knowledge among some new riders.
“You have to know how you use transit to your best advantage,” she said. “A lot of riders don’t get that far. They try it a couple of times, they don’t know how to make it work and they give up on it.”
DeLaMare-Schaefer said that for her, UTA has allowed her to maximize her commute by providing opportunities to finish work and answer emails, as well as opportunities to create new friendships.
“When you ride transit all the time you develop relationships with people you’d never meet, people that you wouldn’t otherwise cross paths with,” she said. “It’s a real community.”