SEPTA names customer advocate

Clean stations. Friendly service. Easy-to-follow signs.

SEPTA now has someone in charge of all the things that can make make commuters' lives a little better - or a whole lot worse.

The agency yesterday named longtime manager Kim Scott Heinle as its advocate for customers, and Heinle said his goal was to make the transit agency "available, responsive, honest and open."

In the newly created position of assistant general manager for customer service, Heinle will focus on what has long been seen as a SEPTA shortcoming. His boss, general manager Joseph Casey, promised when he took over in February to appoint a customer advocate to help improve service, safety and cleanliness.

Heinle said one of his first moves would be to send SEPTA managers out to hear from passengers. And he said he would meet soon with rider-advocate groups, which have long complained of being ignored by SEPTA.

"I'll be on the customers' side to make sure their voice is heard," Heinle said yesterday. "If we can't do what they want, I'll tell them why."

But don't expect bus drivers to make change or subway cashiers to sell tokens. Heinle said he hoped to make employees friendlier, but wouldn't change those job requirements.

He said employees would be encouraged to bend the rules, if necessary, to make life easier for passengers. So a bus driver could stop for a late-arriving passenger or a conductor could allow riders to remain on a train even if they are short some of the fare.

Heinle, who spent his childhood in Springfield, Delaware County, and in Yardley before moving with his family to California as an eighth grader, has been with SEPTA since 1984. He has worked in operations planning, customer service, marketing and sales and ran the trolley and bus operations.

He got generally high marks yesterday from rider advocates, who said they hoped Heinle could make some immediate improvements.

"This raises the profile of customer service, and that's obviously a good thing," said Matthew Mitchell of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers. "It's quite clear that Joe Casey's view is that management needs to start looking at the system from the customers' perspective."

Lance Haver, Philadelphia's consumer advocate and a frequent transit critic, called Heinle's appointment "a tremendous step forward."

"For too long, SEPTA has had a bunker mentality," viewing passengers "as the enemy instead of customers," he said. "The hope is that SEPTA is now focusing on what riders want."

Haver said SEPTA should make quick improvements in system cleanliness, ticket-sales policies, signs, and its Web site.

Casey, who has promised to make customer service his top priority as general manager, said Heinle's appointment reflected "my philosophy that we have to get back to basics."

Casey's efforts have been hampered by recent attacks on passengers in subway stations, including a fatal assault March 26 on Sean Patrick Conroy, 36.

SEPTA has added 30 police officers on overtime to its afternoon shifts, hoping to combat random attacks by youths.

Heinle said he would work on security concerns with Jim Jordan, head of public safety for SEPTA, but would be involved primarily with "quality-of-life issues, like cleanliness and the homeless in stations."

Heinle commutes to work daily - on NJ Transit. He lives in Tuckerton, N.J., and takes a train to 30th Street Station, where he transfers to SEPTA.

Heinle, who graduated from the University of California, San Diego, got his first taste of customer relations as a restaurant manager in California in the 1970s. After studying public transit and business administration, he was general manager of a small transit system in Gloucester, Mass., from 1982-84 before joining SEPTA.

Heinle's salary will be $145,000, and he will oversee about 80 customer-service, communications and research staffers.

Customers can reach him at 215-580-7800 or

» READ MORE: kheinle@septa.org

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