The Riverside Transit Agency board unanimously approved the agency’s Strategic Plan 2025–2030 on June 26, adopting five strategic priorities and specific measurable goals, including a stated objective to reduce driver assaults tracked in the National Transit Database from 104 to zero.

CEO Kristin Warcinski told the board the plan grew from an agency‑wide assessment conducted after an organizational culture and leadership project with Insight Strategies. “We enrich lives by removing barriers to connect our community to more,” Warcinski said, reading the plan’s mission statement and describing a process of focus groups, surveys and workshops to shape priorities and performance measures.

Insight Strategies founder Terry Fisher, who led the consultant team, credited RTA’s executive leadership team and staff engagement for enabling the plan’s development. “This is going to be a highlight of my career,” Fisher said, referring to the work with RTA.

The plan rests on five strategic pillars: service; customer experience; people (human capital); financial sustainability; and community partnerships and impact. Warcinski highlighted several implementation items: renovating the agency’s performance management system so employees’ goals and evaluations align with the new plan; developing leadership competencies and targeted training for mid‑level managers and supervisors; and better integrating employee feedback into operations.

On safety, the board heard a measurable target for assaults on operators. “Reduce NTD‑defined driver assaults from a 104 to 0,” Warcinski said, describing the goal as deliberately ambitious: she said lower percentage targets would send the message that some assaults were acceptable. Board members pressed on how the board could help reach that goal; Warcinski pointed to potential technology (wearable panic buttons, weapons detection), de‑escalation training and support for state legislation (AB 394) that would broaden protections for drivers and expand agency responses to repeat offenders.

Warcinski and staff described a number of “quick wins” the agency has already implemented to improve culture and communication: a monthly Transit Champion award (operations, maintenance, administration) launched in April 2024 with certificates, gift cards or half‑day paid time off; quarterly town halls and recorded department presentations; a “cupcakes with the CEO” informal listening session attended by roughly 50 employees; a virtual suggestion box and a weekly internal newsletter; “spirit week” and other morale events; and a larger employee “rodeo” event that grew from about 130 to over 300 attendees year‑over‑year.

Warcinski said hiring efforts recently yielded 62 offers following an on‑site recruitment event in Corona and that she had been participating in lobbying in Sacramento on driver safety and zero‑emission vehicle conversion funding. After board discussion about onboarding, performance management and safety measures, the board voted to approve the strategic plan; the vote was recorded in the meeting as unanimous.