A transportation planner from southern Louisiana will become the next leader responsible for figuring out how to increase ridership on Lawrence’s public transit system.

Cliff Galante, a senior transit planner in Mandeville, La., has accepted an offer to become Lawrence’s next public transit administrator, who oversees operations of the T bus system.

“I’m very impressed with the work that has already been done here,” Galante said. “I’m excited about the opportunity. I know that figuring out how to grow the system will be a major part of the job. I’m looking forward to that.”

Galante will start work July 1.

The job became available after Karin Rexroad, the city’s first public transit administrator, left the position in late February to accept a private sector job in Wichita.

City Manager Mike Wildgen said Galante would be a good fit for the T, which began operating in 2001, because he had been involved with a public transit system in Newton, Mass., when it was still in its infancy.

Wildgen said Galante also was extremely familiar with Federal Transit Authority regulations because he previously had been employed by a private company that conducted regulatory audits for the FTA.

In his current job, Galante primarily does public transit planning for the Mandeville area, which has about 215,000 people.

“Planning is really what we need from that position,” Wildgen said. “We don’t need someone to assign the routes to the drivers. That is what our transit provider does. We need someone who can do the long-range planning for the system.”

Wildgen said Galante had been told that increasing ridership on the T, which in April had about 1,200 riders per day, was a priority.

“Part of it is to find riders and to look at the ridership itself,” Wildgen said. “We want to do everything we can to make the T part of the internal transportation system. We want to get people to think ‘instead of taking the car, let’s take the bus.'”

Galante will be paid an annual salary of $75,000. In addition to overseeing the T, he’ll also oversee the city’s paratransit system for people with disabilities.

City officials advertised nationally for the position and received 47 applications.