Welcome to PandaPod, Ridepanda's video podcast where we explore how people get to work and move through cities, from transportation demand management and reducing parking, to biking, sustainability, and the future of urban mobility. In each episode, we go straight to an expert to hear about their experience, get their perspective, and learn from their advice. Watch the whole episode now!
Claudine Schneider is a Regional TDM Program Manager at TDM Specialists, where she works across commuter programs, data analysis, marketing, and communications to help drive more effective transportation solutions. With a background spanning property management, the California High-Speed Rail Authority, and construction site management, Claudine brings an incredibly broad set of tools to TDM work. She runs programs across the Bay Area and Sacramento, serves on the ACT board as secretary, and is active on ACT's belonging and engagement committee. She wears a lot of hats, and she'll be the first to tell you why.
Claudine's career trajectory doesn't follow any straight line. She started out wanting to be a cop, a nurse, or a lawyer; her words: "put all those together and that's pretty much the umbrella: helping people." She spent time at a law firm, in property management, and eventually landed at the California High-Speed Rail Authority, where she fell in love with building something big from scratch. When state funding issues forced her out, her last foster mom, who had started her own TDM company, TDM Specialists, in 2012, brought her on. The rest, as they say, is history.
What makes Claudine distinctive isn't just the breadth of her experience. It's that her background, growing up in foster care and moving around constantly, gave her a lived understanding of the barriers that most TDM professionals only read about. "I figured out the bus route myself," she says, describing how she once ended up in the wrong part of town on a light rail trip just trying to get to work. "That educational part, that experience, is something I'm able to share with commuters."
One of the most powerful moments in this episode comes when Claudine describes running programs for large Bay Area office campuses. While most TDM outreach targets the employees in the big offices, Claudine asks a different question: "What about the cleaning crew? They are commuting to the building every day, too. How do I get resources to them?"
Her point is simple but often overlooked: the people who most depend on alternatives to driving, the ones taking the bus, carpooling, stretching every dollar, are often the least likely to be the target of a well-funded TDM program. Claudine's approach is to design for the masses, not the margin. "How what kind of program can I provide that's for the masses? The big majority, from the big people to the little guy."
This shows up practically in how she thinks about language (she's bilingual in Spanish, and always considers second-language speakers in her outreach), how she approaches tabling events, and how she uses survey data to find the gaps nobody else is looking at.
Claudine took the social marketing course through Cutter and came away with a core lesson: stop sounding like a salesperson. "A lot of people overthink the marketing and the outreach that needs to happen," she says. "I try not to overthink it. Don't be too formal, don't be too technical."
Her framework is simple: know your demographics, segment your audience, and talk to people like a person. When you're tabling in front of a warehouse full of Amazon employees, your focus and wording will be different than when you're at an office campus in Palo Alto. She's the first to admit she sometimes breaks from the "official" approach: "Kind of a little of a rebel," she says with a laugh, because she knows her people.
The result? Programs she describes as consistently successful, driven by authentic connection rather than polished messaging.
For Claudine, surveys aren't just a compliance checkbox; they're a tool for program innovation. Every year, she surveys her commuters: how do they get to work today, what would they use if it were available, what barriers are getting in the way? The answers drive her programming decisions.
At Capitol Yards, a residential project in Sacramento, she noticed a pattern: transit ridership was declining, but she had funding to deploy and a goal to hit. She knew it was a strong bike community. She'd already tried to stand up a free e-bike lending program through her TMA board, but legal hurdles killed it before it launched.
That's when she found Ridepanda. "I was like, this sounds great. Let me see if I can convince the people up top." A week later, she had a signed contract. She used existing program funding to launch a bike subsidy program, no new budget, no new complexity for property management, just a targeted solution for a gap her data had already identified. Today, eight to ten residents who wouldn't otherwise own a bike are riding regularly.
It may seem like a small number on paper. But to Claudine, that's eight to ten lives changed, and proof that a data-informed, scrappy approach can have a huge impact.
Claudine is very enthusiastic about micromobility. When she travels for conferences, she makes a point to ride whatever's available. She describes hopping on Lime scooters in Colorado Springs with a former foster sister who was living on a tight budget, and lighting up at the freedom it gave them both.
She sees e-bikes in particular as a powerful equalizer: accessible across age groups, able to conquer hills that keep people in their cars, and genuinely fun in a way that changes how people think about their commute. The infrastructure challenge is real (scooters dumped on sidewalks, lack of docking, education gaps) but she's optimistic that dedicated stations and better education are closing the gap.
Much of Claudine's day-to-day work involves TDM plans for real estate developers and the infrastructure requirements baked in before a building is even built. Things like bike rooms, dedicated carpool parking, EV charging, cargo bike share for low-income housing. "The TDM plan is the foundation," she says, "for really building upon something that has long-term benefits."
But infrastructure without enforcement is toothless. She contrasts the Bay Area, where ordinances come with real penalties and fees, against regions where the rules exist only on paper. Without them, developers build sprawling parking lots and call it a day. She sees the ordinance framework as both a carrot and a stick, and notes that for employers, the threat of penalties can actually be the bargaining chip that gets leadership to finally invest in TDM. "It almost forces action."
Her commuters. She talks about getting their feedback, figuring out what they need, and setting a goal around it. She gives a vivid example: a project where bike lockers sat empty for months. She kept pushing, kept asking why, and eventually got three of them consistently used. "Okay, what else, just feeding that wanting to give and help," she says. "Where can I fill the hole? Where can I bridge the gaps?" For Claudine, inspiration is never abstract; it lives in the day-to-day problem-solving with the people she serves.
Running three construction sites in the Sacramento region, not because of the buildings she helped convert, but because of the crew. She brought temp workers on as permanent employees, picked them up at the light rail, and made sure her team was taken care of. "Not only was I coming up, but I made sure my crew came up too."
Stay a sponge. Webinars, YouTube notifications, podcasts (hi, PandaPod), and the ACT book club for those who prefer reading. Her philosophy: consume broadly, then distill what applies to your specific lane. She also recommends listening to local transit agency podcasts to stay close to what's actually happening on the ground in your region, and converting ideas from outside your lane into something applicable to your own programs.
Breaking the silos. City planners, developers, architects, engineers, TDM implementers: they're all working on the same problem in separate rooms. She uses the Salesforce analogy ofdifferent departments that never talk to each other, to describe how the TDM ecosystem operates today. "Instead of bringing them all to the table and figuring it all out." She's encouraged by communities being designed with less car dependency baked in, but the communication gap between sectors remains the biggest obstacle to progress.
TMAs, or Transportation Management Associations. She's emphatic about it. "They don't get enough credit either. They're out there doing the work that we're doing, trying to do outreach, provide resources, help people commute." Whether someone's car broke down, they don't have a car, or they just want to go for a weekend bike ride, TMAs show up. Usually very small, very low funded, but out there with a big cause. Claudine wants them to get their flowers.
Claudine Schneider's approach to TDM is grounded in something most program playbooks skip: the belief that the people who need better commute options most are the ones least likely to be centered in how we design programs. Her career, from foster care to high-speed rail to running commuter programs across the Bay Area and Sacramento, is proof that when you lead with equity and actually talk to your commuters, you build programs that last.
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