GMPTE interview - Rafael Martinez

Leaning back in his chair, sipping tea and smiling, Rafael Martinez looked ready to take on anything that is thrown at him. And he certainly knew how to answer a question.
The Crime Reduction Coordinator for the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, enthralled with his enthusiasm, passion and dedication for his job.
It was certainly a joy to discover that those trying to make a difference, do so with character.
The young, football crazy professional Rafael, or Raf, as his friends know him as, began by telling us about the route to his current job, starting with his education.
The skills he gained from his foreign languages degree helped him more in his current job of four years than you would think. Being a coordinator for an important department for public transport, he tells us how important it is to be able to summarise a lot of topics in a short space of time.
He said: “University helped a lot with this. The majority of a degree is based around research, and then creating brief preparation for seminars, and obviously managing your time plays a vital role.”
It seems that Raf thoroughly enjoyed his student life at gigs and all the other usual student scenes.
So why study languages and then go onto a post grad in business studies?
He said: “I have a flare for languages. As my father is Spanish, I was brought up to speak the language.”
So where does all this fit into his job? As a fresh graduate out of business school, Raf’s first job was with GMPTE in 2002, as a crime analyst.
He said: “As a temp for the business school after finishing my studies, I was waiting till an advertised job grabbed me before I took it.’ And it seems Raf’s astute decision was the right one; climbing the ranks to his current post with the Crime Reduction team.
Raf’s role now incorporates the negotiation and communication skills he gained as an analyst, and have remained helpful to him throughout his career at GMPTE.
He added: “It’s my job to improve the safety of public transport, and to build relationships with the police. We want to bring public and private together, as well as to overall improve security. We hear of many tales of incidents on public transport and it remains to be my ambition to further develop a career within local government that allows me to serve the needs of the public.”
As safety on public transport is a current big issue, what is GMPTE doing to help reduce crime and increase security?
“We use a multi-model tracking survey, which gives us the opinions of both passengers and non-passengers based on public transport,” said Raf. “We keep a main eye on busier routes, or those in quieter areas, poorly lit areas. Students are a big problem too, especially as many are new here and are therefore more vulnerable to crime in general.’
Raf also commented on how the public are much more aware of CCTV today, and want recordings now to show police. The public will also be interested to know that security guards have also been placed on the metro link for the last eight hours of rail, which Raf thinks will prevent much of the crime occurring currently at night time.
“We also do a lot of preventative work,” he went on to say. “Children who have never been on a bus before need guidance on bus routes, and most of all, the behaviour that is expected on transport.’
The ‘Crucial Crew’ are now the ones responsible for informing younger children leaving primary school on the public transport system, emphasising the way to ‘behave’ on transport.
So it really isn’t difficult to see that GMPTE are doing all they can for the prevention of crime on public transport. Improvements don’t just happen overnight, and people really do have to realise that GMPTE are doing the best job they can possibly do, and with dedicated coordinators such as Raf, we really shouldn’t have anything to worry about!

Author: Amy Coombs

Manchester iJourno group