Survey says: The Capital Area Transit System unveiled Tuesday a customer satisfaction survey showing rider approval up 40 percentage points since February. The survey, conducted in October by Transpro, showed rider approval at 29%, up from -11% satisfaction in the February 2015 survey. The survey also showed a 228% increase in positive responses to the question of whether CATS employees answered riders’ questions. Transpro surveyed more than 500 riders from all CATS routes from Oct. 26 to Nov. 4. The survey measures customer satisfaction through use of a metric called a Net Promoter Score. The survey asked respondents how likely they would be, on a scale of 0 to 10, to recommend CATS service. Respondents answering with a 9 or 10 are considered promoters, while those responding with 0 through 6 are considered detractors.
National fellow: LSU’s vice president of research and economic development, K.T. Valsaraj, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a prestigious group culled from 190 research institutions across the country, LSU says in a news release. Valsaraj is a chemical engineering professor in the Cain Department of Chemical Engineering and owns two patents. “My work on the process of ‘solvent sublation’ (with numerous peer-reviewed publications) that has gone from laboratory scale to full-scale implementation was not patented, but I consider this an important part of my economic development activity,” Valsaraj says in a statement. LSU mechanical engineering professor Wen Jin Meng, who was named an NAI Fellow last year, is the only other LSU professor in the organization. NAI members have “positively influenced the economy through cutting-edge discoveries, creating startup companies and enhancing the culture of academic invention.”
Stills tops: The Baton Rouge Fire Department has retained its Class 1 rating from the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana. The department, one of four fire departments in Louisiana and 130 across the country to receive a Class 1 rating, is evaluated every five years on a plethora of factors, including training, communications, manpower, response times and continuing education. “The top Class 1 rating is something that is easy to take for granted, until the unthinkable happens and you need BRFD to respond to an emergency,” Mayor Kip Holden says in a statement. “We should all consider ourselves fortunate to live in a city with one of the top fire departments in the United States.” The first fire department in the country to receive the Class 1 rating, the Baton Rouge Fire Department has received a Class 1 rating for the past 35 years. Holden notes that Baton Rouge is the only city in Louisiana to receive a Class 1 rating in police, fire, emergency medical services and emergency preparedness.
