As technology has changed, so have both traffic reporting and New York City reporter Bernie Wagenblast. Wagenblast has seen and experienced decades of transformation in one of the world’s most famous and busiest cities.
After graduating from Seton Hall University and doing some traffic and news reports, Wagenblast took on traffic reporting at Shadow Traffic/Metro Networks in 1979, feeding live reports to various stations.
“We only did traffic during rush hours back then,” Wagenblast told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noting that many reporters worked split shifts to cover both.
In Wagenblast’s first stint in traffic reporting, from 1979 to 1985, gathering or producing info was very analog: “We had spotters, for instance, with binoculars atop the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building, who would keep an eye on things. We had fixed-wing aircraft that would fly around the suburbs and helicopters that flew over the city to report on traffic.”
Wagenblast’s fascination with radio and news went back to fifth grade and continued with the Cranford, New Jersey, native even as she went to work with Transcom in the 1980s and 1990s.
Her job at Transcom involved coordinating information between transit agencies in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and also disseminating it to local media via pagers.
Before the internet became ubiquitous on smartphones, the 1990s saw people with cellphones dialing a station to report traffic information. And by that time, Wagenblast said, many radio stations wanted traffic information 24/7.
As radio began to take a back seat to the precision of GPS apps, some stations began cutting back reports or did not want to air them live.
Wagenblast was in a supervisory role at a traffic reporting operation in 2009, when she asked to finally get back on the air. “It was like being the Rip Van Winkle of traffic reporting. Because when I left,” she said, “no internet, no mobile phones, no traffic cameras, none of that technology.”
Wagenblast stayed on the air until the stations she worked for stopped wanting to air live reports.
In 2014, Wagenblast started her own “Transportation Radio” podcast which has evolved into doing different transportation clients’ podcasts. She also founded a hyper-local “Cranford Radio” podcast, where she still interviews local figures in her town.
During Wagenblast’s time at Transcom, she was commissioned to lend her voice to New York’s complex Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and other regional transit systems. “I spent a couple of days in the studio, probably recording close to a thousand different messages,” Wagenblast explained. “And then what happens is the computer puts it together based on which train is coming in.”
She has had some additional recording sessions for MTA, as station names and other things change. But Wagenblast’s voice largely remains evergreen, as she displayed for me in our interview – a booming baritone voice.
Transformation has been a big theme for the 68-year-old. Bernie Wagenblast began to publicly identify as a woman on January 1, 2023. She says she had known that has been her true self for decades.
And Wagenblast said she has received warm support from most anyone who knows her with the only negative feedback coming from social media commenters to her national appearances on CBS or in the New York Times. She said she ignores those.
Wagenblast has refined what her higher pitched voice is in her new identity and says she has had to work new muscles in her throat. I asked her about the tension or the dichotomy between her male voice and past and her new identity and sound. A fellow transit announcer gave Wagenblast some perspective: “One of my roles is being a voice actor. And what do actors do? They play parts that are not really them. So when I put on that male voice, that is a part that I’m playing. But I have no problems hearing that voice, doing that voice. That voice has brought me very far in my career.”
Wagenblast recently voice-acted as a train conductor on Lin Manuel Miranda’s new, star-studded “Warriors” album. She was pleasantly surprised to learn that Miranda knew who she was.
Wagenblast also continues to inform people about transportation, even publishing a daily newsletter with worldwide articles on the subject.
And she wants to provide a strong voice – or two – for people who struggle with identity. So add advocacy to the list of roles the versatile Wagenblast has held in her 45-year-career.
Doug Turnbull has covered Atlanta traffic for over 20 years and written “Gridlock Guy” since 2017. Contact him at fireballturnbull@gmail.com.
