BOSTON, MAY 26, 2010…….The chief administrators of five of the nation’s oldest transit systems last week identified the high cost of replacing and repairing aging fleets and infrastructure as their top problem, expressed hope for a federal funding infusion, and said persistent budget deficits, labor issues and building public support for transit represent continuing challenges.
During a forum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, transit system administrators from Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. sat on a panel moderated by Dan Grabauskas, the former MBTA general manager.
The forum, billed as a national summit on the future of transit, was hosted by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, the MBTA Advisory Board, the 128 Business Council and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, offered a keynote address before the panel discussion featuring:
— Joseph Casey, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority General Manager;
— John Catoe Jr., former Washington Metro Area Transit Authority General Manager;
— Richard Davey, MBTA General Manager;
— Richard Rodriguez, Chicago Transit Authority President;
— Dr. Beverly Scott, Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority General Manager/CEO;
The following is a detailed summary, not a verbatim transcript:
ROY KIENITZ, US DOT UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLICY: On the revenue side we have been surpassed by some in the willingness to call for greater levels of spending. Most calling for greater levels have been silent on where that money is coming from. The recovery act provided funds for surface funding and more competitive programs. The experience we have had with discretionary programs has been instructive. It isn’t highway or transit money. That’s a bit of a daunting one. It’s your first day on the job. You have 60 days to figure out what the investments are to improve America. We worked a lot of overtime. Name the goals – economics, safety, environmental sustainability, job creation. A seemingly obvious list of things. We said show us your projects. When the process went through we found transit projects do those things exceedingly well but they are not the only ones that do. Debates have gone on for 25 years about transit and highways and various lobby groups in Washington. When we were announcing TIGER funding, the fascinating thing was the biggest category was not bikes or transit or highways, it was freight rail. When you return to first principles, surprising and interesting things can happen. There’s a big chunk for dual use systems for freight and passengers. For us it’s really a model. Does our future lie in making a political deal and getting a guaranteed slice and living within your means, or does it lie in saying, we are going to have fewer rules and categories and more possibility for an upside by demonstrating that our community and projects deliver benefits better than other possible uses. Many people tell me this is a naïve way to think in Washington. They may be right that you can do that once. But that is really where one of the major themes we see going forward of naming goals and pursuing them and not relying on rigid definitions and categories of funding and instead relying on the power of competition. Planning processes have been useful but not revolutionary and can easily devolve into box-checking exercises. Did I do this? Yes I did. Did I do that? Check. The process can have little to do genuinely with actual determination of priorities. In the competitive world all of a sudden the strictures of the planning process get seen in a different light. If there are dollars out there and they are awarded on thoughtful multimodal plans and in a way that is competitive, that’s an entirely different relationship. The things coming out of our mouths may be the same but they are heard differently. We may say we have five billion dollars and we’d love to see your plan. This does not need to be half the money. We watched closely the Race to the Top funds. They said we are going to give a percentage away for people who strive for excellence. The competitive fervor has gotten states to adopt things like linking teacher pay to student performance and all sorts of other politically difficult things to do. It’s very interesting to see the leverage you can get by dangling this in front of folks. That program has picked two states as winners, which means there are 48 states that have gotten nothing. In the transportation world that would not fly. In the Senate that is a 96 to 4 vote that you lose. The same thing is happening in energy and housing and urban development. It’s something that we are seeing as a model. We are very aware of the urgency and math and benefit that can come from locking investments in for a significant period of time but a combined package that changes how the money flows and why and for what and the incentives along with enough money to make things worthwhile, we have not achieved internal consensus within the administration on by what means. I wish I could give a fuller answer. In the fullness of time hopefully you will know what that is. In the meantime, I can listen to your needs and thoughts and rants and raves and hopefully we can bring that back.
GREG TORRES, MASSINCE PRESIDENT: Now we will go to our panel which will be moderated by former MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: We are going to have a stimulating conversation. You will hear from leaders of five large transit systems. We have the second, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth largest transit systems in America represented. Their systems will move 6 million people today. Since we are focusing on older legacy systems if you add New York to the list, you’d account for half of public transportation riders in the U.S. by bus, boat and train. The question is do we undervalue what these agencies do for our economy, quality of life and environment? As a nation we are currently underinvesting in systems we have already built. We either maintain what we created and invest or we risk our economic well being. We will talk about the state of systems today. Most experts think things are going to get worse if not addressed soon. There will be some collective commiserating. My first question, Dr. Scott, as the most immediate past chair of APTA, you have talked about your experiences in Atlanta. Give us some context on the message you have sent.
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: I will be candid. Most of the time they were afraid of whether I would stay on script. At the national level, I believe unfortunately APTA, while a great organization, tends to consensus which works in incremental times and quite candidly these are transformational times that require us to be a lot bolder. We are much too modally driven and parochial. We are not going to get to where we need to be doing the same things we have been doing for 40, 50 years. I personally believe we have tremendous challenges. There are real opportunities only to the extent that we have to be prepared to be real real with ourselves and to move forward at all levels. We have issues in terms of renewed need for different policy and funding focus and our institutional arrangements are all very outmoded. We are pretty much in 20th Century. The challenge is understanding you can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater so the question is the balance. How quickly and how do we turn so we don’t just disassemble everything? It’s policy, vision, funding, governance, administration, performance metrics, accountability – all on the table. In Atlanta, I have on an annual basis a $750 million operation and I am looking at a $250 million minimum problem. It’s a structural problem. It’s no secret. It’s exacerbated by the downturn in the economy that quote no one could see from a couple of years ago. I asked for forecasts on sales tax. I got one two weeks ago. There is a modest uptick, good news for our community but not going to stop us from making some serious reductions. But we’re finally, I think, we are seeing a bottoming out and the beginning of a rebound. That was some good news for once but I would say we are looking at a roughly about a 20 percent cut in services as opposed to a third to 40 percent.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: Washington Metro serves northern Virginia, two counties in Maryland and the District of Columbia. We transport 1.2 million passengers per day and 40 percent of all federal employees who work in the Washington area. We’re really tied into the federal government. It is a system managed by a board that is multi-jurisdictional. Metro is a system that provides services for people around the world. It was once named the nation’s subway system. We have visitors from everywhere. During the presidential inauguration, the train system over 17 hours carried 1.5 million individuals. It was the largest ridership in the agency’s history and a view of the future. It finds itself like other transit systems around the country with a deficit in its operating budget. For the upcoming budget, the agency projects a $189 million shortfall out of a $1.3 billion operating budget. Plans are to increase revenues, the largest fare increase in the history of the agency. It’s a system that has been very efficient, recovering 80 percent of its operating costs through fares. The bus system is much less than that. And paratransit is about 5 percent. From a capital standpoint, we find ourselves in a state of disrepair. The federal government increased its contributions over the past year with the intent of purchasing new vehicles and upgrading signals. But the capital needs identified in its first capital plan are $11 billion and $8 billion is just to keep the system in a state of good repair – to replace older rail cars, tracks and we have platforms supported by two by fours. As we look at funding, the amount that we arrived at over the next five to seven years is very short of the capital needs. How do we get additional dollars? Some argue the federal government should provide more. My recommendation is to look at funding in the new authorization bill and to focus on keeping older systems in a state of good repair. The top six systems carry over 50 percent of all riders. That to me is the best bang for the federal dollars for capital. From a local standpoint, jurisdictions have contributed their fair share and find themselves this year with an inability to increase capital funding. From a local perspective there is discussion among businesses and elected officials of a regional tax to focus on the capital needs of the agency. But that has a long way to go.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: This is something that folks in Boston have heard this for a long time, the state of good repair issues. Boston is first and the oldest subway in America. Rich gets to deal with that now. Joe or Rich, please chime in on what’s happening in your cities.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: Unlike many of my colleagues, I am just slightly over my one-year anniversary. It’s been baptism by fire with the economy and what it’s done. As I walked in the door last year, our budget was going to be short by about $58 million. We are a $1.3 billion operating agency. We would have to make that up in 2009. Two months later, in another notice from the RTA and it was up to $200 million and we had to deal with it. We provide 80 percent of the rides to the region. Our budget would be reduced by $155 million followed by another $35 million two months after that. There were no service reductions and no fare increases but for the one already approved. As we entered the 2010 budget, I was advised of a $300 million shortfall. Realize how challenging of a year it’s been. Chicago has the second largest mass transit system. We unfortunately laid off 10 percent of our workforce, a little over a thousand, close to 1,100 bus and rail operators. The public has somewhat acclimated and that is my greatest concern, that the public becomes accustomed to this without complaining too much. The concern is reducing our service and losing riders significantly. We have retained the same levels of ridership. That is wonderful. But we still have a great need to expand rail and bus routes and we’re at a standstill. It’s a wonderful system and industry but the culture has to change. We have four new directors out of seven. The entire executive team is new. We are trying to have performance metrics and a capital plan published online. We are at a $10 billion state of good repair capital need over five years, with $7 billion unfunded. Our system is over 100 years old. Platforms in the downtown area central business district are still original. It’s what brings character to the city but it’s at a point where we run our system much slower. I have 70 mph capable trains running at 40 mph and I have to reduce them to 15 mph because the ties are deteriorating. We replaced some subway lines when we historically had derailments and some fires. I am optimistic but I don’t foresee our country making an investment in high speed rail and not addressing mass transit. The time has come.
JOSEPH CASEY, SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION GM: We run the transit in Philadelphia and surrounding communities. We are often compared to Boston with regional rail and subway. People are having severe deficits and raising fares and reducing services. We don’t have that in Philadelphia right now. In 2007 we had a bill to provide us with funding for ten years and maybe longer. We were able to build up a reserve to take us through tough times. But there are issues with that funding package. Part of it was predicated on the sales tax. Part of it was turned down by the federal government. That created a significant hole for highway and bridges. We are okay from an operating budget but we have severe problems on our capital budget. It’s significant. We have a railroad system built before the turn of the century and a subway system that is 105 years old. A lot of these stations have not been modified in that period. Stimulus money really helped us with some of the track work. Our capital needs going forward are immense. We have 350 bridges, with half over 75 years old and half over 100 years old. Eventually they have to be replaced. Fifteen of our 19 substations are over 75 years old. When the substation goes down, the service stops. On the operating budget, ridership is down and we are not immune to the economy. The stock market has hit our pension fund and the health insurance bill continues to rise. Pension and health care expenses along account for half of our increase in our budget for next year. So we still have issues to address.
RICHARD DAVEY, MBTA GENERAL MANAGER: I just want to say I can’t believe I took this job. It is a good time to be in public transportation. In Boston we may be one of the only transit agencies in America that is not facing fare increases or service cuts this year, next year or the previous year. Our Legislature and governor stepped up and gave us an extra $160 million to close our budget gap which we have been able to do. But that’s not sustainable. We are over eight billion in debt on our capital side. Part of that is from the Big Dig legacy, a legacy debt the T took on in expansion of the 80s and 90s. I took the T this morning and went through two of the oldest stations on the planet. On paratransit services, this is a huge problem for the MBTA. The Ride is by far our largest cost driver over the last five years. We have an aging population. Folks will be relying on paratransit I think much more rigorously over the next 25 to 30 years. At some point in the next ten years paratransit will cost the MBTA more than all of our FTA subsidies combined. That is really unsustainable. We need to think through that. Health care has grown at a clip that is difficult to manage. We are moving to the GIC so there are opportunities to contain health care costs that the T hasn’t been able to. This is not a problem unique to Boston.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: You guys work in an industry that is in demand. You provide a service people want more of. That should engender some support from the business community who relies upon it for people to get to work, in higher education and in health care. Why has it not translated into what’s necessary to get what’s needed? Is it something that has crept up on us over time?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: Being born and raised in Chicago, people are taking it for granted. People are passionate but are not advocates for it. They don’t realize how subsidized it is. For $2.25 you can ride the bus from one part of the city to another. For $2.50 you can ride our rail system. If I were a private corporation and I were to charge them it would cost much more, $7 or $10 a ride. But people don’t get it. It’s a compliment to those who have been in the industry so long. The federal government does not provide operating funds. In spite of such we are able to still provide the service and it almost becomes a utility to people – water, gas and power – there when you need it. The momentum is out there. As an industry we have not done what we should do to garner that energy. Mass transit, it’s not viewed as a sexy thing to invest. It’s a generational thing as well.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: Can you go to the business community or environmental advocates for support?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: Now you are starting at the federal level to match mass transit with community development, which is common sense but people are starting to speak that lingo. You see what it does for the environment and carbon footprints and the density around rail stations. You have prices of homes much higher priced around some of those stations with the potential to create so much more. It’s amazing. Our headquarters for example in downtown Chicago was specifically carved out of zoning code to not allow any parking. We have a rail station adjacent. Our requirement is that our employees ride the system to set an example. In Chicago, we have three systems that receive money from a financial oversight agency and we are always fighting over the same pot of money. If paratransit gets more, I get less. If commuter rail gets more I get less. We are consistently infighting and it’s not a healthy relationship and it needs to be improved. That’s a creation of our state government. We also provide free rides for seniors. That is courtesy of our former governor and it’s costing us at a minimum $20 million a year. Political will at the state level is not there. I am counting on the federal government to help me to fix this. I don’t anticipate it being fixed regionally. It’s just not there.
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: It’s the most amazing thing when I get a business person on my board because most people don’t have any clue about transit economics 101. People just don’t get it. It is very basic – we have not done a good job at all in terms of communicating the who, the what, the how. It has been very much about: we are because we are. For the most part it is not about us. It is about what we do, what happens as a function of transit. It’s what the transit is doing in communities and doing in terms of helping people build their lives. Those are fundamental connections that are about what the it is about. I would say that communication, information, image and really connecting with – it’s not about transit, it’s not about the road. It is about what it enables people and communities to be able do. That is the it. We have done a poor job across the board as an industry of making those kinds of fundamental connections. The profoundness of beginning to connect these dots now of transit as a facilitator – that is so powerful and so important.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: We talk about modal neutrality. You can move people, foster better living. There is a lot of bang for the buck. There is a lot that public transportation has to demonstrate in order to get funding, whereas on the road and bridge side it’s sort of been here’s some money, make sure you fix the bridge. There is not the cost-benefit per rider. Mass transit and public transportation has been held to a much higher standard to demonstrate value. We don’t do the same thing if a new road is built or paved and say what is the ridership benefit? And yet transit has a better story to tell. It’s a frustration we have to deal with.
RICHARD DAVEY, MBTA GENERAL MANAGER: I will say that I did not appreciate getting a glass of water out of my faucet until about four weeks ago. I had this reflection and said boy, a little bit like the T, they had done very well for 15 years and they had an issue for about three days and I did not appreciate what the MWRA does on a daily basis until that crisis. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I came to appreciate what was going on with the MWRA. We need to articulate. Transportation in Boston has a little bit of a credibility gap. We don’t do a good enough job articulating to the public what we deliver on a day to day basis. We ask for patience and additional resources and help but we do not articulate clearly enough what we are doing with funding and that folks own the system. It is the public’s system. Bringing the public in is something we are committed to do. Ultimately we are stewards of the public’s infrastructure. It’s not ours, it’s yours. There are a lot of sort of competing discussions – health care, education, national defense and homeland security. There are a lot of priorities crowding the discussion, which is good. But we bring people to their homes, to their families, to schools, doctor’s appointments. Millions of people rely on the five or six of us here on this panel every day.
JOSEPH CASEY, SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION GM: We have a strong chamber of commerce in Philadelphia. For years they have said a strong public transit system is the number one reason to relocate. We have some strong advocates, including our governor. You still have an issue with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the ends and the people in the middle don’t get a lot of public transportation. We work closely with the highway folks to get a strong transportation bill. At the federal and state level they have budget-cutting issues. It’s difficult for them to raise taxes in an election year.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: Washington is very supportive of public transit, but again it fall behinds in the demands and needs of the system. We need to communicate what we do, how important we are to the region. Our tendency is to talk about issues coming up, the repairs we are doing rather than the importance of the system. There is a responsibility to make the service more reliable.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: If government is seeing stresses itself in funding social services, then a service does not get provided. For transportation you are in a different boat. That is, if you don’t get the resources – you have all articulated service cutbacks or elimination – if you don’t get funding eventually things stop working and eventually stations have to close. It feels that more and more we are reaching at least in the larger legacy systems something we can no longer avoid – things will eventually stop. Quantitatively and qualitatively, it seems to be different. Does that keep you up at night? Have you had brainstorms?
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: Yes, it keeps me up at night. I think about the escalators and elevators, compressed gas, I think about it all okay. It’s all about big things that move. The bottom line is we got ourselves into one heck of a mess. And there is no way in this next authorization – here it from the mountaintop please – in this next authorization we have got to wind up having a good solid hit for state of good repair spending. It’s a fifty to eighty billion dollar documented backlog. Of course we’ve got to fix what we’ve got. This is going to have to be very directed and focused to this issue and a lot of that has to go to these big legacy systems. I have worked in seven places in this country. I do not have a belief that there should be a sense of permanent entitlement of the part of the legacy systems. We have to get ourselves in some kind of a balance. We didn’t get ourselves into this mess overnight. We are losing competitiveness at just astronomical levels, we have got to do something major. It can’t be just one authorization. It’s going to take several. We have to do stuff in terms of looking at our own houses. This is all part of the culture thing. A reason communities say you are entitled – right or wrong – is you are heavily unionized, inefficient, bloated. I love labor but some of that stuff is right. You pick a transit budget and on the operating side I look for 68 to 72, 73 percent to be labor and fringe. It’s about wages and pensions and work practices and health care. It’s about doing things differently than we do. The pieces in the mix are about gaining credibility and transparency so people have confidence in what we do. We have a lot of different pieces we are all moving at one time.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: I am not anti-union but after we had reduced our $300 million deficit to about $95 million we turned to union colleagues and asked for assistance. I turned down 10 percent of my salary and don’t take a pension. That’s not to say you shouldn’t. Unfortunately the union leadership was not willing to give any relief. The trades gave a few furlough days to keep people employed. The bus and rail union that I work with was not willing to give up anything and that was where predominantly the layoffs had to occur. I asked to give up some vacation days. They received 3.5 percent this year and next year. If they had not it would have saved a significant number of individuals. For so many years contracts have been negotiated and increases have been automatic. There is no performance based ties to what individuals receive. I would like to see increases only lost based on performance. That would be a motivator in terms of customer service, making sure customers rate the level of service. My parents were union. But it’s a very different environment. Plumbers chose to take furloughs to save electrician jobs. Now that’s a union, a brotherhood. That wasn’t the sense on the bus and rail side unfortunately. Hopefully there is an understanding that change has to come.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: We have the same issues in Washington. There is the issue of state of good repair and the necessity to expand capacity in the system as ridership increases. In Washington there is the expectation that capacity of the system will max out by 2020. There is interest in expanding the system, a Dulles expansion. It’s something that is needed regionally but that can conflict with the state of good repair. The previous administrator delayed the appropriation. How do you add a new room to a house where you have house that is leaking, the electrical systems are shorting, and you have a 100-year-old garage with water leaking in and electrical problems? But you are talking about getting a new room. The balance has to be how do you fix what you have first? We have debated that – what comes first?
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: How do you make replacement of a 75-year-old substation sexy enough to do it? That is the marketing we are all trying to figure out.
JOSEPH CASEY, SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION GM: It’s a little more difficult. The governor had a press conference at a substation to highlight its importance. We are publicizing those issues but it’s very difficult to address it.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: Look around the world, if you could be any agency, is there a model?
JOSEPH CASEY, SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION GM: I was fortunate to go to London with Rich. Look around Europe, we pay $3.50 for a gallon of gas in Pennsylvania and throughout Europe they are paying eight dollars. It raises money to repair infrastructure and it’s a disincentive to use your automobile. We are so auto-centric here as a nation. There is all this talk about sustainability but as long as we continue using the automobile and the oil, we will continue to rely on foreign oil. They have price congestion in downtown London. That is pushing people onto the system. To me that’s the ideal system.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: My son is 13. When I was that age I begged my dad to use the car and drive it out of the garage. My son and his classmates, and many other pre-teens, there is not that yearning to have a car at 16. The cost is no longer manageable. That generation is dependent on our system. We have the UPass in Chicago and it’s tied to your state college tuition and student ID. It’s become customary for them. They are more accustomed to the system. They don’t necessarily need another expense. The next generation is much more conscious of sustainability and the environmental impact and the economic impact.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: I don’t know which system I would choose. I recall at a Board of Trade meeting in Washington the discussion of the gas tax and torches being lit and pitchforks coming out. We in this country are not willing to make that leap from three dollars for gasoline to seven dollars. We have not convinced the American public that we need to do that. We have a long way to go before that happens. We are in a state of disrepair but in some aspects we do provide good services and we need to sell ourselves and demonstrate to the public that we are good stewards of dollars.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: What is the role of communities and states in this whole thing?
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: It’s greater than the federal side. This has to be about a conversation at all levels. There is a role for the federal government. The rest has to come from local areas and the state. I did not answer the utopian question because we are fighting right here in each of our locales. It is about a movement okay. The bottom line is ultimately it’s not perfect. Evolution not revolution, maybe a little revolution. We got the General Assembly to get a bill out and we have citizens advocacy groups out there. It’s for a referendum to put some additional funding into transportation. We have conversations with ourselves and it’s got to be about real people.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: Millions of people ride, but where are they in this discussion?
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: It is required of us to stop being an island and get out there. Thanks God for all of this social media. We have a tremendous opportunity to tell our own story. We don’t have to wait for the newspapers to pick it up. We have been so busy with our culture. We’ve got to get out there and talk and communicate and engage. That’s scary. You have to open up. People are not going to believe everything you say. You have to be honest. Folks are really good for the most part. Some people will be on the nutty side, but if you try hard and engage with the public about ownership of their system, I found most of the time it will help. We have to do that in communities across the country more and more.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: How do you engage folks? People are in congested systems. If you take an automobile, a neighbor who takes a train is someone not in front of you in traffic. How do you make it resonate?
RICHARD DAVEY, MBTA GENERAL MANAGER: Yesterday the T moved 1.3 million people. We don’t celebrate it enough on a regular basis. Something that frustrates me is when one or two people do the wrong thing you hear about it but when someone saves a life of a passenger, you don’t hear about it because no one wants to cover it frankly. In terms of connecting with the passenger, we need to engage our customers on a regular basis. We can’t be afraid of them. We have to be truthful with them, whether it’s good news or bad news. They own the system. We are engaging passengers two hours a week. Riding the system is critical. I ride it every day. It’s important for passengers to see me out there. We need to articulate a more precise story through the regular media but also social media and to invite the public in. Go to T police headquarters and see what they are doing. The assumption is always we’re doing something wrong and that’s not true. We do have challenges. We are not the most efficient systems on the planet. Performance metrics are still lacking. There are things we need to do to show we are trying our very best.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: There are other industries that have done this. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We have to realize how intertwined we are with other industries and take some of their momentum. We can find out what is working with each other’s systems. Chicago is trying to tie our system with advocacy groups that are pro-environment and involved in community development. We are part of that same mission.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: Freight rail was mentioned. Is this a new business opportunity for us to link arms with our brothers and sisters in the road and bridge side, to link with folks in rail since roads are congested. It’s greener and more efficient. You see people like Warren Buffet buying railroads. Maybe it can deliver for what we really need?
RICHARD DAVEY, MBTA GENERAL MANAGER: I have a unique seat. I am the MBTA GM and the rail administrator for the commonwealth now. We will launch our first rail freight plan in 20 years. With Secretary Mullan, we met with heads of the freight rail system two weeks ago. You employ thousands of residents and keep cargo off our roads. How can we use the rails together? There is conflict from time to time, so double tracking. There are unfunded mandates coming down from the federal government. We need to use the same technologies to make sure there is interoperability. Our plans were due last month. It’s an enormous challenge.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: In Washington we do not have an interaction with freight rail. They have done many ads talking about how environmentally friendly they are. Maybe we can learn from them from a PR perspective about getting our message across. In Los Angeles they have a lot more interaction.
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: I am just as interested in freight and ports. We have bottlenecks. It’s once again not about us per se, but competitiveness and movement of goods and people. I think there are a lot of different partners out there and we’re all trying to accomplish the same things.
DAN GRABAUSKAS, MASSINC FELLOW AND FORMER MBTA GM: Any final comments in general?
JOSEPH CASEY, SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION GM: Our state of good repair issues are so critical.
JOHN CATOE JR., FORMER WASHINGTON METRO TRANSIT GM: I want to say the same. A Congressman from northern Virginia talked about additional extensions to one of the lines in the metro system and we said we can extend it but can’t operate. First, let’s get the existing house in order and then we can talk about additional expansions. Let’s look at the state of good repair first.
RICHARD DAVEY, MBTA GENERAL MANAGER: As the rookie on the panel, I am really interested in tapping into telling our story better. I call it a little bit of a credibility gap. You ask the public for help and you are never sure what you will get. We open sourced our bus data last year and the public responded with tremendous applications. All we did is ask for help. Folks responded. It goes to being open and honest. This is not the most perfect transit system. We are committed to fixing it and engaging the public in an honest conversation. We are stewards of what they own.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PRESIDENT: The priority is getting us to a state of good repair and providing the services the customers should be receiving for what they are paying but they are not. Then you can gain momentum once the public feels it’s getting what they are paying for.
DR. BEVERLY SCOTT, METRO ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT GM: I hope this administration and Congress can help us get the vision right. It’s about being the best we can be and not the least. And it’s about developing systems that are systems of first choice and not last resort. If we can that vision right, we will get there over time. That’s the bottom line.
END
05/26/2010
