In 1990, as the New York City subways were beginning their long, slow climb back to respectability, then-Chariman Robert Kiley brought in Alan F. Kiepper to oversee New York City Transit. Kiepper made his name in Atlanta where he helped develop and build the MARTA system, and to New York’s subways, he tried to bring charm and poetry.
Kiepper, 81, died today of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and The Times’ Mike Grynbaum remembers Kiepper’s tenure in the city:
He became president of the New York City Transit Authority in 1990, overseeing the nation’s largest subway and bus system, which was struggling to emerge from a long decline. Mr. Kiepper grappled with major fires, accidents and crimes, including an explosion and fire in a Brooklyn subway tunnel in which two passengers died, a derailment in the Union Square station that killed five people and the death of Brian Watkins, a young Utah tourist killed while trying to defend his parents from robbers.
Mr. Kiepper also hired William J. Bratton, a transit police chief from Boston, to run the New York Transit Police. Mr. Bratton led an aggressive campaign against fare beating and robbery. (He left after about 21 months to lead the Boston Police Department and later led those in New York and Los Angeles.)
Subway crime fell by 50 percent during Mr. Kiepper’s tenure. Ridership also rebounded to its highest level in two decades, and Mr. Kiepper pushed for cleaner trains and placed additional managers in the stations.
A lifelong lover of poetry, Mr. Kiepper introduced the popular Poetry in Motion program that placed verses alongside advertisements for skin treatments and technical schools in subway cars and buses; the program ended last year. He worked with the Poetry Society of America to start the program.
Kiepper was one of the key figures in the MTA’s current push to bring its stations and system into a state of good repair, and the transit community lost a key voice today.
1 comment
No more poetry in motion?? That’s a shame.