Jay Walder chats with reporters during his ride into Manhattan on the 7 train. (Photo courtesy of MTA/Patrick Cashin)
Nearly five months to the day since Elliot Sander stepped down as MTA CEO and Executive Director, the citys’ transit agency has a new permanent leader. Today marked the first day of work for the incoming CEO and Chairman Jay Walder. A veteran of the MTA and the man credited with modernizing the London Underground, Walder will spearhead the agency at a time of fiscal distress and amidst a public outcry for better service.
To begin his six-year term, Walder has engaged in a press tour lately. He spoke with the Daily News and a reporter from WNYC over the weekend. This morning, he greeted commuters at Flushing/Main St. on the 7 line and rode the subway into Manhattan with those who cover transit for the city’s news outlets. While I couldn’t make the meet-and-greet due to an early-morning class, Walder’s comments seem consistent across the medium: He wants to improve the customer experience, and he wants the agency, notorious for its slow rate of adaptation and innovation, to improve its response time and generally pick up the pace.
“By the end of my first 100 days at the MTA, we will produce an action plan for moving forward with concrete goals and timelines,” Walder said this morning. “We will make the objectives clear and the communities we serve should hold us accountable for achieving real results…”New Yorkers should be able to expect the same type of customer experience riders enjoy in London, with accurate arrival information and modern fare technology.”
While streamlining internal operations will be high on his priority list, the sexier issues he plans to tackle focus around technology and customer service. Known as the person who brought the Oyster Card to London, Walder understands the benefits of a faster fare-payment system, particularly as it applies to bus loading times, and wants to see countdown clocks implemented faster than the MTA currently plans to do so.
“I think we have to find a way to accelerate that timetable,” he said to WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman. “It helps. If you watch the London Underground, if you simply see people coming down into the station, they walk down to the platform. Everyone does exactly the same thing. They look up at the sign and find out exactly when the next train is coming and whether that sign says the train is coming in two minutes or four minutes or eight minutes they feel better with the knowledge that the system is running, that the train is coming and they can deal with that [wait] accordingly.”
In a more general sense, Walder wants the MTA to become more user-friendly. “We really want to have a system that provides an ease of use all around that we don’t have today, whether that’s the ticketing system or whether that’s electronic information that tells us what’s happening or whether that’s a website that gives us the information about what’s happening with the system because we’ve become accustomed to getting that in other environments,” he explained to Schuerman.
He talked further with Pete Donohue and the Daily News about improving both technology and the bus system. I am particularly pleased to hear Walder touch upon the MTA’s website as it is currently stuck in 1999. A new information-laden site would do wonders for the agency’s public image and ease of use.
It’s hard not to get excited about Walder. He has more power than Lee Sander did and comes from a similarly qualified background. He isn’t a real estate mogul (Peter Kalikow) or a politically-connected rich lawyer (E. Virgil Conway), and he should serve out his full six-year term.
That said, he faces a Herculean task. He has to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that currently surrounds every facet of the MTA; he is coming on board at a time of strained labor relations; and he has to figure out a solution to the MTA’s $10 billion capital funding while working to ensure that the agency’s operating costs are funded as well. In other words, he is trying to modernize the system while trying to keep it afloat as well. Walder, all six feet, six inches of him, handled London. Now let’s see how he does in New York.
After the jump, a photo of Walder as he greets passengers who are much, much shorter than he is. Photo courtesy of MTA/Patrick Cashin.
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