Jay Walder is currently the MTA CEO and Chairman because of the success he enjoyed in London and then at McKinsey as a transit consultant. A veteran of New York’s MTA, he helped turn around Transport for London and led an effort to modernize the system. Now, as New York’s transit network stands in need of some major investment and massive upgrades, Walder is looking to bring his team from London across the pond to help drag the MTA into the 21st Century.
He is surrounding himself with his team, though, in an interesting and intriguing fashion. Instead of contracting out to a high-priced consultant firm such as McKinsey, he has proposed a deal that would bring Transport for London officials to the states on a two-year, no-bid consulting deal. It is an unorthodox approach toward transit management, but it just might work. Micheal Grynbaum has the details:
The arrangement, unusual for a pair of public agencies, would be worth up to $500,000 and would pay for Mr. Walder’s former colleagues to fly across the pond and work as on-site consultants in New York. The Londoners’ salary and benefits, along with travel and lodging, would be covered by public funds.
Many of Mr. Walder’s top priorities for the New York system — including computerized, scannable fare cards and arrival-time clocks at bus and subway stops — are modeled after similar programs he introduced in London, where he worked until 2006. “Rather than having to bring in high-priced consultants, we’re getting experts with success already in doing these things, and getting them at public sector costs,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority.
Staff members from the London agency would charge $125 to $200 an hour, according to a document released this week. The authority called those rates “fair and reasonable,” and said the fees were half what a private consultant might charge.
Reaction to the deal from transit experts and advocates was mixed. Nicole Gelinas as the conservative Manhattan Institute told Grynbaum that she is hesitant over the no-bid contract. “A no-bid contract with a former employer could set a bad precedent,” she said. “Mr. Walder has to bend over backwards here to explain what exactly these people will bring to the table that we can’t get through the expertise for which we’re already paying him.”
Gene Russianoff though was more willing to give Walder the benefit of the doubt. “I think he’s made a case that he’s going to get value for the deal,” the Straphangers Campaign head said. “He deserves a chance to do it on his own terms.”
In the end, the MTA Board will have to approve the contract, and even the no-bid nature of it shouldn’t turn them off from it. They don’t need to make it a precedent if they are clear that it is a one-time offer.
My only gripe with this deal is its duration. It is definitely a cheaper deal than one the MTA would sign with McKinsey’s transit experts, but does the MTA need a two-year treatment with Transport for London? Can they bring the good ideas with them for 12 months?
As Walder wraps up his third week in the job, he has shown a willingness to throw out new ideas and bring in new people with a background of success. His desire to succeed and his background as a transit expert — as opposed to a real estate magnate or politically-connected businessman — are manifesting themselves. We can only he can deliver the results we need.
17 comments
Brilliant. Another sign he’s on it!
Seems that Walder is after more than reasonable cost savings. MTA peers at TFL have directly applicable experience working with some of the pillars Walder has identified. Moreover, TFL managers can help pattern how they reshaped their agency’s culture to adapt, and do it in a non-threatening way.
No one can dispute, TFL managers have successfully transformed their system. And as a bonus for MTA peers – they speak plain English.
Seems like a better path – rather than years of new studies, hundreds of new consultants, new vendors, driving toward every bigger consulting contracts.
Walder instead offers a roll up the sleeves and get to work transformation.
I vote to give this approach a chance to take a firm grasp over the MTA agency culture. Walder will need time to re-build pride of ownership among MTA managers and with the riding public.
I can and will absolutely dispute that the there has been anything that looks like a transformation in London’s transport system in the last decade.
It is still, just as it was 10 years ago, extortionately expensive, closed for a handful of weeks every year, and shuts down at 11:30 in the evening. It is still virtually impossible to get around London without a large reserve of money, time and patience. Travelling with bags or children is more pain that it’s worth, and if you’re late finishing dinner, London’s “transformed” transport network won’t help you get home, even for the £169 ($277) a month – and that’s not the at the top end of the fare scale.
There is a reason those of us who have lived there for any amount of time find driving is less painful, and almost cheaper.
The system signage certainly got a lot prettier under Jay Walder, there was a new logo, and I think they have podcasts now too. The transit system is still part-time, unreliable and expensive.
There is nothing at all which I have observed in years of using both systems which New York’s subways could beneficially inherit from London’s. Walder bringing his former co-workers from London to New York, at whichever cost, does not bode well for anyone who relies on the MTA.
Yes.
I think it is great that Walder wants to improve bus service. But fixing bus service (countdown clocks, the equivalent of moving red-light cameras) is not that technologically challenging, nor does it appear, barring superior arguments forthcoming from the MTA, to require overseas expertise beyond what we’re already getting from Walder.
Largely, it requires getting Albany people to allow buses to take precedent over car traffic; after that, the technology follows fairly simply. The way NOT to do this is to have people with British accents lecturing upstate political hacks who won’t like it.
Also, we cannot improve buses at the expense of much more expensive investment in subway service. Unfortunately, London has done exactly that — shortchange the subways for years/decades.
The people in NY who are so excited that we may be getting a more British transit system clearly haven’t spent much time in London. As Al notes, the subway service leaves much to be desired.
Right now, we need someone to fight fiercely in Albany, too, to keep the capital-intensive mega projects going so that we can finish things like the 2nd Avenue Subway, etc.
London’s problem is lack of government money. TfL is run with fewer subsidies than NYCT; among the major transit systems of the Western world, it has the highest farebox recovery ratio.
I am pleased by this news and Walder’s priorities. He’s behaving as if he can’t be shown unceremoniously out the door (lest it cost the State even more $).
Let’s just hope our pols, and the people they influence, namely the MTA Board, cooperate to bring his plans to fruition.
I agree that we should give him the benefit of the doubt here. If NYC brought this guy in to fix, or modernize the subway system, he should be able to do it his way.
In sports, whenever an owner hires a head coach without letting him pick his assistants, it never ends well for anybody. You gotta let the guy pick his own assistants.
If the rate that these consultants are receiving is so much less than what comparably-qualified private-sector consultants would cost, then why not solicit bids from private-sector consultants that would (presumably) demonstrate this fact, in order to avoid any potential stigma relating to “no-bid contracts”?
A Bidding process would make the whole thing fail. Not only would it take longer, but someone would try to weasel in and do a poor job.
This is one of the few times a no bid contract makes sence. Thwe biggest shock of this is that the MTA is doing something that actually saves money. What a concept!
Is Nicole Gelinas either a “transit experts and advocates” or just a thinker of big thoughts with a column in a money-losing tabloid about how to drown government in a bathtub?
Be fair, please. Gelinas doesn’t want to shrink government so that she can drown it in the bathtub. That’s too messy and requires too much responsibility, putting it down and all. She’d much rather just get bigger and bigger bathtubs until there’s no escape.
I did not say that the contract shouldn’t happen, but that the burden is on Walder to show, in great specifics, how it saves money.
How could anyone disagree with that?
Keep in mind: Smart-card technology is already proven, and has been implemented in places much closer to NY than London, including in Boston. The MTA, pre-Walder, has already done a study on this.
Enforcement of dedicated bus lanes largely comes down to a matter of political will in Albany long before we have to deal with the technicals of how to mount the cameras, etc.
Should we engage experts to advise on these projects on specific areas where we need help?
Sure, but I’m not sure why the rush to sign a contract of long duration rather than first agreeing to fly people over one-off and pay their expenses on an as-needed basis and see how it goes and what value they provide.
Articles in any media a year from now about how TfL people flew back and forth business-class, stayed in fancy hotels, and ate in fancy restaurants are NOT going to help the public’s support of reasonable mass-transit investment.
To that end, advocates who are so desperate for someone to care about transit that they remove all skepticism do not in the end help transit.
As for drowning government — the people who make such comments should explain why I pose a greater danger to sensibly higher mass-transit investment than does New York State’s fraud-filled $50 billion Medicaid program.
Thanks, Ben, for posting the piece.
Nicole, you blamed the depth of the recession on rising state spending in Florida and Arizona, whose sin was to raise per capita spending by the same amount as New York and New Jersey and a little more than Texas. You can’t on the one hand ask for more investment in transit and on the other attack government spending.
The wastes you warn of haven’t happened yet. And there’s no evidence they will. On the contrary: New York’s contractors routinely spend several times as much on the same infrastructure as the contractors of Tokyo, or London, or LA. The burden of proof is on you to explain why bypassing the city’s rent-seeking contractors is a bad thing.
What is the farebox recovery ratio of the New York Post and the Manhattan Institute?
The NY Post is actually profitable. In the Murdoch empire, the tabloids subsidize the high-brow papers like the Times, which Murdoch uses to make himself look more respectable.
I apologize to their book keepers, it was my understanding that Murdoch’s excellent world soccer channel paid for the perpetual losses on the Post. At best though, that makes Ms. Gelinas, whose writing I actually admire, a Journalist, maybe even a Transit Journalist, though I think she is much more of a Columnist, certainly not a transit “expert”. It is the MTA’s tendency to kow-tow to such experts that has held back effective decision making just as much as their fear of interference from the Governor. Buzz Passwell is an expert.
[…] Walder, as I reported last week, wants to bring some Transport for London consultants to New York to help modernize the MTA and improve its operational efficiencies. Yesterday, the MTA Board […]