Over the past few weeks, as the MTA has come under fire from New York’s gubernatorial candidates, I’ve been a staunch defender of MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder. Handed an impossible situation, Walder has made the most of it, and he’s moving the system forward as well. While Andrew Cuomo hasn’t made a public statement on the issue one way or another, Walder deserves to be kept on as head of the MTA.
Today, a group of transit advocates have issued a call to both GOP nominee Carl Paladino and Cuomo to support Walder. The executive staff and board of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign put out the call this morning. “We feel the attacks directed toward Mr. Walder during the gubernatorial campaign have been unwarranted,” the letter says. “Whoever is elected governor will inherit an agency with grave fiscal and management challenges. In order to overcome these, the MTA will require bold, innovative leadership and strong support from you and your staff. Mr. Walder’s impressive tenure proves he will be able to rise to the challenges ahead.”
Neither campaign has responded yet to the letter, but I have to hope that Cuomo, the likely winner who hasn’t said much of substance about the state’s transportation issue, is listening. Not only does Walder deserve to stay because of the merits, but he also would enjoy a significant payment in the form of a Golden Parachute if Cuomo tries to oust him. While not by itself a reason to keep an undeserving CEO around, Walder’s record should be allowed to speak for itself.
In a sense, it’s a sad commentary on transit that, one week before Election Day, the city’s leading advocates had to send this letter. We’ve seen the MTA openly mocked for spurious claims — “two sets of books,” for instance — and voters are either mislead by their elected officials or willfully ignorant of the true situation. “We can say it until we’re blue in the face, and people still repeat this nonsense,” MTA Board member Doreen Frasca said yesterday. “Maybe we should all wear T-shirts or something.”
Still, lies are repeated, initiatives scorned. Mass transit in New York needs the support of the next governor, and Jay Walder will be the MTA’s biggest defender and loudest fighter. His job security shouldn’t even be a campaign issue.
After the jump, the TSTC letter in full.
October 25, 2010
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Church Street Station, P.O. Box 683
New York, NY 10008
Mr. Carl Paladino
Paladino For The People, P.O. Box 447
Buffalo, NY 14205
RE: Support for Jay Walder as MTA Chairman
Dear Attorney General Cuomo and Mr. Paladino:
As the campaign for Governor comes to a close, we write as representatives of leading environmental, transportation and civic organizations and board members of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign to urge the successful candidate to retain Jay Walder as Chairman and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Tri-State Transportation Campaign does not always agree with the agency, but we feel the attacks directed toward Mr. Walder during the gubernatorial campaign have been unwarranted. Whoever is elected governor will inherit an agency with grave fiscal and management challenges. In order to overcome these, the MTA will require bold, innovative leadership and strong support from you and your staff.
Mr. Walder’s impressive tenure proves he will be able to rise to the challenges ahead. Consider his excellent list of achievements since his appointment just over a year ago:
- Cost savings that reduced the agency’s operating budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Real time arrival and departure information via the installation of 100 countdown clocks in subway stations and electronic signs along 34th Street bus routes.
- Implementation of faster Select Bus Service along 1stt and 2nd Avenues in Manhattan, expected to improve bus speeds by 10%.
- A new MTA website with enhanced information about the agency’s budget, the status of capital projects, and information for riders about service outages.
- The release of MTA arrival and departure data to independent software developers, a move which will eventually lead to an array of new transit tools for riders.
Given the very real financial challenges facing the MTA in coming years, we believe it is prudent to keep Mr. Walder in his position. The learning curve for MTA CEOs is steep and appointing a new CEO will only reduce the agency’s ability to meet the difficulties ahead.
Thank you for considering our views.
Sincerely,
The Board and executive staff of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign:
Rich Kassel (Board Chair)
Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
Eric Alexander
Executive Director, Vision Long Island
Marcia Bystryn
President, NY League of Conservation Voters
Kevin Corbett
Vice President, AECOM
Joseph Fiordaliso
Principal, Joseph A. Fiordaliso, LLC
Norman Garrick
Director, Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut
Charles Komanoff
Komanoff Energy Associates
Gene Russianoff
Staff Attorney, NYPIRG/Straphangers Campaign
Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff
Former MTA Board Member and Chairman, Audubon New York
Kate Slevin
Executive Director, Tri-State Transportation Campaign
James T.B. Tripp
Senior Counsel, Environmental Defense Fund
Jeff Zupan
Senior Fellow, Regional Plan Association
5 comments
Jay Walder is the the biggest thing to happen to the MTA in years. It’s a miracle that we got a guy as good as him. Cuomo will realize that quickly, you’ll see. He’s not stupid.
This is not an endorsement for Mr. Walder, nor a negative statement about him, just a comment on one point in the letter about SBS along First and Second Avenues.
Is the goal only a ten percent savings in travel time? That is just pathetic considering all the effort that has gone into it. That means an average thirty minute trip will now take 27 minutes. Does that even include the extra time to walk to the stops that are further apart? Better enforcement of the bus lane alone would accomplish more than that. By setting the goal so low, there is no way they cannot call it a success. If people save six minutes, on a 30 minute trip, they can then brag that they have exceeded their goal by 100%.
How about fixing the real problems like improving local bus service on the hundreds of other routes people use that will never see SBS? They really take the public for a bunch of dummies.
The goal, from everything I’ve read, is 20%. Which, despite what you claim, is huge.
The stops are generally not further apart – they’re exactly where they used to be, except that a few of the lesser used ones were eliminated. So some people have to walk a few blocks further or take the local, but the vast majority get a faster trip.
Saving six minutes on a 30 minute trip is huge. If I make that trip twice a day, 5 days a week, I’m saving an hour a week.
I also thing Walder is doing a good job. He has spend up deployment of technology. Under Sander, even after the pilot for Countdown clocks was successful on the L train, there was no real effort to expand their use. Now countdown clocks are in 100 stations, and the whole IRT, as well as big parts of the BMT/IND, will be done by the end of next year.
And Walder, along with NY’s elected officials, is going after the money Christie was nice enough to reject. Great, that money can be used to do phase 2, or if the city and state match funds, phases 2 and 3.
PA/CIS on the IRT has been a multi-year capital project. It just so happens that Walder was appointed shortly before the first of the screens went live.
I like the B Division “mini-PA/CIS” system, which Walder does deserve credit for (along with much else, in my opinion).