As much as I believe Jay Walder has done an admirable job in adverse conditions as the head of the MTA, his departure came as a disappointment last week. As I said in my coverage of the resignation, he is leaving midstream, before his job is done and with many obstacles still in the path. Perhaps he couldn’t resist taking a lucrative job in Hong Kong; perhaps he was fed up with dealing with Albany and folks like Lee Zeldin; perhaps he was sick of it all. But the bottom line is that he’s quitting barely a third of the way through his promised tenure.
While Walder deserves some praise for reexamining the way the MTA works, he certainly doesn’t for walking out, and that’s what Nicole Gelinas and Pete Donohue say today. In The Daily News, Donohue seems to be more annoyed that Walder ruined a good story, but the real problem is that he’s departing with labor contracts expiring, a hole in the capital plan and many projects in progress.
Gelinas, meanwhile, lays into Walder: “He didn’t achieve all that much to justify the quick departure. Much of those improvements that we see now, including the countdown clocks and the consolidation of back offices, are the fruit of efforts that started long before his arrival. As for fiscal stability: Sorry, but it would take more time to make sure his cost-cutting sticks.” With December’s snow emergency fresh in everyone’s minds, Walder’s negatives, she says, may balance out the positives, and “isn’t sticking around long enough to get his hands dirty in negotiating a tough labor contract.” Hopefully, the next MTA CEO can tough it out for the full tenure of his deal. A fifth CEO in six years isn’t good for even the best of businesses.
21 comments
It’s kind of hard to blame Walder — he got offered a rockstar job, giving him him much more opportunity to do cool and exciting things, and he has no obvious reason for any particular loyalty to NYC.
In the end it seems that the blame lies with the political system, history, and culture that keeps the MTA mired in mediocrity; I don’t see that the CEO has much power to change most of that.
Well, he’s from here. That’s reason enough for loyalty.
But I agree–he didn’t have much reason beyond that to stay.
What is Nicole Gelinas smoking. Every time she opens her mouth she directly or indirectly bashes the MTA. Even when there is little justification for doing so, she’s out there spewing her RW free market nonsence.
I don’t agree with her ideology, but what exactly is your specific issue with her take on Walder’s departure? It’s a pretty fair assessment.
Putting the blame on Jay Walder for the MTA’s failings without mentioning the roll of Albany’s interfearence is rediculous at best. It’s like blaming the victom both in an abusive relationship & after they leave it. And we all know what side the state senate is on in this mythical relationship.
If the state senate gave Walder the tools & support he needed, he wouldn’t be on his way to Hong Kong.
Good luck on the bar exam.
Sean
Frankly, what I saw was:
* Albany creating an impossible situation
* The TWU doing their best to make it worse
* Bloomberg and City Council acting like they had no responsibility
Walder was making progress on everything else, and probably would have managed to deal with the TWU eventually, but he can do nothing when his funders — the state and city — are determined to act like know-nothings. Of course he left.
In addition to Elizabeth Moore (provided a link the other day) there is always Webster, the head of the TTC which they are trying to give the boot… great timing to get fired if your the head of a transportation agency if you ask me.
It is absurd to criticize a guy for leaving a relatively low paying job that offered nothing but obstacles and frustration for a job that would actually allow a guy with vision to get things done and make five times as much doing so.
If people in Albany want a top-notch MTA commissioner, they’ll make the job attractive. If not, they’ll either get guys who can’t get better jobs or leave when said jobs become available. He didn’t have an obligation to stay “to finish the job,” not even a moral one and though his tenure was brief, he did a very solid job with the cards he received.
we know…if it isnt left wing, then ben likely doesnt agree
No one is forcing you to read the site if you don’t like the author’s point of view, you know.
Let’s see… the budget keeps getting cut, in good years and bad… complaints that taxes are too high… complaints that the fares are too high… complaints about problems that don’t exist, like “two sets of books”… complaints about cuts to bus routes with poor ridership… complaints about an attempt at bus rapid transit not making stops every block… complaints that the head of the MTA is making too much money… and now, complaints that he left too soon.
After living here for a year, I think it is a miracle that the transit is as good as it is. If you started from scratch today, the subway would never get built. The average person here, and more importantly, the average legislator here, has no clue how to build and maintain a world-class transit system. Everyone seems to think it runs off the unlimited supply of unicorns and pixie dust purportedly hidden in an MTA supply closet.
“If you started from scratch today, the subway would never get built.”
This is the thing that scares me the most about transportation in the United States today.
So true. Did we lern nothing from the bridge disaster in Minneapolis? Obviously the answer is no.
They kvetched just as much in the late 1800s, just about different issues. There’s a reason it took more than 30 years from concept to the beginning of construction.
Yeah, but in the meantime they built and ran the horsecars, the streetcars, the Els, the railroads….
Walder’s countdown clocks are wilting in the heat.
Another MTA failure.
Jay was never a New Yorker even though he was born in Queens.
He was a corporate hitman brought in to bust the Union and failed.
Bring in Brodsky, someone with integrity and guts.
Brodsky tried to run the MTA into the ground while he was an Assembly rep. What makes you think he would be any different inside the org?
Yeah, how strange of someone to leave a job where they don’t get paid a lot to have their budget slashed and have their funds raided all the while fools who wouldn’t know a subway from an eggroll in Albany tell them how worthless they are and a legion of idiot commuters scream at them for not fixing everything with a magic wand. Good luck to Walder.
Walder probably landed the real job of a life time over there in Hong Kong. Great pay, a system under growth and expansion. I don’t know what the political pressures would be in that position, but let’s assume what we all have already, and that is they are much less.
So here we have a system crumbling around us, a hostile union, a hostile press, a hostile state government, countless ‘forensic’ audits by grandstanders and an organization of managers who no doubt wished he would go away. That for 1/3 the salary and who knows what other perks and it sounds like a no brainer.
Sorry for the excessive posts. I needed to add that this is the free market system at work. Apparently there was nothing contractually holding him here, or maybe, MTR (is it?) also agreed to payout on any early departure provisions.
Yeah. Given the choice, I would have taken Hong Kong too. New York was already a step down from London in terms of political support; Hong Kong is a step up.