MTA

In nine days, Jay Walder will leave his post as MTA Chair and CEO as he readies to depart for Hong Kong, and despite the looming resignation, all has been quiet from Albany on his potential replacement. Yesterday, I reported that Joseph Lhota may be the leading candidate, and today, the Daily News echos my scoop while adding Neil Peterson, Thomas Prendergast, Nuria Fernandez, Daniel Grabauskas and Karen Rae to the list of candidates. The outlook for the nomination remains hazy, but we do however have an inkling of who will replace Walder in the short term. According to a New York 1 report, current MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul will serve as interim chair as the search for a permanent replacement continues.

As interim heads go, Saul is the safest of safe choices and one primed for the moment. Named to the MTA Board by Pataki, he has served the Authority since 1996. He is a member of every committee, and with an extensive background in retail and private equity, he is the chair of the MTA’s finance committee. He also sits on a number of other boards, including the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and UPENN’s Wharton School.

In the immediate few weeks, Saul will have to continue to lobby for a resolution to the MTA’s $10 billion capital budget gap, and according to NY1, Saul will “likely follow in the same policy path” as Walder. It offers some stability for the MTA, but still, with another interim head preceding a new permanent CEO and Chair, the MTA is guaranteed to run through six chairmen or women in as many years. For an organization as vital yet on shaky financial footing as the MTA, such turmoil at the top isn’t helping in the long- or short-term.

For years, one of the most obvious signs of bureaucratic issues with the MTA concerned its public phone numbers. The authority had, at its high point, 117 different phone numbers depending upon which service callers needed, and no one really knew which number to call. As part of its effort at cutting down these severe inefficiencies, the MTA has consolidated to one, state-run number. Those who need information from the MTA can now just call 5-1-1.

The 511 service, the authority said in a press release, will provide a portal to an interactive voice response system that will connect calls to customer service and travel information for all MTA agencies. Services include all rail and transit schedules; trip planning; lost and found; MetroCard, rail ticket, or Bridges and Tunnels tolls; and Mail & Ride. Furthermore, as 5-1-1 is a state service, this move costs the MTA no additional dollars. “This is a great example of how we are working to make it easier for our customers to get information and interact with the MTA at the same time that we reduce the MTA’s administrative costs,” MTA Managing Director Diana Jones Ritter said. “Customers now have a single phone number for all transportation-related questions, instead of a long and sometimes confusing list of agencies and departments.”

The MTA noted that 5-1-1 has been available as a transportation resource for a while, but the offerings have been refined. Call transfer paths will “better direct customers’ inquiries to the appropriate departments,” and functions such as Lost & Found, MetroCard Balance Protection and general comments and concerns are now available at one phone number. Ads promoting the new service will soon appear in buses, subways and rail cars throughout the area.

With Jay Walder’s departure date just a few weeks away, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s search committee is hard at work trying to find the next person brave enough to take on the role of MTA CEO and Chairman. Today, we find out a little bit more about the potential candidates under consideration. Courtesy of The Daily News, the list contains the following: Jeffrey Morales from Parsons Brinkerhoff, Tom Prendergast from NYC Transit, Helena Williams from the LIRR, Michael Burns of Santa Clara’s Valley Transportation Authority and Neil Peterson, a transit vet who founded a ZipCar predecessor.

Williams, a one-time interim MTA head, and Predergast are, of course familiar names around these parts, but I’m not too familiar with the other three. I’ll try to prepare some profiles of these potential candidates. Morales and Peterson both have experience with West Coast transit and transportation agencies, and Morales is a former higher-up from the Chicago Transit Authority. At the least, if one of these five is chosen, the next MTA head will have a pedigree of transportation and transit policy, and that’s a step in the right direction.

While some folks in Albany want to lower the next MTA CEO’s salary, Streetsblog has handicapped the race to replace Jay Walder. In an extensive piece that examines both internet and external candidates for the job, Noah Kazis offers up thumbnails on those who could be under consideration. If Gov. Cuomo looks internally, he could tab Transit head Thomas Prendergast, LIRR president Helena Williams or current COO Charles Monheim. The external names are more intriguing.

First, Kazis runs down the list of those who have MTA experience. He mentions bringing back Elliot Sander, but with the ongoing signal scandal and various other issues stemming from Sander’s last term atop the MTA, that’s a non-starter. Marc Shaw’s name will resurface, but he wasn’t too popular the last time around. The two names that intrigue me the most in the Streetsblog piece are Nat Ford, former head of the San Francisco MTA, and Edgar Sandoval, the first managing director of TransMilenio in Bogota. An international pick could signal an attempt at true reform that has evaded the MTA over the past decade.

As New York’s transit-minded community has analyzed Jay Walder’s departure, our city’s infrastructure deficit has come under the microscope. With obstructionist politicians and mounting debt, the future is hazy for New York City’ transit system. Hong Kong’s MTR, on the other hand, is thriving.

In The Daily News today, Alex Marshall of the RPA looks toward Hong Kong for some transit lessons. The MTA would be wise to imitate the MTR with regards to development. In Hong Kong, the MTR has maintained its real estate holdings while developing and monetizing them. In New York, the MTA gave up the Atlantic Yards land in a below-market deal.

Ultimately, New York will have to reform the way it interacts with its transit network before we can truly move forward. But will the debt lead to a collapse before that time comes? Jay Walder, for one, isn’t sticking around to find out.

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.