MTA

Aubrey Boyce, a subway collection agent from Kew Gardens, has won $133 million in the Mega Millions jackpot, the New York Daily News reported today. Boyce identified himself as being from South America (he didn’t specify which country, although some reports have claimed he is from Guyana) and has spent the last eight years working for the MTA. As a collection agent, his job is to go around to different subway stations and collect the money from MetroCard machines and (formerly) token booths.

Boyce’s plan for the money? Yeah, he’s quitting his job. And taking his wife on a vacation to “someplace warm.”

At some point over the next few months, the State Senate will vote to confirm Jay Walder as the tenth chairman of the MTA Board. The one-time agency CFO and long-term transit veteran knows he faces an uphill climb, but he couldn’t really turn down the job.

In The Times yesterday, Michael Grynbaum explored Walder’s rational for taking on this Herculean transit task. “It’s a big risk,” Robert E. Paaswell, a transit expert at the City College of New York, said. “Jay has every tool imaginable to run the system, but brilliance may not cut it.”

In the end, though, it really boils down to one characteristic: The MTA is still the top dog among the world’s untamable transit beasts. “To run the M.T.A. is the sine qua non of transit jobs,” Paaswell said to Grynbaum. “If it’s available, no matter where you are, you take it.”

It’s all well and good to talk about the reasons behind taking the job, but the truth is that Walder has a tall task ahead him. He needs to prioritize certain aspects of the job, and right now, I’d like to offer up my take on the top challenges facing the MTA over the next few years. This is a roadmap to the job Jay Walder should aim to do as the head of the MTA.

1. Get Albany on our side — There is really no good reason for any New York City-based state representative to be anti-transit. Yet, time and again, we see groups such as the Fair Hike Four espouse an anti-transit point of view. It’s an indisputable fact that millions of New Yorkers a day rely on the MTA to get them to and from work, school, doctor’s appointments, errands, baseball games, museums and, well, just about anything. Albany needs to recognize the importance of sensible transit funding options to the city, and Walder has to guide them there.

2. Winning the PR battle — As I mentioned more than once over the last few weeks, the MTA has a public relations problem. No matter what they do right — no matter how many innovations come out of Transit and no matter how often the trains run smoothly — the bad news always dominates the headlines. Walder has to turn the MTA from a whipping boy into a body that, if not respected, is at least given its dues by New Yorkers. If he can turn the media just a bit, the public will be far more willing to embrace the MTA.

3. Offer more service for fare hikes — It is simply an economic fact of life that the MTA will have to raise fares. It is first the only means of balancing the budget not dependent upon politicians, but it is also rational to do so based on inflation. The public can understand this latter reasoning but wants something in return. And so, when the MTA raises the fares, they should attempt to explain what new service they are brining on board. Even if it something as mundane as extending the 5 into Brooklyn during off-peak, mid-day hours or terminating the G at Church Ave. instead of Smith/9th Sts. People will not grumble as much if they get something in return.

4. Fund the capital campaign — Right now, the MTA’s next capital campaign is expected to cost nearly $30 billion, and it will include extending the Second Ave. Subway, funding the East Side Access project and various other minor station repairs and rolling stock purchases. Walder has to find a way to secure the funds for this program without incurring more debt and with an eye toward ensuring future investments as well. He knows the enormity of this task, and for better or worse, it will dominate his first few months as Chair.

5. Bring the MTA into the 21st Century — Every article and blog post about Walder makes mention of the fact that he brought the RFID-based, contactless Oyster Card fare payment system to the London Underground, and we all know he wants to do the same thing here. Bring it on, I say. The MTA is a system relying on late 20th century technology for its fare collection and early 20th century technology for some of its signaling. It’s time for the MTA to enter the 21st century. We want real-time train arrival boards, better fare payment methods and a website that doesn’t look as though it is stuck in 1997.

For the most part, none of these five bullets are that innovative, and right now, the city doesn’t need a particularly innovative chair of the MTA. What we need is someone with the drive and will see these goals realized. Can Jay Walder do that? We’ll find out soon enough.

As Gov. David Paterson introduced Jay Walder as his pick to head the MTA, he expressed his desire to see the Senate rubber-stamp this appointee in short order. In fact, he was gunning for a Wednesday confirmation, but considering the pace of the State Senate these days and Paterson’s low approval ratings, Malcolm Smith and Pedro Espada aren’t rushing off to OK Walder quite yet.

In fact, the opposite is true. In a prepared statement co-signed by Smith, Espada, John Sampson and Carl Kruger, the Senate leadership warned of a protracted confirmation process:

With oversight responsibility and jurisdiction vested in the Senate, it is our responsibility to make sure the next MTA Chairman can run the ship better than his predecessors. As the recent MTA bailout debate proved – the MTA needs new management and must deliver greater transparency and accountability.

We intend to hold several joint hearings in the MTA region as we move forward with this confirmation. We look forward to meeting Mr. Walder and bringing him before our respective committees to exchange ideas about MTA management, the need to protect commuters from greater fare increases, and the imperative to improve service and better manage capital projects.

As the Senate heads to a summer recess soon, Walder’s confirmation will sit in limbo until the fall. That potential delay didn’t stop Kruger, one of the Fare Hike Four, from making an utter ass of himself. The Brooklyn native had a few choice comments about Walder’s promise of fiscal reform: “We’ll look at it over the course of the next couple of months,” he said. “I come from Missouri; don’t show me, tell me. I mean, everybody says they’re for oversight and accountability. What does that mean? What does it mean?”

Brad Aaron said it best: This news just writes itself sometimes.

Meanwhile, the real news from Walder’s press conference was his focus on fiscal responsibility and an adequately funded capital program. Right now, the MTA is on the verge of releasing its next five-year plan, but the agency has money for only the next two years. After that, the future is in limbo. “We must have a long-term financial solution for the MTA,” he said. “It’s critically important to have a capital program.”

The potential head of the MTA had a lot to say about fiscal balancing. Walder said that he may have to make some unpopular decisions concerning late-night service to keep fares affordable. He also expressed his belief that his new role — the joint Chair and CEO job — “is sufficiently independent to make difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions.”

As I mentioned briefly yesterday afternoon, one of those decisions, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, should be to eschew more debt service. The MTA’s capital campaigns have recently been funded through fare-backed bombs that come due over time and lead to crushing debt service payments and potentially crippling restructuring. Steven Higashide at Mobilizing the Region sums it up succinctly:

Like a hot potato, the debt bomb was passed from governor to govenor until it went off last year, creating a crisis that was barely averted through the efforts of an even larger coalition of advocates, officials, and members of the public. Having had the MTA debt bomb go off in his hands, Gov. Paterson surely understands that the worst course of action would be for he and MTA chief Jay Walder to light it again.

All of this, meanwhile, is just the beginning. Tuesday wasn’t even Jay Walder’s first day on the job, and already, he is getting himself a crash course in MTA politics and economics. Once the Senate realizes he’s the right man for the job, his education will begin in earnest.

A few hours ago, New York State Gov. David Paterson made official what we all knew: Barring a disaster in the State Senate, Jay Walder will be the next Chair and executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. When he will be confirmed, though, is up to the whims of a State Senate soon to be on vacation until the fall.

Walder worked at the MTA for 12 years, most recently as the agency’s CFO in 1995. He served — and earned extensive praise for his work — at Transport for London. There, he was instrumental in ushering in the Oyster Card contact-less fare system. Most recently, while a consultant at McKinsey, Walder had recently urged the MTA to eschew the MetroCard in favor of more modern RFID/contact-less technology. By all accounts, Walder is supremely qualified and a transit innovator. Yesterday, I offered up my take on and praise for Walder.

As the announcement became official nearly three hours ago, transit advocates listened into the introductory press conference, and Walder seemingly said the right things. “There’s no question,” he said, “the taxpayer and the riding public need to understand, need to demonstrate, need to see and need to believe that they’re getting value for the money in the way we operate the trains and the buses and the bridges and tunnels, in the way that we undertake the massive capital investments that are underway. And that has to be an immediate focus.”

He went on: “We must restore the public trust and confidence to this organization. We won’t have the credibility to argue for the capital program that this system needs unless we restore the accountability of public trust and public confidence. I believe we can do that. I’m certain we can achieve that.”

With those words, I and other transit watchers can begin to feel confident that Walder knows what he must do to win the media battle. As Ben Fried at Streetsblog noted, one of former CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander’s biggest problems was the PR push. Sander suffered from a lack of media savviness and could not win the print war. Fried writes:

Transit riders will be well-served if Walder can manage to drive the media narrative about the MTA more successfully than his predecessor, Lee Sander. It’s a tall order. Casting aspersions on the MTA is a favored tactic for legislators looking to deflect blame for their own lack of leadership on transit policy, and the press corps often appears to serve as a willing accomplice. The riding public needs someone who not only manages the agency capably, but also shapes the MTA’s public image as deftly as possible.

I couldn’t agree more. How Walder presents the MTA to the public will be just as important, if not more so, than the changes he can affect while at the head of the organization.

At this point, we have to wait for the Senate to confirm him, but he is certainly qualified for the role. Don’t, however, expect the Senate, one week away from vacation, to approve this nominee quite so quickly. Michael Grynbaum of The Times hunted down MTA antagonist Carl Kruger, and the Senator had some brusque words. “This week? That’s ludicrous,” Kruger said when asked if his committee would grill Walder this week. “This is the MTA. It’s not as if we’re confirming somebody to be game warden of the Adirondack Park.”

Those Senators, they’ll never miss a chance to unfairly and uninformedly bash the MTA while stealing the spotlight for themselves. With this nomination seemingly tabled until the fall, current Chair Dale Hemmerdinger and interim CEO and Executive Director Helena Williams will serve until Walder is confirmed.

After the jump, the Straphangers and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign respond to the Walder nomination.