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Would you ride your local transit system even if it was free?
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For Dave Klepper-- <br /> <br />Thank you for the kind words. I really enjoyed my tenure with DART. I was the only engineer on the board and developed a great relationship with the technical staff. I have a policy to never embarrass a person who was making a board presentation. If I had a problem I would call them before the meeting and we would resolve the issue without any embarrasing situations. It is a shame that some of the other board members would not follow this policy and delighted in embarrasing the staff. I know that when I left there were 3000 friends who were sorry to see me go. Cannot say the same for some other members. Occasionally after warning the presenter before the meeting I would ask clarification questions for the benefit of the rest of the board. I already knew the answer but 90% of the time a technical presentation would go over their head. Several members of the staff would tell me things that they would not tell management as they knew I would keep my mouth shut. I was trying to make DART the best transit system in the country and we did this as APTA gave us the Transit Agency of the Year award a couple of years ago. <br /> <br />I tend to ramble on. <br /> <br />One thing I forgot to put into my discussion of what it takes is to have a critical mass. New York and San Francisco have a very good critical mass due to their compact area with a very high population density. Cities which are spread out due to the lack of geographical barriers do not have this population density and will not have the degree or percentage of ridership as the dense cities. Sadly Dallas falls into this category. Dallas has been fortunate though, in that our citizens (including the sourrounding commuties that are part of DART) have really taken to mass transit. DART, like all transit agencies has to rely upon the federal allocation to finance construction of the system. The Feds look at potential ridership in deciding wether to allocate funds. Dallas recently lost on this for the tunnel under Love Field (in town airport) for the line going northwest due to low potential ridership for the high investment for the tunnel. Sadly Love Field will be on a spur line. I currently live in a rural area on a lake. There is not a critical mass there to justify any type of mass transit. We do have paratransit as this is federally mandated. The van pool that I am in is sponsored by DART which is the reason it goes to where I live. That one van takes 8 cars off the freeway. DART has approximately 80 van pools so there is a significant number of cars being removed from the road. <br /> <br />I would like to get into transportation consulting after 45 years in the oil and gas consulting business. A while back I was approached about possible appointment to the Amtrak board. Since I have not donated or raised a million dollars for the political party in power I think my chances are slim for that appointment. With Amtrak's current delimma I might have been out of a job shortly. Sad to say the majority of the political appointments are based on political insider basis and not based on technical ability. Currently I am getting my ducks in a row for retirement after Christmas and putting out feelers to my friends in transit and the oil business. <br /> <br />And finally Dave my email is dwatkins@demac.com. Hope to hear from you soon. <br /> <br />Cheers, <br />*** Watkins (the WR stands for W Richard)
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