L.A. transportation official named Metra's new boss

[schlimm]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-la-transportation-official-to-be-new-metra-boss-20110131,0,7788402.story

[billio]

[quote user="schlimm"]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-la-transportation-official-to-be-new-metra-boss-20110131,0,7788402.story

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From the Trib:

"'METRA will be a model agency,' he vowed."

Hmmm.   We'll see.  Problem is, most reckoned METRA a model agency, even with former Executive Director Pigano's shennanigans.  Other than by keeping his nose clean, which in Chicago is extremely difficult, not sure how this new boy is going to "improve" METRA.

[episcopaliankeith]

They are moving from one agency to the next-NJT to WMATA, LAMTA to METRA like chess pawns.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

episcopaliankeith

They are moving from one agency to the next-NJT to WMATA, LAMTA to METRA like chess pawns.

I'm not sure that an "outsider" would bring that much to the table, especially since the agency director has to be more than just a good operations man.  Transit agencies are political bodies and the director has to know the rules of the game to get the funding he needs for both operations and capital improvements.

[billio]

CSSHEGEWISCH

episcopaliankeith:

They are moving from one agency to the next-NJT to WMATA, LAMTA to METRA like chess pawns.

 

I'm not sure that an "outsider" would bring that much to the table, especially since the agency director has to be more than just a good operations man.  Transit agencies are political bodies and the director has to know the rules of the game to get the funding he needs for both operations and capital improvements.

Ahh, sort of.  The agency director doesn't have to be "a good operations man."  Phil Pigano didn't know the A from the B end of a locomotive or passenger coach.  Moreover, much of the funding from the feds is formulaic, meaning that they have to give away lots of bucks, and all you have to do is submit your capital grant requests to FTA, count to ten, and start getting checks in the mail.  Not much talent required there.  The biggest problem in Illinois is that the state is nearly broke, and, unlike the feds, it cannot crank up the printing press to print money to cover its local match obligations.  The new agency head, if he wants to stick around for any appreciable length of time, has to be supremely good at 1)  smelling out potential challengers to his job and neutralizing them; and 2)  sucking up to a board of directors who without exception owe their lofty status to the political process that saw them appointed, and not to trying to improve transit options for the people they have been "chosen" to serve.  Presumably, when Metra hired its new director, he was carefully vetted, and made it clear that he would cowtow to their whims.  Parenthetically, one suspects that if the employee who blew the whistle on Pigano's excesses is ever identified, he will be shot at sunrise, if not earlier.  With the hearty concurrence of the board, in toto.

My two bits.