Interview: Nathaniel Ford, Part One
We recently sat down with Muni's executive director, Nathaniel P. Ford, to ask him some of the questions our readers and we have been dying to get the answers to. We spent enough time with him that we felt it made sense to publish our conversation in serial form, as opposed to one oppressively long interview. This is the first segment in the series.
Nathaniel Ford: Thanks for coming in.
Eve Batey: Oh, thank you for having me.
NF: By all means. I guess this will be an opportunity for you to get to know me and find out what I think is important and some of the challenges we’re facing, and get some idea of what we’re going to do to try and tackle.
EB: Our readers and we are so pleased that you are actually taking the time to talk to us.
NF: It’s kind of interesting because I think historically, in terms of transit bosses, or transportation bosses, we tend to somewhat be reluctant. You know, in terms of – we’ve got a lot of things going on, but kind of reluctant, but I think with this generation and our ridership being so demanding and everyone wanting to hear from us.
I think it’s a good opportunity for us to really share some of the good and share some of the bad, but more importantly to give you the opportunity to see that we’re really passionate about what we’re doing. Nobody takes a job or an opportunity like this if they’re not sure they can deal with the challenges and the issues. I don’t think you’re in it for the money. You’re not in it for a whole lot of praise.
EB: For the glamour.
NF: Not for the glamour! These are not glamour jobs, these are really difficult, challenging positions.
You’re only as good as your last rush hour. But I think of at least in terms of my being here, you know, I’m a second generation transit person. My father just retired from New York Transit after 44 years there, I’ve got a sister who lives there, and I’ve got a brother-in-law who works there, and probably a host of cousins and uncles that some point worked there, passed through there.
So for us it’s sort of a family business and family opportunity. We’ve been able to raise our children and my father, grandchildren, that kind of thing. We love it.
EB: Well, of course, the first question I have to ask is, so you really ride MUNI every day, the way you said you were going to?
NF: Yeah. I am riding MUNI every day. In fact, I ride the 43 and I transfer to the 7. But I mean, up until – and that’s within the last 2 or 3 weeks. Prior to that, I was living downtown, and I was riding the cable car, and any of the subway down this way every morning, and back every day, and then on top of that, you know, I can alternate from the streetcar operation on the F line or get any of the busses going up and down Market St.
I’ve gotten a chance – you know, not the total system, but I’ve gotten the chance to be pretty familiar with some of our operations that are out there. I’ve been to all of our operating facilities, met a lot of employees and staff, and I want to be careful, you know, that we don’t just talk about MUNI here in some aspects, because we have another large portion, which is the D&T portion, so I’ve had a chance to go and visit some of those folks and talk to some of the employees there, and some of the management.
In terms of riding, it is a significant change for me, because we didn’t have this expansive a system at MARTA, so it was a challenge to get around, but here it’s pretty easy. It’s a 20-minute, 30-minute trip, and I’m right here.
EB: So, have you ridden the 14?
NF: No, I’ve never ridden the 14. I’ve been –
EB: Oh, we’ve got to get you on the 14.
NF: I haven’t been on the 14, but I’ve been a little bit on all of the routes. And then on top of that, we’re putting in a policy – it was always there, there was a requirement for the managers to utilize the system. But we’re revisiting that and revitalizing that program, so we’re keeping good documentation.
Not just with our commute trips coming to and from the workplace, and take the time to do additional trips on top of that during the day or in the evening, to sort of get a good sense of what’s going on out there. Experiencing it like our customers are experiencing it.
EB: Something that’s very important to a lot of people is the actual rider or customer experience. And I think you know there are a lot of challenges facing MUNI riders right now, just in terms of the whole experience of riding MUNI. People have a lot of problems with it. Tell me some steps you’re taking to improve that.
NF: Well, I think, you know, in terms of, you know, the customer experience, there’s always room for improvement, and I think in terms of what I’ve seen with the MUNI system is that – in the four months that I’ve been here – clearly you’ve got to start with your infrastructure first, and I’m still in the process of examining our basic infrastructure.
I’ve seen in some cases where we’ve got 18 year old busses, busses that are well past their useful life. And with that you get reliability issues. I’ve seen where we have in some cases congestion issues. One of our efforts is looking more recently in the last few months, looking at our LRV operation and where is it getting delayed, and having issues just with just basic traffic mess issues. So we’ve got the convolution of traffic issues, reliability issues that have an impact on our reliability. Now when things happen – delays and equipment issues due to maintenance, things of that nature, we’ve got to be very customer-focused. We’ve got to share information with our customers. We’ve got to be, I think, very customer oriented and cordial in terms of our dealings with our customers.
I would say a good part of the time we are doing it right and we do get it on time. However, there’s -- we’re not perfect – we haven’t got to the point that I feel comfortable with in terms of our on-time performance system-wide. So we’ve got work to do from the infrastructure standpoint, we’ve got work to do from a scheduling standpoint. I think there are some challenges with our schedules, and we need to reexamine those schedules and see if the actual running time is realistic in terms of, you know, the schedule versus what the real world looks like.
What other challenges does Mr Ford see Muni facing, and how does he plan on dealing with them? Come back tomorrow and see for yourself!