Interview: Nathaniel Ford, Part Two

I’m having weekly operations review meetings every Friday morning at 7:30 where we literally review the previous week’s performance. We look at any major incidents we’ve had in terms of delays, safety incidents to review, and that has been an issue in terms of some of the more – very serious safety concerns that I have witnessed over the last few months and just prior to getting here, that we’re trying to deal with. Looking at hot spots. One thing we’re looking at now in terms of dealing with the situation is triaging the system and looking at what intersections, seem to be, from a standpoint of impact to service and ridership. What areas are the big areas that are creating a ripple effect through the entire operation? So we’re starting to focus on those hot spots. We’re trying to get DPT, get them involved, so if we do have a traffic issue, how can traffic control officers help us speed up the bus system, speed up the rail system? We’re talking with the Police Department to look at the Bus Only diamond lanes. They’re great, fantastic in this city, the number that we have. But what about the enforcement on those lanes? The double parking in bus stops –

EB: Double parking in front of MUNI metro!

NF: Yeah, double parking, period. And then the parking in bus stops. So we’re looking at all of those issues, and the idea is, none of it’s going to be fixed overnight, but there are clearly some things that we can deal with on a day to day basis to improve our on-time performance and reliability. Some of the longer term issues take a little bit bigger examination.

The age of our busses and bus fleet, rehabilitation on our LRVs, they’re getting to that point where they need some attention on their doors, their brake systems. If you’re riding our system, you hear about it, you see it and you experience it, so we’re pulling those plans together to deal with – and not just plans, I mean, I want to be careful with that. Some are longer term. Some are short term, and some of it is daily.

So I get notified daily of our major delays and there’s a discussion and a critique and a review of those incidents almost daily, and definitely Friday mornings, 7:30, that’s when we’re sitting next door, and these last about 2 or 3 hours, going over each day’s operational performance.

EB: It's great that you have this meeting, but there's got to be -- I mean, what are the results from that conversation?

NF: Well, as a result of that conversation, one of the things that we’ve been looking at is on-time performance, particularly at night with the LRV operation, which has historically been – because it operates on the subway and clearly has its own right of way, should be one of our top performers, but in the evening we find we’re having some difficulty trying to maintain on-time performance with that, so we restructured the management structure, supervision in that area, and then daily I get a performance report on LRV, performance from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

So that’s been some of the efforts. In terms of even vehicle or bus on-time performance, we’re looking at, again, those hot spots that seem to have a propensity, and there are a few of them in the city, that even in the best case scenario with traffic conditions the way they are, we’re getting delays in those hot spots, and that’s when we need to call the DPT as well as the Police Department to help us out, dealing with those hot spots. We’ve got a long list of action items that we’re trying to deal with.

EB: I hear what you're saying about the timeliness studies, but what about the SPUR Report? I’ve heard you’ve read it.

NF: Right. In terms of the SPUR Report, clearly there is a fundamental or base deficit concern with our operation over the next few years, and we need to look for additional revenue sources. It’s been my history in terms of my operation in Atlanta, we made sure that before we went out looking for additional funding, that we had our financial house in order, and that we looked at opportunities to become more efficient inside our own organization and, probably more importantly, or just as importantly, looked for opportunities to increase revenue.

We reexamined all of our advertising contracts. We looked for opportunities to increase advertising on our existing operation. We looked at new – just how our fares were structured in some ways, and looked at opportunities to increase the amount of fare revenue coming in. So we’re in the process of doing that right now. With the development of this budget we really took a good examination of where expenditures were and making sure that we had control over them, as well as the right reporting mechanisms to make sure that we knew every penny we’re spending is being spent in the right place.

Now once we’ve got all of that completed, now we can start talking about different revenue sources. We obviously need a revenue source that deals with our infrastructure issues in terms of reinvesting in the rail cars and the busses in our facilities. Some of our facilities that I’ve looked at, money spent on vehicles could be money misspent if we don’t have the right infrastructure to maintain those vehicles and the right number of mechanics. That’s one issue. The second issue is the base operation. We have, in terms of our expenses, in terms of salaries, we have some of the highest salaries in terms of operators in the country, and we operate in a very expensive environment, San Francisco Bay Area. I mean, and I’m relocating from Atlanta.

There’s a significantly higher cost of living here – housing, and things of that nature. So we pay a salary which makes sure that our employees are compensated for the environment. At the same time we have one of the lowest fares in transit operations.

So, you know, that structural deficit situation is a very challenging one to deal with. I think that we need to have funding mechanisms that 1) deal with inflation, 2) deal with performance. And if we are asking for more money and we need more funding, then, you know, there should be an expected level of service and an expected quality of service.

So while I know we have funding issues and we have deficits going on the next few years, I’m not prepared at this point to say, bring in a downtown tax. Should it be an increase in fares? Should it be a reduction of service?

I’m not prepared to do that just yet, because we have to finish examining our existing funding, existing revenue and existing expenses, and then we have to cobble together the right mixture of funding sources that at once stabilizes the organization and prepares us for the future. We could look at real estate taxes, obviously, user fees, downtown business fees. There’s a smorgasbord, probably, of potential funding structures and funding mechanisms.

We need to take a look at all of them, look at this community, look at what makes sense, and then go from there. But, you know, we’ll have to do it sooner than later.

On Monday: Increasing patronage, speeding up the system, and the Geary BRT