Interview: Nathaniel Ford, Part Three

Because after 15 years, 20 years of operation, we recognized that the system needed to be reexamined. People’s travel patterns changed, and I think our riders have a lot more choices now. There’s people who telecommute, there’s people who will use their car where 20 years ago that may not have been a choice, with the price of parking. That’s another thing to examine, too, in terms of our decision about revenue structure. We do receive the money from meters and fines as well as parking, and the garages. What’s the optimum price going on that to maximize the amount of revenue we bring in? So I think we’ve got our work cut out for us in terms of the long-term financial liability of the MTA. But we’re doing the work we need to do.

EB: Transitioning from getting money, to spending money, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Geary BRT program. It looks like right now they’re talking about starting construction in 2009. Is that right?

NF: Yes.

EB: So what do you think? Is that going to happen?

NF: I think it needs to happen

EB: God, it needs to happen.

NF: That is one of the highest passenger-loading corridors in this country.

EB: Oh, yeah. I know it. More people ride the 38 than BART.

NF: That’s right. So clearly it needs to happen. One thing that we’ve been trying to do over these last few months is really look at all of these projects. We’ve got Third St. getting ready to open up, we’ve got Geary BRT, Van Ness BRT, we’ve got people who are talking to us about the Fort Mason line and the E line, and they’re also talking about a central subway.

Right now the agency’s at a great time. There has been greater demand for transit, demand for improved transit. Our role is going to be to deliver it. I’m putting a team in place and looking internally. We’ve got some good staff on board. They’ve been examining all of these projects, and we’re just pulling it together into, I think within six months to a year, one cohesive game plan.

Because I think right now what’s happening is all of these projects are somewhat talked about, and they’re all in isolation, and my sense of it is going back to the financial question: Geary BRT, central subway, Third St. opening, Van Ness BRT. How much is all of that going to cost from an operating standpoint?

EB: See, that’s a great, great point. When I was researching this interview, and getting questions from our readership, I ended up with all these separate initiatives that we all have questions about, and I was just overwhelmed. They all seem so disparate, you know, there are all these different pieces that don’t seem to go together, that are all sort of discussed lot, or a little bit has been done, and all of it is so expensive. As an outside observer, it's really maddening that we have about 10 things that might be really really cool, or really really suck, and we're about one-tenth of the way into all of them.

NF: Well, I think that’s the challenge of my role, and I think that, one, we’ve got a MUNI that has made some significant improvements over the last few years, since ’98. However, it’s plateaued. I mean, you can see that in the statistics, you can see that in a slow increase of some of the customer concerns and complaints.

So we’ve got our work there. We are not there yet in terms of MUNI. I mentioned the infrastructure issues that I – just walking down the street, before I even took this job that I was able to see in terms of the age of the rolling stock, graffiti, some of those issues you can see. Okay, so we’ve got to deal with the basic operation of MUNI on a day to day basis and focus on that, and improve that.

But we’ve got some long-term challenges: one, fixing that infrastructure, and then two, the numerous capital projects that you just mentioned. What is the glue? And I guess that’s my role, and my team’s role, is the glue that pulls all of these projects together, and then also prioritizes them and says, “What will give us the biggest bang for our buck in a timely order?” Because to try and deliver all those projects within the same window could be a challenging – you may not get any of it done.

But I think it’s a great opportunity. We’re excited about it. We want to do it all. We think we can do it all, and I think the citizens of San Francisco and our riders, they’re depending on us to do it. So we’ll get it done. It’s just that there is, I think, a certain amount of, like you said, looking at all of it.

How much it’s going to cost on the capital portion of it, and then the operating portion of it, and that’s where it gets complicated when we start talking about the deficit. Okay, we’re going to say we’ve got a $40 million deficit next year. We open up Third St., depending on how the schedules run and some of the ridership that picks up there, that may be a $2 million increase in our operating costs.

So we want to be very careful when we talk about funding, that we don’t jump out there with a number, then fill that number and find out we’re short two years from then. We’re moving away from day to day to kind of looking at some of the long term, visionary type of functions.

Tomorrow: We discuss the Central Subway. Hoo, boy.