Muni Executive Director Defers His Yearly Raise, Bonus

I just wish that someone could tell me,without passion or prejudice, what exactly he does to earn that $300K+ per year. No doubt that MUNI is an incredibly complex organization and a competent manager at that level should earn a good salary. However, I know many highly competent and educated executives making much less than $300K+ who would be fired in a hot minute if their organization suffered from such chronic and epic failure.

I'm more than certain that Ford makes more American dollars per annum than any other head of a large municipal public transportation agency in the United States. While 300,000 American dollars a year is an outrageous salary for what he does, he's not completely idle. The MTA has completed a much needed LRT maintenance facility, is attempting to address Muni's notorious inefficiencies with the TEP project, and continues to move ahead with the extraordinarily ill conceived Central Subway - all under his watch.

I will say that Ford and the team he dragged out here with him from Atlanta are among some of the best dressed men in city government (they are perhaps a bit too flashy for my taste, but still well dressed), so at least he is spending all his money on what really counts - clothes. I say give him another year to get the N Judah functioning properly before we run him out of town on a rail.

@Jamison

I had the pleasure of inspecting the new maintenance facility and Ford and his assorted fashion minions swore up and down that once fully operational it would help improve system efficiency significantly. This is why I'm giving him a year to get the N Judah running proper like. If in a year riding the N Judah is still a form of torture of which Dick Cheney would be proud, then I say Mr. Ford and his team should be promptly shown to the Daly City line and we should give his job to Annemarie Conroy or similar.

I'd recommend a better success metric than whether or not riding the N-Judah is torture. The system has been improving, but I wouldn't expect that to continue given the budget cutting that's been happening at all levels.

As for riding Ford out on a rail... what happens then? Some new guy will come in to find the same cash strapped system in need of repair.

TEP looks to have plenty of terrible decisions as well as a few good ones. It also feels like a vague attempt to try to improve service by shuffling things around rather than looking at the deep and systematic problems our transit system has.

I keep saying it, but we need to have a proper underground system. Not the idiotic central subway, but a full system where we can actually get around town without being constantly stuck in traffic or trying to make the traffic even worse with new systems of right of way that won't significantly improve transit and will make it even harder to actually go where you need to be rather than where the city has decided you're allowed to go.

about 20-25% more trains are now in service than when Nat Ford arrived right before the start of the T-Line.

So wait, and pardon me if I'm slow, but how much of that "20-25%" is due to the T itself opening? How much did Nat have to do with something that was already going to happen without him? That is, is it another pie-in-the-sky being painted by Mr. Ford to justify his suits and not-riding-MUNI lifestyle?

And "The N-Judah is torture" is a perfectly reasonable 'metric.' Why doesn't Nat himself tout these miniscule and invisible (yet immensely important) developments rather than saying the future is gunan be awsum? People actually ride these trains, you know.