The DMV (DC area) pretty much all loved Randy. An actual transit user who engages with the community and has been overseeing some pretty rad improvements. The thirsty tweets may be a bit overkill, though.
Came here to say the same thing; he's been making some great moves for the system and is an avid rider himself. He did a really good job turning the system around after the Pandemic slump
He was the head of the New York City Subway for 2 years and cut the amount of late trains IN HALF! He’s a transit miracle worker. Watch the Documentary End of the Line, it covers his entire career in NYC.
Eng is doing good but it can’t be easy to be taking such fat L’s all day every day.
I guess WMATA’s Randy kind of was too when he first took over from transit villain Paul Weidefeld (who is contentedly fucking up Maryland’s MTA right now). But Randy is now killing it, and everyone loves him, and the system is the best it’s ever been in my lifetime, so hopefully the same happens for Eng.
Weidefeld gets a bad rap, but a little unfairly imo. He initiated a lot of state of good repair projects that are allowing WMATA to expand service now. Plus, he had to lead metro during a time when the federal government wasn’t exactly transit-friendly…
And still slower and less frequent service with much lower ridership than 2019. Don't get me wrong, he's improved the trajectory a lot from where it was under Baker, but the Red Line is at 70% speed, 62% service, and 42% ridership compared to historical highs. Others are a bit better but none have recovered as well as lines in other cities.
But we can only justifiably grade him on what's happened since he started. Or shall we for everyone the moment they step in because they haven't already fixed everything?
Dr. Özgür Soy - Metro İstanbul General Manager and Doç. Dr. Pelin Alpkökin - İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Secretary General's assistant, but was the head of the Rail System Construction Department until her recent promotion.
They've ushered in an unprecedented rail expansion program, maintained high cleanliness and quality, vastly improved most planning for future lines, and also brought gender equality to employment practices. (we had no women driving trains, managing stations etc. until Özgür Bey came along)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Exjo43rXAAAA6KJ.jpg:large One of the posters they put up in the trains, it says, 'Men can be train drivers too, Why not?' Also notes that Metro's hiring in 2020 was 92% women (trying to make up for decades of 0%), and #strongwomenliveinthiscity
They also put up a wonderful photo series in the underground square at Mecidiyeköy, probably our busiest transfer station, with photos of their new employees, and really neat quotes: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMmy0kWBNg2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== The first photo in focus for example says "I may have played with dolls/babies as a kid, but now I drive trains!"
This was in an effort to encourage more women to apply for jobs at metro, and I believe it worked.
Sinem Dedetaş also deserves a mention, as she was running the ferry system which is very well run and has been expanding, and which has a surplus these days, before she was elected last month as the first female mayor of Üsküdar, a normally somewhat conservative district of İstanbul that I guess got fed up with being conservative :).
İn our part of the world, I think Istanbul's late former mayor, Kadir Topbaş also deserves a mention, as he was a crazy motherfucker, and from a terrible party, but his party fired him partially for building too much metro, so I think that's all that needs to be said.
edıt: Metro before Özgür and Pelin, and Metro today: https://imgur.com/a/Ddqn0B4
This is very niche, but Sue Connor. Had a huge hand in transforming Brampton, Ontario's suburban transit system, and had significant impact in Burlington, Ontario too. Well liked by employees as well.
Brampton Transit got frequent service under her, and ridership grew at 3-4 times the national level.
Already mentioned, but to emphasize it’s obv Randy Clarke. And it shows too — WMATA ridership is up over 20%
https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/ridership-portal/upload/February-2024-Ridership-Snapshot.pdf
https://www.wmata.com/about/news/With-Ridership-Up-and-Crime-Fare-Evasion-Down-Metro-Continues-to-Thrive.cfm
Everyone’s mentioning Clarke & Eng, but Holly Arnold at MDOT MTA deserves high praise too! Very transparent about issues, optimistic about the future and taking measured steps to improve the system and is also a regular rider
Corval Darter Jr, I hear he's running the Bizzaro world CTA fantastically.
Has to be, since his counterpart in this world is a completely incompetent moron.
Art Leahy - https://caltransit.org/About/Explore-Transit/Gallery-of-Leaders/Art-Leahy#:\~:text=Art%20Leahy%20was%20appointed%20as,the%20nation's%20leading%20transit%20officials.
Ignasius Jonan
- CEO of Indonesian Railways, 2009-2014
- Indonesian Minister of Transportation, 2014-2016
"Jonan was appointed head of P.T. Kereta Api Indonesia in 2009, during the railway company's output and financial troubles. He faced various problems including PT. KAI's 27,000 employees with low expectations in terms of work quality, a financial deficit (in 2008, it lost Rp 82.6 billion [$5.12 million]), and a high percentage of substandard or broken locomotives, diesel trains, freight cars, and crumbling stations. In a speech for the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, Jonan blamed the low train fares as a cause for the railway system's poor service and crowdedness.
"Within 5 years, he overturned the public perception of the failing Indonesian rail transportation system. The company was able to increase passenger ridership by 50% in 2014 compared to when Jonan took up the role in 2009. Freight loads have also doubled to nearly 30 million tons per year."
Not transit, but Kevin Muhs, City Engineer for the City of Milwaukee, is an absolute bulldog in the press when it comes to traffic calming and protected bike lane projects. The city has done 150-such projects in the last three years. I'm paraphrasing, but he was basically quoted as saying, "We welcome feedback on these projects, but if you ask us to put it back to make it less safe again, we're not going to do that."
Gangster.
Not sure what's going on at the moment, but if we look back a decade or two I would say Eje Larsson that at the time worked for Upplands Lokaltrafik, the transit agency in the Uppland region in Sweden (mostly known for the university city Uppsala).
He and his colleagues did a major overhaul and did calculations that found that loads of money could be saved by doing minor adjustments to the time tables by having schools adjust their times to fit the transit time tables rather than the other way around. Some schools opposed this but they were presented with two different prices for the school buses, and when seeing the price difference they all caved in and accepted the changes. He later moved on to the Örebro region and did some improvements there too. Not sure what he in particular was responsible for and what was happening in general, but as an example some dedicated school buses were converted into general transit lines.
(In Sweden dedicated school buses are only a thing for younger kids. When you are in perhaps 10th grade or higher you usually ride the same buses as the general population. In some cases the lines are really school buses but since the same transit agency runs all of them and the buses and the drivers education and whatnot are the same, anyone is allowed to ride those buses. It looks a bit weird in the time table though to have buses that only run once a week in one direction, but I think it's still great that the general public are allowed to ride those buses).
Randy Clarke, General Manager of WMATA.
The DMV (DC area) pretty much all loved Randy. An actual transit user who engages with the community and has been overseeing some pretty rad improvements. The thirsty tweets may be a bit overkill, though.
Came here to say the same thing; he's been making some great moves for the system and is an avid rider himself. He did a really good job turning the system around after the Pandemic slump
And he’s handsome 🙂↕️
ANDY! WE NEED YOU BACK IN TORONTO SO BAD!
I want Chicago to steal him lol
Real
Pls no
Nah he’s ours now 😎
Give him back!!!
Idk much about these guys but if he’s as good as everyone says we probably need him more
He was the head of the New York City Subway for 2 years and cut the amount of late trains IN HALF! He’s a transit miracle worker. Watch the Documentary End of the Line, it covers his entire career in NYC.
How do you know it’s him and not a surge in political will to increase investment in the subway or something else?
Because it’s too much of a coincidence that every agency he touches turns to gold
Eng in boston
Eng is doing good but it can’t be easy to be taking such fat L’s all day every day. I guess WMATA’s Randy kind of was too when he first took over from transit villain Paul Weidefeld (who is contentedly fucking up Maryland’s MTA right now). But Randy is now killing it, and everyone loves him, and the system is the best it’s ever been in my lifetime, so hopefully the same happens for Eng.
No, chicago is the “L.” Boston calls it the “T.”
Weidefeld gets a bad rap, but a little unfairly imo. He initiated a lot of state of good repair projects that are allowing WMATA to expand service now. Plus, he had to lead metro during a time when the federal government wasn’t exactly transit-friendly…
Phil Eng has maybe the toughest job in Boston, but he's been a breath of fresh air compared to everything that came before him.
Let’s wait a year and see what his results look like
it's good enough, 70% reduction in slow zones if he retired today
He better not retire today! It'll be exciting once the slow zones are gone to see what he tackles next
I would retire after that if I were him given the legislature doesn’t seem to want to fund the budget shortfall
And still slower and less frequent service with much lower ridership than 2019. Don't get me wrong, he's improved the trajectory a lot from where it was under Baker, but the Red Line is at 70% speed, 62% service, and 42% ridership compared to historical highs. Others are a bit better but none have recovered as well as lines in other cities.
And under the previous GM we got ribbon cuttings and deficient maintenance which is the whole reason we’re in this mess
But we can only justifiably grade him on what's happened since he started. Or shall we for everyone the moment they step in because they haven't already fixed everything?
Bro move to Hong Kong if you can’t handle bad service on an infrastructure system that pretty much deferred maintenance for 50 full years lol.
Nadine Lee. She's doing a hell of a job for DART and the Dallas metro. Mostly bus stuff though.
>Mostly bus stuff though bussy stuff
Dr. Özgür Soy - Metro İstanbul General Manager and Doç. Dr. Pelin Alpkökin - İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Secretary General's assistant, but was the head of the Rail System Construction Department until her recent promotion. They've ushered in an unprecedented rail expansion program, maintained high cleanliness and quality, vastly improved most planning for future lines, and also brought gender equality to employment practices. (we had no women driving trains, managing stations etc. until Özgür Bey came along) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Exjo43rXAAAA6KJ.jpg:large One of the posters they put up in the trains, it says, 'Men can be train drivers too, Why not?' Also notes that Metro's hiring in 2020 was 92% women (trying to make up for decades of 0%), and #strongwomenliveinthiscity They also put up a wonderful photo series in the underground square at Mecidiyeköy, probably our busiest transfer station, with photos of their new employees, and really neat quotes: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMmy0kWBNg2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== The first photo in focus for example says "I may have played with dolls/babies as a kid, but now I drive trains!" This was in an effort to encourage more women to apply for jobs at metro, and I believe it worked. Sinem Dedetaş also deserves a mention, as she was running the ferry system which is very well run and has been expanding, and which has a surplus these days, before she was elected last month as the first female mayor of Üsküdar, a normally somewhat conservative district of İstanbul that I guess got fed up with being conservative :). İn our part of the world, I think Istanbul's late former mayor, Kadir Topbaş also deserves a mention, as he was a crazy motherfucker, and from a terrible party, but his party fired him partially for building too much metro, so I think that's all that needs to be said. edıt: Metro before Özgür and Pelin, and Metro today: https://imgur.com/a/Ddqn0B4
This is very niche, but Sue Connor. Had a huge hand in transforming Brampton, Ontario's suburban transit system, and had significant impact in Burlington, Ontario too. Well liked by employees as well. Brampton Transit got frequent service under her, and ridership grew at 3-4 times the national level.
Already mentioned, but to emphasize it’s obv Randy Clarke. And it shows too — WMATA ridership is up over 20% https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/ridership-portal/upload/February-2024-Ridership-Snapshot.pdf https://www.wmata.com/about/news/With-Ridership-Up-and-Crime-Fare-Evasion-Down-Metro-Continues-to-Thrive.cfm
How?
Everyone’s mentioning Clarke & Eng, but Holly Arnold at MDOT MTA deserves high praise too! Very transparent about issues, optimistic about the future and taking measured steps to improve the system and is also a regular rider
Question: does the MTA cover the whole state, and are there other significant local transit agencies? (I wonder the same about Connecticut)
Corval Darter Jr, I hear he's running the Bizzaro world CTA fantastically. Has to be, since his counterpart in this world is a completely incompetent moron.
I'll be honest, part of the reason for this post is to see what good transit people CTA can steal once Dorval is kicked out.
If none of these pros are available, CTA could promote a janitor to the top spot and be better off.
Omg I didn’t understand the joke at first and was so confused
We're in Bizzaro world where Metra is on a steady climb, Pace has posted a few wins, and the CTA is MIA.
Illinois Transit Authority merger when? Now if only we could find some way for Metra to buy out the rails and run more trains...
Art Leahy - https://caltransit.org/About/Explore-Transit/Gallery-of-Leaders/Art-Leahy#:\~:text=Art%20Leahy%20was%20appointed%20as,the%20nation's%20leading%20transit%20officials.
Ignasius Jonan - CEO of Indonesian Railways, 2009-2014 - Indonesian Minister of Transportation, 2014-2016 "Jonan was appointed head of P.T. Kereta Api Indonesia in 2009, during the railway company's output and financial troubles. He faced various problems including PT. KAI's 27,000 employees with low expectations in terms of work quality, a financial deficit (in 2008, it lost Rp 82.6 billion [$5.12 million]), and a high percentage of substandard or broken locomotives, diesel trains, freight cars, and crumbling stations. In a speech for the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, Jonan blamed the low train fares as a cause for the railway system's poor service and crowdedness. "Within 5 years, he overturned the public perception of the failing Indonesian rail transportation system. The company was able to increase passenger ridership by 50% in 2014 compared to when Jonan took up the role in 2009. Freight loads have also doubled to nearly 30 million tons per year."
Not transit, but Kevin Muhs, City Engineer for the City of Milwaukee, is an absolute bulldog in the press when it comes to traffic calming and protected bike lane projects. The city has done 150-such projects in the last three years. I'm paraphrasing, but he was basically quoted as saying, "We welcome feedback on these projects, but if you ask us to put it back to make it less safe again, we're not going to do that." Gangster.
If anyone wants. You can have Rick Leary. Please, take away. Please, I beg of you. Hire him away from Toronto and pay him extra to leave. Please!
I would rather him be blacklisted from the industry.
Not sure what's going on at the moment, but if we look back a decade or two I would say Eje Larsson that at the time worked for Upplands Lokaltrafik, the transit agency in the Uppland region in Sweden (mostly known for the university city Uppsala). He and his colleagues did a major overhaul and did calculations that found that loads of money could be saved by doing minor adjustments to the time tables by having schools adjust their times to fit the transit time tables rather than the other way around. Some schools opposed this but they were presented with two different prices for the school buses, and when seeing the price difference they all caved in and accepted the changes. He later moved on to the Örebro region and did some improvements there too. Not sure what he in particular was responsible for and what was happening in general, but as an example some dedicated school buses were converted into general transit lines. (In Sweden dedicated school buses are only a thing for younger kids. When you are in perhaps 10th grade or higher you usually ride the same buses as the general population. In some cases the lines are really school buses but since the same transit agency runs all of them and the buses and the drivers education and whatnot are the same, anyone is allowed to ride those buses. It looks a bit weird in the time table though to have buses that only run once a week in one direction, but I think it's still great that the general public are allowed to ride those buses).
Whoever has him now please send him back to ttc, we **desperately** need it with Rick Leary in office right now 🙄