Profiles in Regional Transportation Leadership: Bringing the Best to the MTC
The MTC is looking for a new Executive Director. The last one was in place for 17 years, so this is a big deal: the leader of this organization could help set the tone for nearly a generation of regional transportation work. We’re pretty excited by the opportunity, and we’ve been working hard to help the search committee find the best possible candidates.
As part of that work, we’ve been refreshing our knowledge of amazing regional leaders in transportation from around the world. And yes, “around the world”, because we think having international experience is an incredibly important qualification. We all love what makes the SF Bay Area unique and special, but it’s a big transportation world out there. There’s so much we can learn from places like Toronto, London, Paris, and Hong Kong — and from the people who makes things happen in those great city-regions.
So without further ado, here are some of the amazing folks we encountered on our globe-spanning tour of regional transportation leadership. It’s not an exhaustive list (you have other names in mind? Let us know! @seamlessbayarea), but we were just so inspired we felt the need to share.
Isabel Dedring is a former Deputy Mayor of London, steeped in the challenges of running transportation in a metropolis of 8 million people. In this role she led an effort to reduce Tube delays by 30%, rolled out a new city-wide cycling vision, and led a task force to rethink London’s strategy on roadway investments (check out this neat radio interview for more, discussing issues of particular relevance for the Bay Area). As far as we can see, Isabel pairs a progressive, expansive vision on transportation in cities, with the critical ability to get things done in complex political environments. Great qualifications for unsticking our stuck transportation system, we think.
Tyler Duvall is a partner at McKinsey & Company and a former Under Secretary for Transportation at the U.S. DOT. Tyler’s expertise is in large capital and infrastructure projects (we particularly enjoyed this article on how to rebuild national infrastructure), something we sorely need given the Bay Area’s procession of mismanaged mega-investments. Tyler’s perspective on data- and outcomes-driven decision making could be a valuable upgrade on our porkbarrel-driven regional project planning processes.
Catherine Guillouard is a megastar in the transportation operations world. She currently runs RATP, the state-owned public transit operator for the Paris region, a monolithic operator and regional heavyweight which carries some 3 billion people a year. Catherine’s resume also includes a decade or more of trying to reform Air France, a change making project of such magnitude that she’d surely come to the Bay Area with a few ideas to try out on our own intransigent politics. Not only did she have to be appointed by the French President to this role (imagine if we had to cross that hurdle), but has led RATP on an international expansion boom to become one of the world’s leading public transit operators (imagine if BART…yeah, that’s not a thing). MTC ED might be a bit of a step down for Ms Guillouard, but we live in hope.
Mike Brown is commissioner for Transport for London, the managing and coordianting entity for the enormous transportation needs of the London region. Previously, he ran London’s Heathrow Airport (if you’ve ever connected through LHR, try not to hold that against him), and oversaw a 40% reduction in subway delays when he was Chief Operating Officer for TfL. Mr Brown is a rare individual combining direct operational experience — and so has an appreciation of how hard it is to improve transit — with the strategic and political savvy to get regional mega-projects moving and bring politicians and the public along with him.
Dr Ekroop Caur helmed the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation for several years earlier in the decade, and by all accounts did an incredible job running one of India’s largest bus systems (which, at over 6,000 vehicles strong, rather dwarfs the SFMTA’s ~800 buses and AC Transit’s 630). She caught our attention for prioritizing the needs of women in a transportation environment that has long been actively hostile to them. The WRI described Dr Caur as “creating a city where women have greater opportunity and independence to live the lives to which they aspire”. We wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, and would love to see more of the same here in the Bay Area.
We finish up with another megastar, Tanya Müller García, the Secretary of Environment for Mexico City. She has tackled air quality issues in the city head on by leading massive investments in the bus system, expanding bike-share and finding novel ways to raise funds for future projects. What’s more, her work has actually had a measurable and significant effect on air quality levels in the city: that can be said for every regional leader’s efforts. Ms Müller García has taken a practical, rational and honest approach to tackling a mega-region’s transportation problems: more please.
Detect any patterns? This is an eclectic bunch, not all of which have “regional expertise” or a background in planning in the way we might expect of an MTC Executive Director. What they all share, however, is clear impatience with the status quo, and the smarts and positivity to translate that frustration into incredible, regional-scale action. We’re all for positive, visionary leaders, and these are some of the best.
Do we expect any of these regional superstars to come and take over at the MTC? We’ll boost the Bay Area as much as anyone, but realistically it’s unlikely 😞. Our low expectations here are indicative: while the MTC is certainly not TfL or RATP, it’s also not without power. A generation of MTC leadership has defanged and delimited the authority of the agency to things like regional tolling, while our transit operators have roamed unsupervised and often unsupported (we’re not saying tolling is unimportant, but it’s just a part of the regional transportation puzzle). We’re at the point where no one expects all that much of the MTC beyond what it does right now, and we think that’s sad and a real missed opportunity. Any one of these leaders, we feel, would bring the MTC — and the Bay Area — a much-needed dose of ambition to make change, backed up by significant and proven expertise in wrangling technical, legal and political systems in favor of a better ridership experience and a better quality of life for us all.
We look forward to seeing who the MTC ED Selection Committee chooses. Let them know that you care about who leads the MTC, and perhaps even send them a few names 😉.
