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The Source for Public Transportation News and Analysis November 15, 2013
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Special Feature
There’s No Place Like Home: A Talk with GMs Who Provide Transit Service in Their Hometowns
BY SUSAN BERLIN Senior Editor
 
All public transportation general managers need to demonstrate a commitment to the communities in which they work, but some have an additional link: They provide service in the city or town where they grew up.
 
The following comments and reminiscences are from a few of these home-grown general managers. This is the first part of a two-part article. See the final part in the Dec. 2 issue of Passenger Transport.
 
Jeffrey A. Nelson
General Manager
Rock Island County Metropolitan Mass Transit District (MetroLink), Moline, IL
 
Jeff Nelson was familiar with public transportation while growing up: He used the service to get to junior high school and for some of his high school years. Still, working in public transit was not in Nelson’s plans when he came home to Moline after graduating from Western Illinois University.
 
How did he become general manager of MetroLink—a position he has held since 1986?
 
“I didn’t have a sharp vision of what I was going to do, so I got into commercial real estate and insurance business in Moline,” Nelson said. “That was in the early 1980s, when we had the infamous farm crisis. Moline was a major manufacturing hub for farm equipment—John Deere, International Harvester—so the area saw a significant downturn in jobs. My core market was small retail businesses, but a lot of them closed.”
 
The connection to MetroLink came when the agency needed coverage for its new maintenance facility and went to the insurance company that employed Nelson. “I went down there, fire rated the building, and put a program together for them,” he said. “After that, the then-general manager said he was looking for a projects and business development manager and asked if I’d be interested in the job. I said sure.”
 
When he joined MetroLink in ­September 1983, Nelson thought the job would be temporary. Instead, he found it a good fit. When the general manager decided to leave in 1986, he recommended Nelson as interim general manager: “Instead of the interim position, they offered me the job.”
 
He continued: “It’s been an interesting 30 years. I’ve seen significant, dynamic changes both in the industry as a whole and in our agency here. There’s never a boring day; every day is different from the next one.”
 
The Moline area is the sort of place where “you tend to be one person away from knowing everybody” Nelson said. This familiarity can be a challenge.“No one is shy about talking to me,” he explained. “People I went to school with, didn’t necessarily know well—it doesn’t matter if they see me at work, at a restaurant . . . I get chronic feedback on the quality of our service from both MetroLink users and non-users.”
 
On the other hand, knowing who does what in the community provides some unique opportunities. “The people I went to high school with are now running the city,” ­Nelson said. “I also had a distinct advantage in my younger days because I knew their parents as well.”
 
He sums up: “Ultimately you have more ownership of the situation when you know the community. You contemplate the decisions differently. People who come and go may focus on immediate points rather than making decisions for the long term.” 
 
William Hudson
President-General Manager
Memphis Area Transit Authority, (MATA)
 
“It’s a pleasure to work in my hometown, where my family and friends live,” said William Hudson, longtime president and general manager of MATA, an agency he has served for 49 years. He began at MATA as a bus operator and worked his way through the ranks with stops in operations, customer service, marketing, and labor relations, to name a few. (Following this interview, Hudson announced his plans to retire early next year.)
 
Hudson recalled taking the bus as a youngster: “often it was my only source of transportation,” he said, also noting the pride his family, neighbors, and church friends felt when he began driving for MATA in 1964.
 
“Public transportation has been very important to a number of people,” Hudson said. “To be able to take people in this community from their point of origin to their destination—whether it’s a job, the doctor, or wherever they’re going—is so satisfying, helping them get there.”
 
Being part of a close-knit community means that customers can communicate directly with the general manager, Hudson said: “Since I’m a local, people know me from many places. They may call me, asking, ‘Where is my bus?’ They can connect personally.”
 
The other side of this, he said, is new riders who start service without doing their homework. “The fact is, learning to use public transit is a process. People in the Memphis area are eager to ride. We try to teach our new riders how to use the system.”
 
Arthur Leahy
Chief Executive Officer
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (Metro) 

Arthur Leahy has headed public transit systems in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, and Orange County, CA, but Los Angeles is home—where he grew up and where he first worked as a bus operator.

“Returning to Los Angeles was the most difficult decision of my career,” he said. “I was happy working in Orange County, but then I thought, how can I turn down a chance to make an impact of one of the largest cities in the world? I’ve been here for four and a half years now and haven’t had a bad day yet.”

Leahy noted that both his parents were Los Angeles streetcar operators—his mother during World War II, his father after the war—and he rode the streetcars as a young child. He took city buses to junior high and high school, but also to Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games and the beach.

“People need Metro to get to work and to school, and that’s joyful to be involved in,” Leahy said. He also described how the agency is helping to redesign the city, with 13 rail construction projects under development, three under construction, and federal grants anticipated for two others.

“We’re changing the way people commute, basically preparing Los Angeles for a future that will be very different from the past,” he said. “It’s an adrenaline high to be working in L.A. It would be even for someone who isn’t from here, but it’s especially exciting for me since I did grow up here and have seen the city changing.”

Leahy stressed that Metro employees appreciate his emotional investment in Los Angeles. “I think it allows me to better understand L.A., having grown up here,” he said. “Being away for 12 years was a great growth opportunity. I can see how this city is the same as other places and how it’s different.”

 

 

MetroLink GM Jeff Nelson, far right, offers U.S. Rep Cheri Bustos (D-IL), center, an insider’s view of the agency’s state-of-the-art Transit Maintenance Facility, scheduled to be completed in February 2014.

MATA GM Will Hudson shares the stage with local, state, and federal transportation leaders during ceremonies to mark the 2001 groundbreaking for the agency’s Madison Avenue Rail Extension in the Memphis medical district.


 

 

Art Leahy, chief executive officer of Los Angeles Metro who started his public transit career as a bus driver, comes full circle as he stands in the doorway of one of the agency’s new buses.

 

 

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