Live chat with Marcel Acosta, Tuesday at noon
Our next chat guest is NCPC Executive Director Marcel Acosta, who was recently appointed by the federal government to the WMATA Board.
From his WMATA bio:
Acosta is the Executive Director of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the federal government’s central planning agency for the National Capital Region. Prior to joining NCPC in 2001, Mr. Acosta served as senior vice president of planning and development for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the nation’s second largest public transportation system. As CTA’s chief planner, he developed new capital programs and oversaw successful initiatives that increased ridership and reduced operating costs for the city’s bus and rail systems. Prior to his role at CTA, he served as deputy commissioner at the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.
We’ll be discussing issues facing WMATA, such as the budget, safety, customer service, and more. We’ll also discuss subjects under NCPC’s purview, including the National Mall and memorials, the siting, design, and security of federal facilities, streetcar overhead wires and more.
Before the chat, we’ll try a little reverse interview as well. Mr. Acosta has his own opinions about WMATA and federal planning, but he’d also like to hear from all of you. Therefore, he’ll send me a list of questions on Monday for all of you to answer prior to the chat.
If you want to be sure not to miss the reverse interview or the chat, sign up for our daily email of recent articles each morning.
And for some background reading on some of the issues, here are some recent posts:
- WMATA budget: The latest proposal, fare policy principles, the debate over using capital, and the need for leadership.
- Safety: A missing culture of safety, barring safety inspectors, lapses discovered, and the recent derailment.
- Customer service: The rock-throwing incident, reporting problems, and integrating customer service.
- Board procedures: Discussing items in secret, and Virginia members’ pushback.
- General Manager search: Look to the private sector?
- The Mall: Our chat with Kirk Savage, Monument Wars, Save Our Mall’s ideas, the lack of transit service, and the invisible building problem.
- Streetcar overhead wires: a a possible compromise between power systems and visual impacts.
- Framework Plan: BeyondDC’s pages summarize and critique NCPC’s master plan for the capital’s public spaces, roads and rails.