WMATA ex-GM presents assessment to Board

Former WMATA General Manager David Gunn presented his report on how to fix Metro in a closed session of the Board yesterday. Following pressure from advocates and the press, WMATA released an outline of the recommendations.

Clearly, the most critical focus was safety. Gunn encouraged Metro to redevelop a strong safety culture, something that the NSTB focused on in their recent hearings. Those documents make clear that Metro does not have a strong safety culture.

Mr. Gunn cited a “shoot the messenger” attitude, which backs up a finding from the Tri-State Oversight Committee last year. They found that some rail operators would retaliate against wayside workers that reported safety rule violations.

Gunn also mentioned making safety the responsibility of line departments, which Michael’s field calls “mainstreaming” or “teaming”. This encourages ownership of safety-related processes, but requires a strong auditing and oversight program. An independent safety department is crucial to ensure that the departments are doing their jobs properly.

Numerous communication system and track circuit anomalies cause the operators and controllers to negotiate clearances and work-arounds, which divert attention from the task at hand. Real problems with the system are harder to find when there is a lot of information clutter. This was a problem identified as part of the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and it’s a problem with control of any operational system.

Other recommendations involved greater openness and honesty. Gunn recommended Metro “educate the public about financial realities: this trend cannot continue,” and “Communicate candidly about safety with the public.”

On the budget, Gunn recommended ending the trend toward rising MetroAccess costs and toward growing subsidies for bus relative to rail. Michael analyzed these trends in the past. “He looked at our financial structure and said it was basically unsustainable,” said Peter Benjamin in a video released by WMATA.

Gunn had a few bullet points about top management:

• “Recruit a permanent general manager with a strong operating and technical background; the quality of the next general manager will significantly affect the ability to hire competent senior managers.”
• “Recruit experienced senior managers with engineering experience to fill many currently open positions. “

While we need top managers who have the specific expertise to fix the problems at Metro, David is skeptical of the wisdom of hiring lots of engineers and technical guys as GM and top managers, and says that as an engineering/technical guy.

Metro’s problems go beyond the technical. In particular, Metro will eventually get its safety problems under control and put this nasty episode behind it. At that point, it will a General Manager who can deal with the other problems at Metro: the command and control structure that prevents information from being shared, and the institutional secrecy that prevents the organization from leveling with the public as Gunn recommended. It’ll need someone with a strong customer service orientation as well.

The Board needs to look beyond the immediate crisis when selecting its GM. If it can find someone with great technical ability and great customer service ability, terrific. But if not, it seems more likely to try to get an amazing manager and a first-rate number two to handle safety, someone the GM can trust and give free rein, than the other way around.

Regarding people at other levels of the organization, Gunn recommended WMATA stop using hiring freezes to control the budget. Transit professionals tell me that hiring freezes are very harmful for quality people; many of the superstars in an organization, especially more junior ones, decide to leave because a hiring freeze removes all opportunities for them to move into higher-level jobs. This is also the kind of situation a GM could best address if he has experience managing a large organization and keeping it dynamic and innovative.

WMATA also suffers from low morale and high rates of absenteeism, with an absentee rate over 7.5% almost twice the industry average. The Post revealed this part of Gunn’s report not included in WMATA’s release.

Finally, Gunn echoed part of Pierce Homer’s suggestion, “To provide continuity, the Board chairman should serve a multi-year term.” Without the details of what Gunn said we can’t know why he thought that would really help; it might not make much difference, though it also couldn’t hurt.