Art Leahy, New Metro CEO, Takes Leadership of L.A. Transit Authority, Measure R Process

TPR/MIR's April issue included an interview with Metro's former CEO, Roger Snoble, and we're delighted this month to have the opportunity to do a "Welcome to Metro" interview with you. What, to begin, are the priority challenges on your plate? What advice did Roger give you on how best address the difficult challenges ahead?

The challenges are immense, but the challenges were the reason I accepted the position. I was very happy in Orange County. We accomplished a strong alignment with the business community, with various electives, and with other institutions. Throughout my career I have followed the motto that I should go where the action is. There is a lot of action here.

Roger's advice to me was that some days will be an absolute high and other days will be really tough.

Many of the issues are very parallel to what I used to see when I was with the predecessor to Metro years ago-and the same with Minnesota and Orange County. They are bigger here, but they are the same issues. What we need to do is to work with the board to align what the board wants to accomplish and what the staff is focused on. Then we go outside to the cities and other groups to bring all of that into alignment. We want to involve the business community; they have an important contribution to make.

L.A. County's passage of Measure R, which could raise $30 billion-plus over the next three decades for transportation infrastructure, offers hope to those caught in traffic congestion. Address the promise and challenges of investing Measure R's resources wisely.

Taxpayers have trusted Metro with a large investment. The first obligation is to show the taxpayers benefit and acts of good faith on the projects listed in Measure R. Obviously there is a great deal of work to be done finishing up the Exposition Line. There is the Gold Line to the east, Crenshaw, the subway, and a variety of other projects around Los Angeles County.

We have the opportunity to take that money and use it to leverage federal and state money where it is appropriate. The objective will be to put together a comprehensive package of projects with the support of the board that gives the taxpayers the benefits they voted for.

There are many rail line projects on Metro's to-do list. Can Metro do the expanses to the east and west and everything else on the table? How are the needed routes and expansions going to be prioritized?

We are going to start by looking at Measure R as our touchstone. That is the roadmap that tells us what projects to do and on approximately what schedule. Our first obligation is to achieve that. In the coming six weeks we will go to the board with an update to the long range transportation plan to breathe some life to that. We will try to move forward in an expedited manner on things like the Gold Line East, the subway, Expo, and Crenshaw. There will have to be tradeoffs. We can't do all of them all at once. Therefore, we will use Measure R as a starting point, then do our LRTP, and put together a logical package going forward. That will be difficult.

We will all benefit by working together and collaborating on these projects, rather than contesting every single project or trying to get all of them to go forward at one time, because we can't do that.

We will have to have a very aggressive program in Washington to find money for rail starts. That is going to take a lot of work from our staff, by me, by the Metro board, by the business community, and by our delegation in Washington. We really have to be successful in that endeavor. We are working on finding federal money to help pay for the cost of operations. And we need to talk with the state of California. They discontinued operating money at the same time that they implemented SB 375. We need to work in Sacramento to get a coordinated incentive program.

Your experience in Orange County, which had much less rail than Los Angeles County, was in building-out roads, tolling corridors, and managing fixed assets. Share what experience you bring from Orange Country to the non-rail part of L.A. Metro's agenda.

The widening of the SR-22 Garden Grove Freeway was the first use of design-build to widen an operating freeway in state history. We delivered that project about five years faster than under a conventional approach. Right now the I-5 is being widened in North Orange County with a more conventional approach, but there were some reasons why we took a different approach. The 91 toll lanes are a great example of congestion pricing that will be directly applicable for Los Angeles. Right now they are working on a HOT lane in Orange County on the 405-a very large project widening HOT lanes. All of those things apply directly, not just to the road projects in Los Angeles, like our 405, but also to the rail construction projects. Capital projects are difficult and challenging whether they are for roads or transit.

Regarding federal stimulus funding, what is Metro seeking? What job-generating projects are priorities?

Yesterday the board approved a $1 billion widening of the 405. That project has a substantial amount of federal stimulus money in it. That is a result showing right now and that will soon be underway. We will be working with Orange County on the federal stimulus money for high-speed rail between L.A. and Orange County. There are some great opportunities there for job creation and for improved transportation.

Included in this issue of TPR/MIR is an interview of Mehdi Morshed, the executive director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, who says it will take at least a year or more for the authority to do environmental permitting work. What is your sense of the timeline and potential of high-speed rail for California and Southern California?

There is an awful lot of opportunity here because of the state bond approved by voters in November. There is $13 billion of federal money for high-speed rail applications. One of the things that Orange County always tried to do was get ahead of the game in terms of project readiness. A few years ago, Orange paid for the initial work on environmental clearances. The L.A. to Anaheim segment is really further along than any other segment in California. There should be two starter segments, including San Francisco to San Jose, but the L.A. to Anaheim project is further along environmentally. It is relatively less expansive to do, and probably much easier to do. Los Angeles, in partnership with Orange, is in very good shape to compete for those funds.

San Diego will want a future extension so we can build a cooperative alliance with them. The LOSSAN corridor has a number of grade separations that are funded by goods movement mitigation money. In addition to that there is Measure M in Orange County and there is a bit of Measure R money from L.A. for the corridor. Plus, we have Amtrak, the state bond, and the federal money. It is a complex set of opportunities. There are a lot of sources of revenue and a number of entities that need to be involved, including Amtrak, the High-Speed Authority, Caltrans, L.A. County, and Orange County. If we do it right and figure out how to coordinate all of that, we can really get some benefit to put L.A. and Orange in a very good position.

A new state law, SB 375, links transportation and land use in California, and 2006's AB 32 includes the adoption of a Low Carbon Fuel Standard. What do these legislative mandates mean for Metro?

The focus on reducing vehicle miles traveled is going to be very difficult in Southern California. We are not built like Boston. We don't have the same sort of high-speed subways that San Francisco has all over the Bay Area. We are going to have special challenges. We should certainly focus on technical improvements like cleaner engines and alternative fuel engines that don't have the same levels of greenhouse gases. We are going to need to work on the state for operating funds. Orange County is cutting service because of the reduction of state funding for transit. At the same time that the state is requiring more transit to reduce greenhouse gases, they are de-funding transit operations. Metro is going to face a crisis on operating costs as well. We really need to get a consistent set of themes and programs out of Sacramento if we are going to be successful.

What will be the operating budget challenges for Metro over the next two years?

The budget that we will ask the board to approve in May is balanced for the year. We don't have an immediate problem in the coming 15 months. But we do have an issue after that. I've told the staff that there are no sacred cows. I am going to go out and further evaluate capital projects and see if there is anything we can get by without. There may be some deferrals we can make to manage the problem. We need to look at ways of controlling cost on the transit system-rail and bus. That system includes not just Metro rail but it includes Amtrak, Metrolink, and services through other carriers. We have to make sure that we have a rational system. We have to make sure that on the rail side we are capturing the benefit of the large investment that we have made.

On the bus side, there are some opportunities for economies, but there are also opportunities to improve the quality of service. Right now we have inadequate quality control. We have inadequate on-time performance. That sort of thing leads to reliability problems and it inconveniences our passengers. We need to try and find a place where we can control costs and also improve service quality in the coming year.

What will be high on your agenda come 2010?

Hopefully by then we will have a board-approved long-range plan. We will have the high-speed rail program coming forward. There are some great opportunities for integration on the LOSSAN Corridor. We will have clarity on what we are going to do with the subway, the Gold Line to the east, and other projects around the county. There will be some really good things to talk about. We will have some idea, hopefully, about what the federal authorization looks like. Right now we have a new president and a Congress that appear to be very friendly to infrastructure investment and job creation. It is going to be a very exciting year. If a Metro employee is not excited, they are probably in the wrong place; this is almost the center of gravity for the entire country in what is going on in transit.