(The following story by Michael Dresser appeared on The Baltimore Sun website on July 11, 2010.)
BALTIMORE — When he was named to head the Maryland Transit Administration late last year, Ralign T. Wells enjoyed a brief honeymoon amid upbeat stories of the bus driver who rose through the ranks to head an agency with 3,300 employees and an annual budget of $617 million.
His rapport with MTA riders seemed to weather the problems that arose during February’s blizzards, which knocked the aboveground portion of the Metro subway out of service for about a week. But summer, with the wear and tear it brings to the vulnerable MARC system, is raising the heat on the 43-year-old administrator in multiple ways — including criticism from former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
With the MARC commuter train service afflicted with breakdowns and rider complaints, Wells and his agency have been thrust into the middle of this year’s gubernatorial campaign. And he has learned that amid controversy even a smile can be interpreted as a sign of callous disregard.
Still, even as he wrestles with persistent problems with MARC commuter train service, Wells is trying to engineer a transformation of the agency’s culture to emphasize customer service on all its rail and bus systems.
He insists he is moving forward with an ambitious, multiyear effort to improve the MTA’s service quality and communications with passengers. Wells said the reorganization he has set in motion is not a silver bullet that will eliminate the agency’s problems, but the ever-optimistic administrator is confident it will bring noticeable improvements in performance.
“If we continue on the trajectory we’re on, I sincerely see the MTA being one of the nation’s premier transit organizations,” he said.
Wells said that when he was working his way up the ranks, he noticed that there were bus problems that rail supervisors wouldn’t deal with and rail problems that bus supervisors wouldn’t deal with.
He wondered: Aren’t they all just MTA problems?
Now that he occupies the administrator’s office with the breathtaking view from the top of the William Donald Schaefer Tower, Wells is demanding that his managers take responsibility for solving problems no matter where they crop up.
“Anything that happens in their zone, they will be responsible for,” he said.
Wells is attempting to bring these fundamental changes to the way the MTA does business at the same time he is wrestling with a critical breakdown of service on MARC — one of the six modes of transportation the agency provides.
A June 21 incident in which passengers on a disabled Amtrak-operated train on the Penn Line were left to swelter on the tracks for two hours put MARC service onto the front pages and into the middle of the gubernatorial race between Ehrlich and Gov. Martin O’Malley — both of whom he has served in high-level jobs.
The controversy over MARC performance, and Ehrlich’s criticism of Wells for not attending meetings of a riders’ advisory group, brought the affable MTA chief into a political arena he had largely avoided. His efforts to ride the rails to meet personally with MARC passengers have received a mixed reaction, with some customers appreciating the gesture but others demanding his ouster.
Under the circumstances, at least one outraged MARC rider found Wells’ trademark smile off-putting, describing it as a “smirk.”
“What is funny, Mr. Wells? Why the smile? If that is your defense mechanism, please, don’t bother showing up anymore. You just make things worse,” wrote Kevin Culp of Severn in an e-mail.
Since the stranded train incident, Wells has made several important changes at MARC — including an announcement last Wednesday that he has extended customer call center hours until 11 p.m. to match the commuter trains’ schedule. Under pressure from Maryland officials, Amtrak has announced other moves, including a policy under which its trains will stop to help disabled MARC trains.
But as much as MARC’s woes and relations with Amtrak have absorbed his energies in recent weeks, Wells has also been getting out into the community to meet with transit advocates to discuss his plans for improving service on the MTA’s buses, light rail, Metro, contractor-operated commuter buses and Mobility van and taxi service for the disabled.
At the core of Wells’ effort is a reorganization plan to create a separate service quality division to make improvements in all of MTA’s core services. The program, which he said had its origins under previous administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld, is patterned after the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.
Wells said the program is being phased in and won’t be fully in place until the MTA opens its new control center now under construction at Eutaw and Saratoga streets late next year.
The new center will combine all MTA-operated core services in one location so controllers for one can easily communicate with their counterparts from other services. Supervisors, now called “service quality coordinators,” will be cross-trained so that people from the bus division understand rail operations and vice versa
Still to be determined, Wells said, is whether to locate MARC managers at the center. Unlike the Metro, for instance, MARC traffic control is the responsibility of Amtrak on the Penn Line and CSX on the Camden and Brunswick lines.
The concept, Wells explained, is to foster communication so that when a problem erupts on one line, the resources of the entire MTA can be focused on solutions. For instance, he said, if a light rail train is disabled, that system’s managers will be able to deal face-to-face with the officials who can set up a “bus bridge.” Now, the bus system, light rail and Metro control centers are scattered around the city.
Any improvement in MTA service delivery can’t come too soon for Elizabeth Muscedere of Towson.
Last Tuesday, on the hottest day of the summer so far, she found herself waiting at the Cultural Center light rail stop for about 45 minutes for a train that’s supposed to run every 10 to15 minutes. She said the only communication from the MTA was a public announcement 30 minutes into the ordeal that falsely promised a train in 2 to 3 minutes.
“They never communicate with us,” she said. “I’ve been riding the light rail on and off for more than 12 years, and I’ve never seen any real organization or communications.”
Muscedere hasn’t seen many noticeable improvements so far.
“They’ve got to step up the service,” she said. “They treat most of the riders as a captive audience.”
It is perceptions such as these that Wells, an enthusiastic cheerleader for mass transit, says he wants to dispel.
One of the advantages of the new control center, he said, is that the people who run the system’s operations will be located in the same room with those whose job it is to communicate with passengers.
But Wells acknowledged that one of the most intractable communications problems facing the agency is the failure of some of its operators to communicate with riders when problems arise. He said it’s an issue MTA management has sought to correct for years, with limited success, because some operators see informing passengers as a low priority.
“When they have a problem, they forget to multitask,” he said. “We try to explain to them they’re moving people and not commodities like fruit.”
Wells added that he’s determined to bring about a change in that thinking, even if it means using the agency’s disciplinary process.
To build up the identity of the MTA “brand,” Wells has pushed a series of changes, including a redesign of operators’ uniforms to give them what he calls a more professional appearance — not unlike that of airline pilots. Gone are the barber-style shirts formerly worn by bus drivers.
“We’re not barbers,” Wells told the Transit Riders Action Council of Metropolitan Baltimore during a recent meeting of the group.
Ed Cohen, a past president of that group, is cautiously hopeful that Wells’ strategy will bring improvements, though he doubts they can be maintained without more resources for an agency he insists has never been properly funded.
Cohen said Wells’ rise through the ranks has given him a perspective no previous MTA chief has had.
“He knows the way everything works there and he knows the way everything doesn’t work there because he’s seen it first-hand,” said Cohen, a veteran transit advocate with an extensive knowledge of all the MTA’s systems. “He wants a pro-active mind-set at MTA, and it’s an agency with a reactive culture.”
Cohen said the reorganization plan will mean that when a problem comes up, the MTA will be able to call on a pool of 20 cross-trained managers rather than four or five specialists.
“It’s just another way to stretch a dollar,” Cohen said.
And where many previous administrators served a few years, then moved on to other agencies or the private sector, Wells — a transit lifer who has received promotions in both Republican and Democratic administrations — said he has no ambitions outside the MTA.
Cohen said that’s just what the agency needs.
“We’ve never had anyone at MTA long enough, and here’s a guy who wants to be here a long time,” he said.