PHILADELPHIA — Faye L.M. Moore will take the helm at SEPTA today, the first woman and the first African American to run the nation’s fifth-largest public-transportation agency, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The former SEPTA treasurer is not moving far – just five doors down the hall to the 10th-floor corner office vacated last month by departed general manager John K. “Jack” Leary Jr. – but her salary will jump dramatically. She currently makes $130,000. As general manager, she will be paid $195,000.
Renowned for balancing the books for four of the last five years and for her blunt management style, Moore is taking control at SEPTA’s 12th and Market headquarters with attitude. Despite a background restricted to finance, she is confident in the face of managing one of the region’s largest employers and its $800 million budget.
“If I don’t know it, I don’t know that I don’t know it,” she said yesterday following her unanimous appointment by SEPTA’s 15-person board.
But if she knows so much, Moore is not talking. Asked her vision for SEPTA, she demurred.
“I can’t give you any specifics about vision,” Moore said. “I am having a meeting with senior staff this afternoon to explore those issues.”
Moore’s official bio reports that she is a Virginia native, but it does not mention her age. Even SEPTA’s media department is not privy to that information.
Among the many challenges awaiting Moore is a tide of red ink projected to grow to $10 million by the end of the budget year.
Since SEPTA ended both December and January slightly in the black, there is a chance “we could end the year in a positive position,” Moore said.
The revenue shortfall is the result of the bruised economy and the 2001 fare hike that upped the cash fare to $2, the highest in the land along with San Diego’s. Since last summer, SEPTA has lost 40,000 riders. Coaxing them back is important, Moore said. Still, more than 750,000 riders a day commute on SEPTA buses, trains and streetcars in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs.
And while many see the key to SEPTA’s growth in the building of the $2 billion Schuylkill Valley Metro from Center City to Reading, Moore acknowledged that the project became even more tenuous last month when the Federal Transit Administration doubled the required state or local match from 20 to 40 percent of the total cost.
“That puts a strain on any new project,” Moore said. “We’ll have to come up with more local match or more innovative ways of financing.”
The SEPTA board is dominated by suburbanites and Republicans, and its members are known less for riding the system than their obsession with the bottom line. This created mistrust between the board and prior general managers devoted to public transit’s mostly urban customer base.
The result, chairman Pasquale “Pat” Deon said yesterday, has been a lack of communication, including the bad news two years ago that SEPTA was facing a multimillion judgment in the case of Shareif Hall, who lost his foot in a malfunctioning escalator in North Philadelphia.
“We had a [$51] million judgment against us,” Deon said. “The first time I heard about it was on the news.”
With her straightforward style and focus on finance, Moore has won the board’s acclaim, Deon said yesterday.
“With Faye, you know the good, the bad, and the ugly,” he added.
But that cozy relationship does not mean she will be a toady to the board, Moore said yesterday.
Critics who say that “will get to know me and form quite a different opinion,” she said.