David Gunn called in to assess agency

Ex-general manager David Gunn to assess D.C. area Metro system

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 18, 2010

Could he be coming back, I'm wondering.........

"Robert Paniagua"
Could he be coming back, I'm wondering.........

No. The article states that this is not the purpose of asking him for his expertise.

I don't see that in the article.

Regardless of what's being said or not said now, it's certainly possible that there is interest on at least one side of the table.

This will be interesting to see Gunn really say it like it is. I also wonder if he will actually ruffle the feathers of the board as well...

They said he has two weeks to check out the problems. Question becomes, is two weeks enough time to investigate all of Metro's problems?

tommyboy6181 wrote:This will be interesting to see Gunn really say it like it is. I also wonder if he will actually ruffle the feathers of the board as well...

One of the advantages of being the "expert from out of town" is the ability to say what no one locally can or will - such as "The biggest problem is the no-nothing petty pols on the Board..." if such were true, and then walk away. (We here know the WMATA Board is no such thing, it's always used its daily personal experience on the system to provide insight, and is focused on improving the system, with no thought whatsoever for nest-feathering, kickbacks etc...right?)

The downside is, once he's gone again, will anyone implement any changes he recommends?

Everyone: With the recent links Farecard has posted is the Washington Post making Metro look worse then things actually are?

It seems like calling in David Gunn to look hard at Metro's problems is the right thing to do here...

I recall from my visits to Washington primarily in the 70s and 80s how much pride Metro had and I learned a lot about the system back in those days - it was the state of the art for rail transit in the US at one point...

For some reason I am thinking of the Chicago song "Harry Truman" from the 1970s - let's change the lyrics a little and say:
"Metro needs you,David Gunn - David would you please come back?"

Thoughts from MACTRAXX

MACTRAXX wrote:Everyone: With the recent links Farecard has posted is the Washington Post making Metro look worse then things actually are?

Of course they are, they're in the (dying) business of selling newspapers, not reporting on things as the actually are. I don't think that there's any disagreement that the agency has some serious problems that need addressing, but it isn't like this is a completely dysfunctional system that never gets anybody to their destination.

In the transit world David Gunn is "The Man". Just like Lee Iacocca in the auto industry years ago, and Bill Bratton among big city police chiefs. They should hire Gunn as Catoe's replacment. If anyone can get WMATA back on "the right track" he would be the guy! He was doing such a good job galvanizing the employees at Amtrak, they were wearing t-shirts that said "Proud to be working under the Gunn". That's probably why those idiots in the Bush administration fired him.

I'm surprised we've not been discussing the Gunn Report..

http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/p ... ION(2).pdf at length.

One issue I saw was page 9 where the most reliable cars are the 6000's, but the LEAST are the 4000 & 5000 series!

There are a couple of things in that pull no punches unsugar coated presentation that I have been complaining about for years.

page 9

Cars
Can't meet service requirements.
850 cars 1,126 fleet 276 spares

Don't wash tunnels.

I love this report for a few reasons:
1) It is stating the obvious about how screwed up the organization is.
2) David Gunn states that the board is the first place that is screwed up.
3) Common sense solutions were presented.

These slides don't stand very well on their own - it's hard to make sense of some of the bullet points without additional context. Is there a full report floating around somewhere that accompanies the presentation, or has that not been released?

Slide 22 caught my attention. It seems to be saying that WMATA needs to make improvements in the areas of setting goals and metrics, developing organizational charts, budgeting, project planning, and progress reporting. Those 5 areas basically sum up "what management does." If WMATA management is deficient in all of them - what the heck HAVE they been doing???

(On the other hand, an alternative read of the slide would be that Gunn has a preferred system for addressing those 5 areas and WMATA's system may simply be different and not necessarily deficient. One of the many reasons why seeing the full report would be helpful...)