RE: Lew Gould is a _____(place your favorite adjective here)

See the Bucks County Courier Times article at:

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/ ... 54229.html

in which former SEPTA Board Chairman Lewis Gould advocates chopping one of the Chestnut Hill lines as a money saving device.

What cave did he crawl out of? I haven't heard about him since he was forced to resign in disgrace from the SEPTA Board.

Let's not forget the infamous Bill Stead affair, which made SEPTA the openly acknowledged laughing stock of the transit industry. Admittedly, neither of the gentlemen in question were wellsprings of mental vitality.

Yes, SEPTA does waste a great deal of money. Operating service to both CHW and CHE is not one of those problems, however, IMHO.

Bill R. wrote:Let's not forget the infamous Bill Stead affair, which made SEPTA the openly acknowledged laughing stock of the transit industry. Admittedly, neither of the gentlemen in question were wellsprings of mental vitality.

Admittedly l'affaire Stead is now ancient history but at least he

(1) rode the system himself and
(2) asked why things were being done the way they were and whether there might be better alternatives

neither of which can be said about Faye "Less".

For that, Stead got run out of town on a rail, no doubt one ripped up from a bustituted trolley line.

JeffK wrote:Admittedly l'affaire Stead is now ancient history but at least he

(1) rode the system himself and
(2) asked why things were being done the way they were and whether there might be better alternatives

neither of which can be said about Faye "Less".

For that, Stead got run out of town on a rail, no doubt one ripped up from a bustituted trolley line.

Stead did stir things up in his rather brief tenure. One of the more unsuccessful things was to reorganize all operations on functional lines, so one department was responsible for maintenance of all vehicles, and another was responsible for operating the vehicles--and the division of the departments went all the way up to the AGM level. As a result, whenever there was a problem, the two departments would spend more effort pointing fingers at the other than they did fixing the problem.

That management structure remained in place for a coupla years or so after Stead's departure (while Prader from Purchasing was Acting GM, and into Uncle Lou's term).

Bill R. wrote:See the Bucks County Courier Times article at:

What cave did [Gould] crawl out of? I haven't heard about him since he was forced to resign in disgrace from the SEPTA Board.

Let's not forget the infamous Bill Stead affair, which made SEPTA the openly acknowledged laughing stock of the transit industry. Admittedly, neither of the gentlemen in question were wellsprings of mental vitality.

(a) What was the Bill Stead affair and (b) what happend to this Gould guy?

FWIW, the adjective I choose to use would be dumba**...

ctrabs74 wrote:

(a) What was the Bill Stead affair and (b) what happend to this Gould guy?

Anyone else may jump in to correct me if I'm wrong about certain things: I admit it's possible as it was a long time ago.

Bill Stead was hired to fill the vacant SEPTA GM position in September 1987. He came from San Francisco MUNI after a nation-wide search. While at MUNI, he was GM, and he was used to (presumably) a much more coherent organization.

As Matt Mitchell said, when Stead arrived, he almost immediately began making changes. This resulted in emnity from within SEPTA in the upper and mid-level manager ranks, especially since he was an outsider. Allegedly, they took every opportunity to stab him in the back.

Shortly after he arrived, an incident occured one day just prior to the PM rush hour. A stray dog was sighted on the MFSE tracks somewhere near the I-95 tunnel portal. MFSE service was halted to look for (and remove) the dog.

Bill Stead wanted service to resume. He began issuing orders that mid-level management could not follow (making PA announcements on the MFSE - there was no PA system in 1987) or would not follow (for fear of reprecussions from PETA or it's predecessor - he wanted to run over the dog if it was found to be in the way). There was speculation at the time that mid-level management already knew he was on his way out.

The resulting rush hour was a fiasco. When service was restored they didn't even platoon the trains. People waited forever to get onboard at stations like 13th Street and 15th Street, because the trains were already loaded with people from further upstream.

Lew Gould, the current SEPTA Board Chairman at the time, publicly criticized Bill Stead over this incident.

Shortly thereafter, Bill Stead resigned and returned to San Francisco, claiming that he had been the recipient of "threatening phone calls" telling him that it would be in his best interest to leave Philadelphia and SEPTA. His entire tenure was less than two month (maybe 5 weeks?).

The media blamed Lew Gould for mis-handling the entire affair, and also implying that he had somehow been connected with the threatening phone calls to Stead. Public pressure for Gould's ouster grew and he was finally forced to resign (early the next year, I believe).

Keep in mind that SEPTA was in crisis (sound familiar ?) at the time, and Bill Stead was portrayed as the savior of the system. That he turned out not to be (and given the way that he left) meant somebody had to be (and, realistically, should have been) held accountable.

One other note: I specifically remember after the fact a news article, perhaps by the Philadelphia Daily News, in which a reporter sought comment from the other GM candidates not selected. The response from one was to burst out laughing in the reporter's ear upon hearing the news, and then to hang up the phone without further comment.

Bill's covered the story pretty well, so I'll just add a few bits.

IIRC, Stead was also responsible for condemning the Brill Bullets, on grounds their frames had deteriorated to the point of being unsafe. That threw the P&W into turmoil, and they ended up busing the line for a while until the ex-CTA sets could be found and put in service. That pretty much wiped out the traditional suburb-to-city ridership on the line, and to this day it is has been a reverse-commute-oriented service. That decision of Stead's also caused a lot of anger through management.

Getting back to Gould, there were a lot of allegations thrown around about SEPTA's contracting policies; allegations of favoritism and lousy planning. A bunch of investigations ensued, but few of them (perhaps to the Inquirer's dismay) found anything rising to the level of impropriety, let alone anything that would result in criminal charges.

F'rinstance, it was discovered that Bombardier let one of Gould's children ride with some Bombardier officials on a corporate jet back up to New Hampshire, where she was going to college, at the time Bombardier was seeking the contract for the push-pull trains. That contract and surrounding controversy was investigated by the Auditor General, who concluded that though the appearances were questionable, the only thing SEPTA did wrong was to not pick up the option for additional cars (in other words, SEPTA had gotten a good deal). Jim Cira, who was railroad boss at the time, was dismissed over the matter. It was alleged he was billing for consulting work at the same time he was drawing his SEPTA salary.

It should be noted that there was plenty of blame to go around for all this [stuff], and Gould should not be seen as the only cause of SEPTA's managerial problems. However, accountability was lacking, and you can say it was a matter of the board failing to do its job, and Gould failing to set the right tone.

Also, SEPTA had an ongoing budget crisis in that era, not unlike what we've had recently, though it was handled in a less ham-handed manner than Faye Moore and Pat Deon did.

Gould resigned from the Board a few months after Stead quit, and was succeeded as chairman by J. Clayton Undercofler, who overall did a pretty good job as chairman.

Ultimately, I think Gould got what he deserved. I'm sure all the allegations and investigations and bad press were unpleasant for him and his family, but clearly he brought much of it on himself, for failing to run the show in a more transparent fashion.

One more thing: part of the reason this controversy reached the level it did was the work of Mark Bowden (later of Black Hawk Down), who was covering the transportation beat for the Inquirer at that time. Bowden did a lot of solid old-fashioned newspapering, and it helped that his editors were hot to try and take down Gould as a means of getting Paul Bartle and the Montgomery County Republican organization. Once Gambaccini was appointed GM, the Inquirer started treating SEPTA with kid gloves, so stuff that would be the subject of editorial campaigns elsewhere (like the RRD's shameful on-time record or the Keystone Kops response when the motion detector was found in Powelton Yard) never got the investigations they deserved. While the editors may believe that criticizing SEPTA management is an act of disloyalty that will somehow result in SEPTA not getting enough funding, I don't think that attitude has been beneficial to the riders or the taxpayers.

--MDM

Matthew Mitchell wrote:Ultimately, I think Gould got what he deserved.

Yes.

Stead was also responsible for condemning the Brill Bullets, on grounds their frames had deteriorated to the point of being unsafe. That threw the P&W into turmoil, and they ended up busing the line for a while until the ex-CTA sets could be found and put in service.

I can't defend much of what Stead did, but operators told me the undercarriages of the Bullets were more rust than metal in many places. Remember, there had been a series of serious accidents on the P&W. Some weren't SEPTA's fault, such as vandalism that destroyed one Bullet (207, I think - ?), but there was also the horrendous crash when a throttle stuck and Strafford car 167 ran into the waiting room, killing a passenger. IIRC the operator couldn't even warn people in the terminal because the radio system was jammed.

The Bullets were long past their expected lifespan and SEPTA knew it, but they had turned down an opportunity to replace them by expanding the Media-Sharon Hill K-car order. I believe that decision long predated Stead's tenure.

That pretty much wiped out the traditional suburb-to-city ridership on the line.

The compound failures fundamentally changed the character of the line. The parking lot at station I used for so many years (King Manor) used to pretty much fill up by 8 a.m. with riders inbound from the surrounding bedroom communities. Now, even with part of the lot taken over for SEPTA utility uses, there are plenty of spaces. At the same time, the outbound P&W cars are SRO.

Once Gambaccini was appointed GM, the Inquirer started treating SEPTA with kid gloves, so stuff that would be the subject of editorial campaigns elsewhere (like the RRD's shameful on-time record or the Keystone Kops response when the motion detector was found in Powelton Yard) never got the investigations they deserved.

That attitude persists. I spent about 2 hours on the phone with one of their current (part-time) transit reporters, detailing problems ranging from the RRD on-time record to EPA violations at Victory Avenue. The reporter kept asking for more and more info, so I figured maybe they were finally gonna do a full-blown investigation. About 2 weeks later I got a call back saying that one of the editors had told the reporter to spike the story. No wonder Philadelphia is still "corrupt and contented" 100 years after Lincoln Steffens.