Editor:
The Metro appreciates the interest of Jonathan E.D. Richmond regarding our restructuring of bus service into service sectors (“Can Reorganization Tame the Metro Beast?” March 3, 2002). The issues he raises are mostly legitimate and ones we are addressing.

Richmond correctly notes the potential of these smaller business units to transform the services we provide to our customers. Accordingly, we are hiring top-notch transit professionals as sector general managers and restructuring the enormous talent at Metro to support their efforts and to be better able to measure their performance.

While the Metro Board will decide which, if any, responsibilities it wishes to delegate to a yet to be determined body, the sector general managers and their staffs will spend their time in the sectors developing and maintaining close contacts with their customers, communities and employees to ensure we deliver the excellent bus service each community deserves. The questions they will ask will include, “Are the buses operating on the right streets? Are they going to the right places? Are the buses scheduled efficiently? Are the buses clean?” As each manager fine tunes their operation, we anticipate cost savings which, in turn, will be reinvested into new services.

The service sector concept has been developed in direct response to the goals of the Metro Board and with the participation of the transit unions which also are committed to improving our quality of service. Sector staffs will be lean, their responsiveness level high. Metro’s operation in downtown LA will be leaner, too, while still carrying out its regional responsibilities including planning and programming, construction, and operations.

The benchmarks for success are simple: reducing costs while improving the quality of service we provide our customers; responding quickly to community needs; improving the performance and appearance of our buses, and increasing ridership with existing resources.

The sector concept is not new. Many large companies operate through a series of business units that are supported by a corporate structure that can provide many services cheaply and effectively, while functions that require local presence are based in the business unit.

The sector concept is, however, a very sincere and serious approach to reducing bureaucracy and lowering costs, while at the same time providing a high quality, safe service to the people that comprise the 1,300,000 boardings Metro carries every weekday. We owe our best efforts to our customers.

Roger Snoble
CEO, Metropolitan Transportation Authority