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Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Transdev isn't in charge anymore so here are some Transdev people to be in charge of things

Reshuffling at RTA under the new "hybrid" management system.
But under a new contract that will be inked by Sept. 1, Transdev will handle maintenance and operations of the agency’s buses, ferries and streetcars, but not the agency’s administrative and leadership functions. That will fall to Wiggins and former interim Executive Director Jared Munster, now the agency’s chief administrative officer.

Also part of the cabinet is Mark Major, a veteran transit official who will serve as the RTA’s chief financial officer, the role most recently held by Ronald Baptiste of Transdev. Major was a finalist for Wiggins’ job and a former chief investment officer for Transdev. Baptiste, another transit veteran, will move into a separate role on Transdev’s smaller New Orleans team, which will be led by Darryll Simpson.

Wiggins also aims to hire a chief operating officer in the coming weeks.
Good to see Major landed on his feet.  As for the rest of the new management scheme, I've never seen the point of a slightly less privatized structure if the operation is still by and large privatized.

Wiggins says he hopes to expand service but isn't ready to talk about how just yet. There's
"low hanging fruit," he says but looks like he's still asking where.
“Being new to the organization, I know that there is some low-hanging fruit, and we will talk about things we will address in very short order,” Wiggins said to the RTA’s board.

“How do we provide better services to the New Orleans East? To Algiers? How do we really put the ‘R’ back in regionalization when it comes to the RTA?”
This month, RTA has been paying a consultant to run a series of meetings designed to provide the appearance of public input.  I'd ask what they hope to learn if I thought they really wanted to learn anything.  We need more routes, greater frequency, and later hours with fares as close to zero as possible. How hard is that to figure out?

Anyway, a couple of the meetings got postponed by Barry but there are a few still planned for this week.  Here is the schedule in case you feel like shouting into the void.

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