New Port Authority CEO has big plans

The Port Authority’s new CEO says the agency is done acting like a system struggling to get by on a limited budget.

“Pittsburgh can be the place that defines what transit looks like in the United States,” Katharine Eagan Kelleman said last week, in the course of announcing a major job expansion at the agency that will open 40 new positions. “We can’t make those upgrades unless we have the people in place to do the work.”

The 2018-19 budget proposal calls for using an estimated $7.5 million from reserve funds to balance it, but the final amount could change before the board votes on it next month. The proposed $441 million budget — up about $22 million from the current year — shows the agency is

moving past years of working with tight budgets designed to maintain the system following service cuts in 2011, creating what Ms. Kelleman called a “foundational moment.”

Ms. Kelleman was hired in January from Tampa, Fla., to bring service innovations to the agency after previous CEO Ellen McLean straightened out finances and the state passed a transportation bill that gives more money to mass transit.

“We have not focused on growing,” Ms. Kelleman said. “There’s been a focus on keeping us going. That’s not unusual in an agency that has had cuts.”

She is proposing adding positions to begin that process at a cost of about $3.7 million. The 40 new positions include 15 administrators, 21 maintenance positions and four fare collectors on the light-rail system that will be needed after the agency decided against a cashlessfare system.

The administrative jobs include a chief of staff; a new planning division with a chief development officer, director of planning and double the number of route analysts to four; a manager of capital programs; and a manager of the Bus Rapid Transit system between Oakland and Downtown Pittsburgh. Ms. Kelleman said the existing planning staff is too small to focus on maintaining the existing service and plan future expansion at a time when Pittsburgh could be on the cutting edge with technology such as self-driving vehicles and smart traffic signals being developed here.

The administrative proposals were among the recommendations of Vasti Amaro, a private consultant Ms. Kelleman hired after working with her in Tampa.

Ms. Amaro was hired under a six-month, $90,000 maximum contract to review the agency’s organizational structure.

But the budget is designed to address immediate needs and goals as well, Ms. Kelleman said. Those include improving on-time service, expanding technology for customers and developing an employee engagement program. The agency’s annual internal assessment showed scheduled service was on time about 67 percent of the time. The goal is to increase that to 73 percent over the next year by improving scheduling, hiring more maintenance workers so buses can leave on time, and having route managers be more aggressive to avoid situations where buses on the same route are only a few minutes apart due to delays.

“If our staff was only coming to work on time two out of three days, we wouldn’t be very happy,” Ms. Kelleman said. “People deserve better.”

The additional route analysts will allow the agency to be more responsive to customer needs, Ms. Kelleman said.

The agency expects its second chief information officer in six weeks to start this week after the previous one quit after one week. One of the responsibilities will be to develop a mobile fare payment app this year and oversee an increase in the agency’s social media presence,

The agency also will conduct public surveys several times a year to “find out how we’re doing,” Ms. Kelleman said.

For employees, the agency wants to improve health and safety, expand educational opportunities and use them to help create a brand for the agency.