Port Authority hires public transit ‘superstar’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This is the kind of attention to detail Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and the Port Authority are expecting from Katharine Eagan Kelleman as the agency’s new CEO: She wore a black-and-gold scarf to her introductory news conference Wednesday.
Ms. Kelleman, who will start here in January after nearly four years heading the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority in Tampa, Fla., has a background in transit planning and previously worked for transit agencies in Baltimore, Dallas and San Angelo, Texas. She has a five-year contract to replace interim CEO David Donahoe and will earn a base salary of $230,000.
Mr. Fitzgerald, who pushed to replace strong financial CEO Ellen McLean with someone with a transit background, called Ms. Kelleman
“You are getting an absolute superstar. It’s almost mindboggling what she and her people put in place. She just did wonders with what we had.” — Lesley Miller, HART board chairman
“visionary” and “a dynamic leader who can take us to the next level.”
Ms. Kelleman, 44, said she was intrigued when she heard the Port Authority job was open last spring because of the region’s reputation as a technology leader and for rebuilding its economy. But her agency was going through an overhaul of service and she was raising two young sons, so she didn’t do anything until a recruiter called to gauge her interest. Then she jumped. “Who wouldn’t want to be in the Pittsburgh area right now?” she said, calling her new job “a public servant’s dream come true.”
In Florida, Ms. Kelleman heads an agency with a $99.9 million budget, 776 employees, about 180 buses and about 14 million riders annually. Her salary is $183,248.
Port Authority is a much larger agency with a budget of $419.8 million, about 2,600 employees and about 200,000 daily riders.
HART board chairman Lesley Miller, who’s also a Hillsborough County commissioner, raved about Ms. Kelleman’s ability to lead an agency he considers grossly underfunded. Communities such as Buffalo, N.Y. and Bridgeport, Conn., have budgets similar to that of HART — which is funded by a millage levy that can be increased only by referendum — but have a population about 1.5 million less.
Still, under Ms. Kelleman’s leadership, the agency restructured its service in the past year and changed a $6 million deficit into a $3 million surplus, he said. Some areas received reduced service, he said, but the agency received few complaints because staff did a good job concentrating service where it is needed the most.
In addition, the lack of funding prompted the agency to develop innovations such as its own version of a ride-share program like Uber to feed riders to the transit system. Next week, the agency will debut the first autonomous transit vehicle in North America, a six-passenger vehicle that will serve a 0.6mile restricted transit route.
Mr. Miller described Ms. Kelleman as “young, bright and energetic.”
“It’s your gain and our loss,” Mr. Miller said. “You are getting an absolute superstar. It’s almost mindboggling what she and her people put in place. She just did wonders with what we had.
“I’m very, very, very troubled to see her leave. It hurts. It really hurts. But we understand and we wish her well.”
Ms. Kelleman was selected after a national search that drew more than 40 applicants. Jennifer Liptak, Mr. Fitzgerald’s chief of staff and the authority board vice chair who headed the search committee, said the committee pared the initial list to 14, then did remote interviews with eight, brought four in for personal interviews and did second interviews with two candidates before recommending Ms. Kelleman.
“That’s something we were really happy to see — that many good people wanting to come here,” Ms. Liptak said. “[Ms. Kelleman] just really stood out.”
For her part, Ms. Kelleman spoke about the importance of public transit, calling it “the thing that knits us together.” She tries to engage the public herself, such as being at the scene with drivers at 3 a.m. the day the revamped bus schedule began.
“Whatever your planners thought is great isn’t great if people don’t use it,” she said. “The agency runs the system, but the community owns it.”
Ms. Kelleman is married and has two boys, one 5 and the other turning 4 next week, and is eager to be moving closer to her in-laws in Hummelstown, near Harrisburg. She speaks at a mile-a-minute pace and is a self-described Twitter fiend whose staff sometimes has to rein her in.
She was chosen businesswoman of the year for 2013 by the Tampa Bay Business Journal and is a certified instructor for the American Taekwondo Association.
Ms. Kelleman said she will be involved with HART and Port Authority for the rest of the year as she learns more about the system and hears what customers want. She’s aware of concerns about a proposal for her new agency to use armed police officers to check fares and potential service cuts in the Monongahela Valley as part of a Bus Rapid Transit system between Oakland and Downtown and hopes to be prepared to deal with them when she arrives early next year.
She’s confident the agency can deliver good, innovative service.
“Pittsburgh gets talked about for everything else,” she said, “and transit is next.”