With Paul Wiedefeld stepping down in six months, Metro’s board will be looking for a new leader to steer WMATA through some of its most trying times.

Using what we know about the system, and through interviews and statements from politicians and transit advocates, we put together a “job posting” to highlight what the next general manager will face when they come on board. (And no, this is not the official job posting. Metro’s board is still working on that, we just hope this is a clever way to present the news).

Summary/Objective

Metro is looking for the right person to lead the transit agency during a time of great transition. Metrorail ridership is down 78% from pre-pandemic times. This person will have to chart a course for an uncertain future where white-collar workers, which make up a bulk of Metrorail ridership and Metro’s fare revenue, may telework more in the future. Bus ridership is down 60% and Metro is facing a driver shortage because of nationwide labor trends and the omicron variant.

Metro’s General Manager is in charge of the nation’s third-busiest rail system and sixth-largest bus system in the country. This person will manage a workforce of 13,000 people and have ten direct VP reports. Above the GM is Metro’s board of directors which is made up of eight primary members and eight alternate members appointed by the D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and federal governments.

The General Manager position is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the region as Metro touches many peoples’ lives to get to work, home, and play. During non-pandemic times, the District’s population swells 79% during the day and has the second-highest influx of daytime residents in the country with workers coming in from Virginia and Maryland, many by Metro.

The General Manager oversees rail and bus operations, safety, budget, working with government agencies and politicians, infrastructure and maintenance, planning, capital projects, community engagement, marketing, and serves as the figurehead of Metro. Other duties as assigned.

This person must move quickly from managing to responding to crises and short and long-term planning. They must be both an administrator and a politician in a way. It is a complex and difficult job.

Essential Functions

1. Safety, safety, safety.
   • The transit agency hasn’t had a passenger death since 2015, but it has had collisions, derailments, and poor incident management at times in recent years. Safety for passengers, staff, and the public is the top priority. Metro has made some strides in improving the infrastructure, but still has work to do on clearing the 7000-series train issues and getting the Rail Operations Control Center to not violate safety standards.
2. Navigate a new reality for commuting and transportation and set service levels to respond to the changing landscape.
   • Rail makes the most money for the agency, bus serves the people most in need including low-income workers, and Metro Access serves people with disabilities with critical door-to-door service. All of those services were affected by the pandemic and patterns may continue to change.
   • Metro is focusing on equity, safety, and reliability in its future service plan decisions.
   • Metro also adopted a Bus Transformation Plan to make the bus system function better. In 2022, it will focus on revamping its bus routes.
   • The new GM will have to oversee Metro’s transition to a 100% electric fleet by 2045.
3. Manage a workforce of 13,000 people and relations with multiple unions.
   • Metro’s largest union ATU Local 689 has butted heads with GMs in the past. Their contract expires June 2024, setting up another potentially bitter fight over wages, working conditions, and privatization of services. Last go-round, the union authorized a strike but workers never did actually leave job sites.
4. Formulate and pitch budget and service options to the Board of Directors.
   • Metro’s latest budget was $4.8 billion. During the pandemic, Metro staff faced tough decisions and suggested massive cuts, including nixing weekend service and closing 20 rail stations to save money. They avoided that because of federal funding, but a new fiscal cliff looms in 2024 when federal relief dollars run out.
5. Oversee big capital projects and planning.
   • Metro is opening a new infill station this year as well as operating service on a new extension of the Silver Line.
   • Plans are also in the works on how to address train crowding in the tunnels under the Potomac River that could mean massive expansion. And Virginia is studying whether to expand Metrorail to Woodbridge.
6. Set rules and policies for the transit system.
   • Want to allow concessions in stations? That’s up to you to pitch to the board. Want to try to prohibit repeat weapons and sex assault offenders from the system for a time? You can ask for that, too.
7. Engage with the region’s stakeholders.
   • The job includes working with D.C., Virginia, Maryland, the federal government, Congress, state General Assemblies, regional transportation groups, and nine localities that subsidize service.
   • The GM has gone in front of Congress before for safety issues and will be there again on Feb. 9.
   • Take input and fix issues pointed out by the newly-formed independent oversight body, the Metrorail Safety Commission, which recently sidelined the 7000-series trains for wheel issues.
8. Oversee a Transit Police department that has come under fire from the Inspector General for not investigating complaints and possible crimes or not documenting the investigations.

What Others Are Seeking

• Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia says the next GM must be “equally committed to maintaining transparency, cooperating with state, local, and federal partners, and most importantly, prioritizing safety.”
• Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland says Metro is in a difficult situation and that “It’s going to take a transformative leader. It’s an enormous job, and trying to find the right person to transform and turn Metro around is going to be a big challenge. …We look forward to finding somebody that will continue to make some improvements.”
• Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia says “it is imperative that the next General Manager of Metro bring transit expertise and a willingness to tackle the culture of mediocrity that has plagued this system. Failure to do so will cause a backslide in the progress Wiedefeld made.”
• Joe McAndrew, who heads transportation policy for the business group Greater Washington Partnership says Metro needs “a good manager, a trusted and savvy public communicator, someone that is comfortable with politics/politicians. Ideally, that person would help diversify the transportation leadership ranks in the U.S. as well.” He says there’s no “unicorn” that can solve all the problems on their own.

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work

• Full Time General Manager and CEO
• Salaried position
• Hours include a regular workday, but often include off-hour emergencies (like a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call about a fire in a station), attending early meetings with stakeholders, and evening public hearing meetings.

Salary Range

• Metro pays a competitive salary. In fact, it’s currently the highest salary for a general manager/CEO of any transit agency in the country. Current GM Paul Wiedefeld makes $527,000 a year, more than $125,000 higher than the next best-paid transit CEO.
• (Wiedefeld makes almost the most of any public servant in the DMV region, save a dozen or so university presidents and medical professors in Virginia and Maryland. He makes more than the highest-paid federal government employees, including President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci).

Required Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree preferred
• Management experience of large operations, transit experience preferred
• Metro has had a wide range of general managers:
  • Metro’s first GM, Jackson Graham, was Major General of the Army Corps of Engineers before taking over the new system from 1967 to 1975. He had to build a staff, come up with engineering the system, and work through bitter political battles. He was frustrated with a fractured board and politicians meddling with other ideas to complete the system and resigned.
  • Metro’s second GM, Ted Lutz, was a 31-year-old federal budget analyst from Minnesota who had never managed more than a dozen people. But Metro was moving into a new phase and needed a “bean counter.”
  • Carmen Turner started her government career as a typist and moved her way up through the ranks of USDOT to become acting director of civil rights there before taking over at WMATA from 1983 to 1990. She was the nation’s first Black woman to lead a transit agency.
  • Richard A. White served as head of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco before coming to WMATA from 1996-2006.
  • Richard Sarles, who had the job for four years before Wiedefeld was the former head of New Jersey Transit.
  • Wiedefeld worked in private transportation consulting, headed up Maryland’s transit operations, and was head of BWI airport before coming to Metro.

Additional Qualifications

• Ability to withstand getting dragged in front of Congress
• Ability to withstand getting dragged by all of Twitter
• Comfort with briefing the president on snow operations
• Can work collaboratively with politicians from 14 different jurisdictions
• Have the patience to gently remind people that the Silver Line is being built by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and the Purple Line is being built by the state of Maryland and private partners.
• Can carefully wade into the standard cultural practice of walk left, stand right on Metro escalators. Metro wants you to stand only, please.
• Courage to tell riders not to use your transit system at times.
• Ability to deal with competing interests of protecting overnight hours for maintenance versus nightlife interests in the District.
• Talent to build and foster an inclusive, encouraging, and diverse workplace
• Creativity, flexibility, and resourcefulness
• Must be vaccinated or tested weekly.
• Knowhow to transition Metro’s workforce back from the pandemic and into multiple new offices across the region.
• Accept that few will notice or give praise when things are going right

Hiring Manager

• The WMATA Board’s Executive Committee is made up of board chair Paul Smedberg of Virginia, Lucinda Babers of D.C., new Maryland Transportation Secretary and WMATA board member Jim Ports of Maryland, and Sarah Kline, a representative of the federal government who sits on the board.
• The committee is conducting a national search and will discuss succession planning at the Board’s Feb. 10 meeting.
• WMATA’s board is still in the early stages of formulating the exact job description and qualifications.
• The board may also be hiring for a transit general manager at the same time as Atlanta’s MARTA, who lost their CEO after he died by suicide in recent days.

Benefits

• Free Metro rides and a host of other stuff.

This concludes our faux job description. Good luck to the board in finding the right person.