By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; A01
Metro Chief Executive Richard A. White was forced out of his job yesterday, ending a tenure marked by strides in fixing complex funding problems but struggles with daily crises, including broken escalators, faulty rail cars and preventable accidents.
White had led Metro since 1996, making him the longest-serving chief executive in the agency's 30-year history and lifting his visibility within the industry. He was a frequent visitor on Capitol Hill, testifying on behalf of transit systems across the country, and recently completed a two-year term as chairman of the American Public Transportation Association.
But as he burnished a national reputation, daily service on the nation's second-busiest subway system began to falter. In the past two years, mechanical problems, crowding and management mistakes hampered subway and bus service.
Dan Tangherlini, the District's director of transportation and a Metro board member, was named interim general manager while a search is launched for White's permanent successor.
Tangherlini, who has led the city's Transportation Department since 2002 and has served on the Metro board for 10 months, will resign from both posts before he takes over for White on Feb. 16.
"No person is a person for all seasons," said Jim Graham, who represents the District and had been arguing for a management change for a year in closed sessions of the Metro board. "Mr. White was a person whose season has come and gone. We need a new person."
White will receive a severance package that will guarantee him a six-figure annual income for life.
White blamed Metro's problems on a lack of funding and the aging of the transit system. But a series of articles published in The Washington Post last year detailed how Metro mismanaged nearly $1 billion in rail car and escalator contracts, ignored safety warnings and failed to effectively manage its program to transport the disabled. Last month, the paper chronicled how the Metrobus system was underfunded and neglected by management.
White pledged to fix the problems and made some personnel changes and reorganized his staff. But progress wasn't fast enough for Metro's directors, who agreed in private talks last month to ask White to leave.
His ouster had been brewing for months as the directors grew disillusioned with his performance and his most solid supporters turned to skeptics. The board put White on notice that it wanted improvements in several areas, saying he needed to connect better with Metro's employees and riders.
Meanwhile, Metro began facing increasing scrutiny in the past year from local officials and Congress. In July, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) introduced legislation that would require Metro to hire an inspector general to keep an eye on spending and management, investigate employee reports of wrongdoing and report on the findings.
Because three years remain on White's contract, he will receive a severance package that includes a cash payment of $238,000, continued health insurance and an annual pension of $116,000 for the rest of his life. Upon his death, his spouse will receive $58,000 annually until she dies. He also receives a SmarTrip card good for free travel on Metro for life.
White, 53, who declined to speak to reporters yesterday, has told his staff that he is considering job offers from the private sector.
His arrival at Metro marked the pinnacle of his career. He had spent years working as a federal bureaucrat, then as a manager at New Jersey Transit and later as the top executive at Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco before he was tapped for the key job at "America's subway" in the nation's capital.
He is widely credited with saving the Metrobus system from collapse and with keeping Metro running during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when police were advising the subway system to shut down. "Dick White has done a tremendous job for nearly a decade at America's best transit system," said Pierce R. Homer, Virginia's transportation secretary.
White didn't spend much time mingling with the rank and file; he talked to policymakers about Metro's role in the region and the need for local governments to create reliable funding for transit. Because of his efforts, the D.C. Council has approved dedicated funding for Metro, and the legislatures in Richmond and Annapolis are expected to discuss it during the coming sessions.
"He was part of the whole regional dialogue about highways and land use and everything else, which I thought was terrific," said Ron Kirby, chief transportation planner at the Washington Council of Governments. "He got this issue of adequate funding on the radar screen. . . . That was a pretty heavy lift."
White has acknowledged that he grew distracted from the nuts and bolts of the buses and trains, on which 1.1 million commuters depend each day.
"The whole issue of how you make the trains run on time and get the escalators working -- it's been a long time on some of those things, and that's probably what hurt him," Kirby said.
T. Dana Kauffman, who represents Fairfax County and chairs the Metro board, said that Tangherlini can make any kind of changes he deems necessary and that the interim position could become permanent. "This is not a caretaker role," Kauffman said. "We need a dynamic individual to be able to respond to these challenges. . . . He needs to do whatever he needs to do to make this organization work."
Tangherlini, 38, lives on Capitol Hill and is a daily rider of the Metro system. White drove to work from his Fairfax home in his Metro-issued SUV until he was pressured by the board to resume daily commuting on the Orange Line in 2004.
Where White was a self-described introvert, Tangherlini is easygoing and approachable. "He's a personable guy," said Bob Grow of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. "He's easy to talk to and work with. Not that Dick wasn't, but I have a closer working relationship with Dan."
Metro's top manager must answer to local and state governments in Virginia, Maryland and the District, as well as the federal government. The chief executive also must manage a workforce of 10,000.
Tangherlini isn't afraid to try new things. He launched the D.C. Circulator, a bus service with two lines that are designed to better connect parts of the city that aren't well served by Metro. He also is working to build a light rail line in Anacostia, the first of its kind in the region.
"It is amazing what he and his team have accomplished in a short period of time," said his boss, D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
Before working in the city's Department of Transportation, Tangherlini was chief financial officer for the D.C. police department. He also has worked as a senior program analyst at the U.S. Department of Transportation and has worked in the Office of Management and Budget.
Jack Corbett, co-founder of a Metro riders group, said Tangherlini differs from White in at least one important way: He rides Metro. "One of the things our people talk about is how often we run across him on the bus system and the rail system," Corbett said.
Staff writer Steven Ginsberg contributed to this report.
