Metro's Steady Navigator
Catoe Gets Good Marks as Crisis Manager in Tumultuous First Year

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2008

Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr.'s cellphone often starts beeping at 5 a.m. Many of the alerts inform him of routine track maintenance. But for the past year, far too many have been about broken-down trains, track fires and other problems that delay riders.

"If I get to 6 and there's no beep, it's a good day," he said.

It has been a turbulent first year for the chief of the nation's second-busiest rail and fifth-busiest bus system. He began the job after several train and bus accidents that resulted in employee and pedestrian deaths. Track fires and mechanical breakdowns led to a steady decline in the subway's on-time performance. An inherited budget crisis triggered an agency overhaul, layoffs and the largest fare and fee increases in Metrorail's 32-year history.

"Some honeymoon," Catoe told Metro board members recently, summarizing his first 12 months.

The board, which recently completed Catoe's performance review, gives the Washington native generally high marks. But now that Catoe has finished "mucking out the stalls," as former board member T. Dana Kauffman put it, the real test will be whether he can move the agency forward, make change permanent and rely less on stopgap measures.

Catoe started a safety program to cut injuries and accidents by half within five years. He improved track maintenance, which has dramatically reduced debris fires. Rail personnel are replacing faulty parts blamed for some train breakdowns.

Much remains to be done. Catoe needs to quickly improve customer service and on-time performance. And he must plan for the future. The agency needs a new capital plan to replace critical infrastructure, including about 300 rail cars -- more than a fourth of the fleet -- that are more than 30 years old. He also faces a looming personnel crisis: 30 percent of Metro employees, including hard-to-replace mechanics, will be eligible to retire in two years.

The performance of Metro carries extraordinarily high stakes for the regional bus and train system and the metropolitan area. In a region with the second-worst traffic in the country, access to reliable mass transit is vital to easing congestion and for shaping population growth and development.

About 1.2 million passengers ride Metro on an average weekday, and Catoe has pledged to make Metro the country's premier transit agency.

He is the first to acknowledge that daily performance needs to improve.

"I'm not happy with the customer service we have, and I'm not happy with the reliability of service," he said. "I'm my biggest critic."

Arlington County Board member Chris Zimmerman, who became Metro board chairman Feb. 28, said real change will take time. "There was a lot of putting the house in order, and he's done a pretty good job of that," Zimmerman said.

This month, Catoe and the board are expected to finalize performance goals to reduce train service disruptions caused by mechanical problems and improve bus on-time performance.

When Catoe took the job in January 2007, he was the fourth general manager to head the agency in 12 months. The last permanent chief was Richard A. White, who was forced out after nine years. Catoe, who receives $360,000 a year, oversees a $1.2 billion operating budget and a 10,000-person organization. He was the second-ranking official of the Los Angeles transit system.

Catoe pledged to boost safety and service at Metro after a string of fatal accidents. "The toughest issue was coming onboard after the fatalities," Catoe said during a meeting with reporters in January.

Catoe, 60, continues to be surprised when strangers stop him in the grocery store to talk about Metro. Unlike other major metropolitan areas, he said, riders in the Washington region are "very educated, very opinionated and can communicate very effectively."

Nancy Iacomini, chairman of the Metro-appointed Riders' Advisory Council, said she is encouraged by Catoe's willingness to listen to customers. When riders bombarded Metro with complaints after officials decided in December to run shorter trains on weekends, Catoe quickly reversed the decision after talking to customers on a weekend ride.

His leadership style is low-key. "I don't raise my voice. I don't beat on tables and shout," he said. "I have high expectations, and if you're unable to perform, then in that same tone, I'll tell you that you need to find something else to do."

Senior managers who have been fired include the head of track and structures, the chief engineer and the accounting director.

His executive team includes several close aides from Los Angeles and a handful of others he promoted from within.

While praising Catoe for having "many elements of a strong team," Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari noted that Catoe "probably needs additional assistance in some specific areas." He declined to elaborate.

According to Metro sources and others who work regularly with the agency, Catoe needs to add more experience to the operations team and improve coordination by making sure top managers share critical information. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their jobs. In several instances, they said, follow-through on projects is spotty, and good ideas have met with resistance from middle- and lower-level managers who are afraid they will be blamed for mistakes.

In October, officials launched a major initiative to improve customer communications, one of the agency's biggest problems. A senior manager was put in charge. Wireless microphones were supposed to be given out so that station managers could leave their kiosks and relay information to riders on station platforms.

According to Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein, 20 of 39 targeted stations have received microphones. But operations personnel said the microphones are not working properly at some downtown locations.

The manager assigned to oversee the customer service initiative left Metro in January and was not replaced. Instead, the duties were added to those of Deputy General Manager Gerald Francis, who oversees daily rail and bus operations and a host of other key areas.

Catoe made radical changes to his leadership team, and "anytime you put a new team together, you have to develop working relations and make adjustments to style, and you need to develop trust," he said. "That's improving every week."

He will probably to make more agency changes after an outside expert completes an assessment of the operations staff, which includes bus, rail, MetroAccess, training, planning and scheduling.

Advancing an agenda at Metro is not easy.

The politics of Metro's governing board means working with 12 officials from three jurisdictions, a job Maryland's Porcari described as "an exercise in personality management."

Metro's bureaucratic culture is also famous for resisting change.

When Metro ran a pilot program in the fall teaching basic Spanish phrases to bus drivers, it was well received by drivers. But the program took several months to launch because human resource managers were worried about public reaction at the height of anti-illegal immigration sentiment, sources said.

To encourage creative problem-solving and good customer service, Catoe has boosted employee recognition. He spotlights individuals at board meetings and at monthly lunches he hosts. One recent lunch group included a track employee who helped riders even as they yelled profanities at him and a retired mechanic who made parts for old rail cars because manufacturers no longer do.

But in early December, Catoe took a different approach.

Frustrated by "a slowdown in progress," he warned 70 managers that all employees, not just those in operations, need to improve customer service and system reliability.

"Sometimes to move forward and progress, we have to break out of our comfortable ways of doing business," he said, according to a copy of his speech. "Some of the things that we may have been doing since the beginning of time may not make a lot of sense when you step back and think about it."

It's all right to take risks, he told them, "as long as the goal is to improve service." He urged them to remember their duties at all times.

"It does not help our image if customers see some of our employees sitting in trucks sipping coffee, talking in groups at station platforms or outside stations" during busy times. "Why is it that I am observing and troubled by these instances but the managers are not seeing these or taking any corrective action?"

Catoe said he has noticed improvement in the weeks since.

On other service-related issues, rail managers are trying to run trains with the same series of car to troubleshoot mechanical problems. Metro also plans to implement new customer service standards by fall, including a "mystery rider" program to assess performance.

Catoe also wants more training for frontline employees, especially station managers, so they know what kind of customer service they should provide. Metro is reviewing standards used by the London subway as a possible model.

One of his main challenges is reforming an agency that some workers say has served as an easy employer for those with family and friend connections. In his speech to managers, Catoe said it was time for everyone to get onboard.

Some employees might "feel they have done enough changing, that they only have a few years left before retiring," he said in an interview.

His message to them: "There is no free retirement job."