Paterson Set To Nominate Jay Walder To Head MTA

London's pay-as-you-go Oyster Card

Governor David Paterson is expected to nominate Jay Walder to head the MTA. (Former executive director Eliot Sander resigned in May.) The Daily News calls him a "transit executive who has held high-level posts in London and New York" and City College's Robert Paaswell, director of the University Transportation Research Center at City College, says, "His knowledge of both the MTA and how to bring a large system well-planned into this century are without peer."

Walder worked for Transport for London between 2000 and 2006; when he left the agency (to join McKinsey as a consultant), London Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy said, "Jay's work at TfL has broken the cycle of short-term, stop-start investment and means London's transport system faces the future in a much healthier state." The Telegraph notes his work included "put[ting] together a five-year, £10bn investment in the city's London Underground, bus and road systems."

The Daily News adds that Walder's stint with the MTA in the early 1980s included being "on a fare policy task force that did the groundwork for the MTA's termination of two-fare zones" while the Post reports that he "was the author of a recent report that called for the end of the swipe MetroCard, sources said yesterday. Walder told former MTA honcho Elliot Sander about several new ways that straphangers could buzz though turnstiles like cars though E-ZPass tolls." In London, Walder helped launch the Oyster card, a pay-as-you-go card which which commuters tap on pads.

Of course, the State Senate would need to confirm Walder. The Senate comes back from a four-day weekend, after five weeks of mostly doing nothing but fighting for power, tomorrow.

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By Jen Chung in News on July 14, 2009 9:25 AM

Comments [rss]

Duffy

I agree with whitecastelrock.

The MTA has a seriously flawed set of priorities.

1. Clean the stations and make sure all infrastructure is in a working state (this includes all escalators)

2. Make the trains run on time.

Once you've mastered 1 and 2, THEN we can start talking about fancy new toys.

NannyState

Well, they obviously didn't do that in London: the platforms are icky, the trains are a mess, but the Oyster Cards work quite well...

whitecastlerock

Give him a bucket and a mop and tell him to start cleaning the filthy stations first... Having state of the art technology to access the trains is one thing, removing the decades-old stalactites of filth is another.

theboneranger

Uhhhhhh the last MetroCard turnstiles were installed in 1997 and we only fully phased out tokens for MetroCards in 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetroCard_(New_York_City)

Wasn't that whole system expensive enough? It seems to work just fine. Why do we need a new system? Making it easier to part you with your money, making it easier to track who you are and where you go.

Hopefully these are just rumors, but where there's money to be made for the city and probably someone's pal who owns the company that makes the technology you never know... a coupla kickbacks to the right gov't officials for getting the contract will getcha far when money's tight.

Doesnt the MTA keep raising fares because of "rising costs" or someshit?

Talk of now moving from MetroCards to these Oyster Card type technology is not only ridiculous but obscenely wasteful.

citykid

uuuuuhhhhh

swiping based system cost more money:

because 1- moving parts have to be replaced almost every year, costing millions in maintenance fees.

2. No one ever reuses their metrocard... wasting millions more in printing.

-This is why almost every city ive been to (See. Boston, Washington, LA, London, Paris, Hong Kong).... notice whose missing from the list?