MARTA is failing. The people of metro Atlanta deserve better. New leadership is needed.
That’s the kind of direct statement MARTA officials should have issued when they announced Thursday that CEO Collie Greenwood was leaving his position early, after a tenure marked by failure and mismanagement.
Instead, the MARTA board chose to lean into the fact that Greenwood’s U.S. visa had expired. While that is true, it is also true, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, that pressure to remove Greenwood came to a head six weeks ago and that the board had been under increasing pressure to replace the CEO. The visa became a convenient truth.
In praising Greenwood and failing to acknowledge MARTA’s problems, the board again shirked responsibility for the fact that the nation’s sixth largest metropolitan area lacks a world-class public transit system, due in part to poor management.
Under Greenwood’s leadership, MARTA failed the city on multiple fronts. It is not clean, safe and reliable. It has been plagued by labor issues and customer experience problems. And, it has failed to deliver major projects on time.
Owning those issues and holding the person at the top accountable would have sent a signal to the public, the business community and city officials that MARTA is serious about addressing its problems and fixing them.
The problem with soft executive landings designed to allow good people to depart the stage with grace is that the public sees through them and distrusts the people left to take the organization forward.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
MARTA has been plagued by a string of high-profile missteps and it has compounded the damage by poor communications. In the same meeting in which they announced Greenwood’s “early retirement,” officials declared there was “nothing wrong” with the escalator at the Vine City station that malfunctioned after Monday’s Beyoncé concert, sending seven people to the hospital and injuring four others.
Instead, MARTA Chief Customer Experience Officer (and new acting CEO) Rhonda Allen seemed to blame her customers, saying there were too many people on the escalator, causing it to rapidly speed up and abruptly stop, hurling people through the air like a rodeo bull.
I am not an escalator expert. But I have been on plenty of crowded escalators — at airports, at stadiums, at shopping malls and in subway stations. While they’re not fun, I’ve never experienced anything like this. Ms. Allen admitted MARTA had only half the necessary staff on duty the night of the concert. Maybe that was the problem.
What Ms. Allen should have said was, “This was a tragic, unfortunate and avoidable incident. We let our customers down and we are sorry. We’ve taken responsibility and it will never happen again.”
She could have said something similar after the AJC Peachtree Road Race, when a mechanical issue left many riders stranded for up to 45 minutes on one of MARTA’s most important days of the year. Or, when frustrated riders faced major disruptions during last month’s Shakira concert or last fall’s Pride Weekend.
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
Instead, lack of accountability and poor communication time and again further erodes confidence in public transit and sends more cars onto the road. That is the last thing Atlanta needs.
What we need, and deserve, is a competent, visionary, accountable leader who can work with public and private interests to rejuvenate MARTA. I agree with A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District. He issued a statement saying, “Any organizational change at a top position, it is a chance to rethink and improve the all-around performance of a company’s operation.”
Robinson suggested that the next CEO need not be a transit executive. I agree with him there as well. MARTA needs a leader, first and foremost. A talented executive who can build a first-class team and a first-class plan. Most important, we need someone who can literally make the trains run on time.
Of all MARTA’s missteps in recent months the most egregious was the one they made in misleading the public about Greenwood’s departure. In her acting role, Ms. Allen has a chance to start fresh. She can put the past behind her, work closely with government officials and business leaders, and work with urgency to improve our public transport. Most important, she must hold herself and her team accountable.
Andrew Morse is the president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a member of the AJC Editorial Board.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
