Saturday, March 17, 2007

This shouldn't surprise anyone

Miami Fl - The Miami Herald reported on the recent firing of Roosevelt Bradley, head of the Miami-Dade Metro. The scandals swirling around Bradley shouldn't surprise anyone out there since this type of situation is all too common within public transit circles.

One scandal involved consultants. It's hard to blame Bradley or any other head of public transit on this one. Consultants routinely pull the bait and switch once they are contracted and there isn't much you can do since the consultants on transit projects pretty much have free reign during their contract and the officials in charge rarely will force their hand since they have little clue as to what the consultants are talking about. Consultants are perhaps the worst problem public transit has for inflating prices.

Another scandal involves nepotism. An age old problem and it's not limited to the public sector. In a public agency however, it shouldn't be allowed but the practice is often ignored to the detriment of the bottom line of the operation. Friends, family, former colleagues often follow new managers into the public agencies and many aren't qualified.

What Bradley did was actually no different than what occurs in most medium to large transit systems. Questionable contracts and nepotism? That seems to be the status-quo for public transit these days (as well as any public agency). Bradley was just unfortunate and got caught at it. I guess he needed more practice of being at the top before actually playing the game.

No comments: