Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't
By Jocelyn Geboy in Miscellaneous on Jun 15, 2007 7:52PM
You know, maybe you guys are right. Maybe Chicagoist is never satisfied when it comes to the CTA. We are not happy when they are doing nothing to take care of problems, and when they come out with some sort of solution, we aren't happy with that. But it just seems like the higher-ups over at CTA crazy always go so black and white with their ideas. It's either do nothing, or get a little too overzealous. But let's get to the details.
Lydia Murray is Ron Huberman's chief-of-staff. Her credentials aren't too shabby. She acted as a liaison between the mayor and police department in New York, which implemented a program that mapped crime data and patterns to influence its decisions in deploying officers. That program was one of the factors cited in contributing to New York’s declining crime rate during the 1990s under Mr. Giuliani. She also most recently worked under Daley as the deputy chief of staff for management.
Murray has been brought to her chief-of-staff position charged with two main tasks -- to implement a performance management system that will grade the agency’s nearly 11,000 employees, and begin a so-called “mystery shopper” program that will test customer-facing CTA employees. According to Murray, these two strategies will help the CTA really provide “clean, on-time, safe and efficient” service to its 1.6 million daily passengers.
Part of the problem with getting Springfield to give the CTA more money to cover the $100-million hole in its 2007 operating budget is that people are often very vocal about their displeasure about how the CTA is handling rapidly worsening service. Brian Imus, senior policy advocate of Illinois Public Interest Research Group, says, "... the challenge for the CTA is: How do you convince the public that the problem is a lack of funding, not a lack of leadership at the CTA?” .
More about Lydia's ideas after the jump ...
While we think it's high time that non-performing CTA employees be held accountable for their actions, we are yet again skeptical of a system that reduces everything to a number or set of numbers. While Murray acknowledges that, “It’s not easy to pigeonhole every person into some metric,” it seems that her specialty is coming up with hard data to try and take a bad situation and turn it to a good one. She is still unclear about how to measure the performance of all the employees in a quantifiable way, but in the Crain's article she said that the ones who aren't doing a good job should "be nervous."
Our concern is that this is some crafty way to start firing employees without replacing them. Another great way to cut the budget and get rid of salaries at the lower levels without saying that's what you're doing. And if it's truly someone who doesn't need to be there, fine. If it's a shitty customer assistant, fine. But even though those customer assistants often don't look like they're doing a hell of a lot, they really do need to be there. For the people from out of town or the elderly who don't know how to work the farecard machines. For the times when your card doesn't work and they help you out by letting you in. For the times when they open the gate so you can get your bike or suitcase through.
And who will be the mystery shoppers? As we've said so many times before, it's time to get the public involved. We just don't trust people within the organization to make these qualitative calls. Put out an ad. Pay people a minor wage to do these mystery shopping tasks. Hell, Chicagoist would even do it for free. Give people a free monthly pass and let that be their wage. The people riding the trains and buses are the CTA's greatest asset in really trying to gather knowledge and improve itself. We, the riders, have the inside track and the most practical ways to make things better. We see things on a grander scale; get the bigger picture. We see the customer assistant at a particular location every day, not just on one given occasion. We'll be the first ones in line.
"surely" by delicious_aloysius