Refreshing Transit Management: Prologue

For years I have written what we experience.
Now, I want to put that to work. For you.

Ha! Dougie-Poo is retiring early next year. It's time the Bored(sicop) of Directors make drastic changes regarding the management of Tri-Mess. 

I am currently working on what is probably my last series of blog posts. Y'all don't read in massive numbers these days, so it seems this ship has sailed. It's all good. I have written just over a million words about this now eight-year career, and I thank you. There are better writers braving the storm of managerial oversight, and my artistic muse is pulling me toward more creative endeavors. Part of me feels bad for leaving this behind, but the practical side of me dictates it be so.

It is time for me to consider a major career change within this agency. Given the disastrous lack of supportive transit leadership, it is time for an Operator to take control of the helm. I have given this much thought, as you will see as my upcoming series explaining my views of transit management is published. A new hashtag began popping into my head earlier this year, and it's far from a nirvana-inspired psychosis. It is my true belief that I have the ability to be General Manager of Portland's transit agency. It's about damn time WE take it back from the failed corporatists who have made a grand mess of things. Get ready. I'm fucking serious, folks.

Knowing FTDS posts have lost luster due to my habitual lack of brevity, I beg you tune in for each coming installment. They will be precise and detailed. My plan is to outline not the failures of the past per se, but more to explain my reasons for reaching so high.

I am not a narcissist, nor am I delusional. My detractors will allude to this and many other reasons why I should not become a major city's transit General Manager. Utmost will be the fact I have never done it before, but that has become a moot point given the horrific failure of the past several who held the position. It is actually why I should be hired to lead.

Having driven a bus for 32 signups, many issues have crossed this writer's mind as the big wheels rolled. Talking with fellow operators, one thing is obvious: we are the least respected and most maligned employees of Portland's transit agency. That's the main problem, because WE are the "lug nuts of transit," as the murdered Operator Thomas Dunn of Florida, MY transit hero, told his local Board of Directors the year before he died in the seat. Like Mr. Dunn, our ranks are composed of a seriously-talented group. Many of us have come from other careers, which are so diverse as to make us a Melting Pot of American Ingenuity and How Things Get Done. 

Millionaires don't do the work, they simply rack in the profits of those who do their bidding. They don't pay taxes, but WE do to the point where we simply won't put up with it any longer.

Join me in my quest to have a no-nonsense, Operations-First blue collar worker at the helm of this metropolitan transit agency. All I ask is two years. If we're not on the rise toward regaining our No. 1 status, I will step down. Given my ability to work with people over 40 years of serving people, it's time to end my career helping the strongest, most-dedicated group of professionals I have ever had the honor of working with, and beside.

Share this, and my next posts, widely. Be sure to add the hashtag #DEKE4GM, and let us move forward into a future which rewards our dedication. Otherwise, sit back and take what we all know is coming. 

As a 17-year-old college freshman, I walked into my local community college's Journalism Department in hopes of landing a spot on the newspaper staff. It was a fortuitous time to do so. Central Arizona College had lost many of its CACtus staffers the previous spring to graduation. Every spot on the staff was open, and The Man asked me which position I wanted. It took all of a few seconds for my response.

"Given the choice," I said, "I'd like to be Editor."

Two years later, The CACtus became the most-awarded newspaper staff in CAC's history, and the Journalism Department was awarded the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Press Association's most prestigious honor: The President's Award.

Therefore, I shall apply for the GM position. I can do this job, but only with YOUR help. It is my solemn vow that every action I take as your GM would be dedicated to those who actually do the work of transit. There will be no empty words, only action on behalf of those who make management's job possible. The soul of Operator Dunn, and the thousands of you and your brothers and sisters who have suffered abuse at the controls of a transit vehicle, demand it.

A lifetime of work as a blue-collar worker has prepared me for a final major hurrah. Each challenge I have not only met, but exceeded expectations. It is a confidence hardened, sharpened, and honed by life's toughest experience: simply earning enough to keep my family fed and housed. Nothing more, no frills or extreme luxuries. Just life as WE know it, man. A life few at the top of transit today can probably remember.

Yeah, I'm reaching for the stars. But y'all, those pinpoints of light are YOU.