And so it was that Houstonians woke up to the news that the Metropolitan Transit Authority decided that, at the added cost of, well who knows how much money, that the agency is going to aggrandize itself via building 30 more miles of light rail. I will do some analysis sometime within the next few days.
Of course the boys at 801 Texas Avenue cheered at the news, noting that 60,000 jobs were going to be created at its peak. This is almost certainly tacking on a zero onto the number of jobs that might be temporarily created. If 60,000 jobs are to be created and, say for argument's sake that each job pays (with benefits) $50,000 per year, then the labor costs alone for the project would run $3 billion. The numbers can be massaged around, but you should get the picture. It is notable that the Hearst boys were very careful in their editorial not to make claims that the project would do anything to alleviate traffic congestion.
But analysis about that are to come later this week. Today we are going to talk about one person who already has found employment with Metro, courtesy of current Metro President Frank Wilson. That man's name is one, Mr. Frank Russo. Details about Mr. Russo's current employment can be downloaded here. This is a Power Point presentation that is 3.1 mb in size.
Addendum edit: It has been pointed out to me that several of the pages in the contract are missing. That is because there were several pages in the contract which involved dealing with issues such as the fact that Mr. Russo was to follow federal laws not discriminating against race, creed, sex, ethnicity, and so forth in hiring subcontractors, if any were needed. There were other - what I would call generic clauses in the contract, such as that Mr. Russo was supposed to comply with other laws which I did not see worth posting.
Also, it was pointed out to me that the contract does not exactly point out the scope of duties that Mr. Russo was supposed to be performing. Curiously, the contract is quite vague about that very question and I find that I cannot answer that question.
At point, Mr. Wilson stipulated in the contract he awarded to Mr. Russo that he would make $1 million over the first two years of his employment with Metro, at a rate of $300 per hour. The contract was amended this past April, where Mr. Wilson bumped up Russo's pay by $10 per hour and increased the contract ceiling to $1.1 million. Mr. Russo's employment can be extended beyond the inital period, but we will not know on what terms. Metro has an option to help pay for automobile expenses. but we will not speculate about any possible kickbacks between the two men.
So what have Mr. Wilson and Mr. Russo done to earn such pay? Mr. Wilson and Mr. Russo have been together for a very long time, indeed Mr. Russo has been following Mr. Wilson around even before the people up in New Jersey salted them up before sending them down to Houston, much as Mr. Wilson's predecessor Shirley Delibero was before him.
The Frank and Frank show has not been the cleaner of operations, but their history together represents iron triangularism at its finest. While in New Jersey, Mr. Wilson was involved with two rail projects, the South Jersey Rail line and the Hudson Bergen rail line. The Hudson Bergen line currently is 8 miles long and carries about 30,000 boardings per day. The Hudson Bergen project went three times over budget and is carrying about half of its originally projected ridership.
However, that matter was much overshadowed by the events surrounding the South Jersey Rail line. It's a bit hard for me in far away Houston to suss out the details, but it seems that the genesis of the South Jersey rail line was that it was a politically demanded project in the sense that since the folks up in northern New Jersey got a rail line, then gosh darnit, we folks in southern New Jersey better have one too. Based on such political calculus, one might consider looking at the Metro Rail map and drawing your own conclusions.
What resulted with South Jersey appears to have been was an absolute disaster. In fact the project is such a disaster that it is notable that the Wiki entry listing the light rail line riderships of various lines across America lists the South Jersey project at #22 in ridership. The South Jersey line's cost, originally thought to be $314 million, soared to $1 billion. The project was initially thought to have a miserly 9,000 boardings per day, but that figure was revised to a mere 5,900. Current ridership is claimed at 3,600 - 7,350 per day. A single, typical interstate freeway lane handles about 20,000 vehicles (including freight trucks) per day and more than 25,000+ passengers. Metro has 10 bus routes (cost per bus is about $300,000 - $400,000) which carry more passengers than that billion dollar line.
One week after Wilson pushed through approval of the South Jersey line, he resigned his post to take a job with Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, where he eventually became company president and secured at least $72 million on contracts with the line. As for Russo, he worked in a job created by Wilson in New Jersey, then went to work for Raytheon which did work on the South Jersey line. The entire South Jersey rail line project was such a disaster that the New Jersey State Assembly decided to start calling people to the mat.
In the time honored way of politics, when disaster strikes the best way a political figure can make sure they can continue visiting disasters on the public is to make sure they get as far away as they can from the site of where their previous disaster took place. Hence Mr. Wilson, tarred and feathered, got lucky and found himself a job in Houston where he doesn't ride the HOV canyon buses from his suburban home into downtown where he works (because like for 95-99 percent of the population, it isn't worth his time to do so), though some of my upper middle class co-workers - who would otherwise not be bothering taking public transportation - do, if only to avoid traffic jams. We will not talk about Wilson's taking $250,000 of travel, courtesy of BART in 1992, or his E-Z Pass disasters. As for Russo, in addition to his big money payday in Houston, he is taking his public private partnership schtick back to his old stomping grounds in California.
Sigh. My analysis of Metro's plans for light rail come later this week.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at October 22, 2007 11:01 PM