[IMAGE]MET11QA-.jpg[/IMAGE]With 39 years in public transportation service and 16 years as CEO/GM of San Bernardino, Calif.'s Omnitrans, Durand L. Rall will retire in late December. Rall was appointed interim GM of Omnitrans in 1993, serving for nine months in that capacity until being given the job permanently. During his tenure, the agency twice received the American Public Transportation Assoication's (APTA) Outstanding Transit System Award, and significantly grew its services, employees and ridership.

METRO: How did you get involved in transportation?

Durand Rall: By accident. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. I went to work on February 2 and got laid off. I looked for a job for quite some time. The Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) in Minneapolis was the first to offer me a job, and that's how I got started in transit. It was 1971.

What was the draw to continue in the field?

The people were great, the job was great, and it was interesting and challenging. It was during that era when all of the private companies were being sold to cities or public commissions and so on. I got to do some work through the condemnation process, evaluating assets and pensions and all that stuff to determine sale prices, so it was an interesting thing. From that point on, one thing led to another. I was picked up by a management firm, ATE/Ryder Systems Inc., and, of course, worked for them for 23 years until I came here.

What other transit properties did you work during your career with ATE?

I went from Minneapolis to Tidewater Metro Transit in Norfolk, Va., then to SunTran in Tucson, Ariz., and, from there, went to RTA in Riverside, Calif., all under contract with ATE.

How do you feel the industry has changed?

It has become a great deal more regulated than it was back then; much more political. At the point where I began, [public transportation] was just coming out of the private sector into public, and it was considered, I think, as just-hanging-on-to-a-lifeline service for certain people. It has grown now to become intertwined with greenhouse gas regulations and everything else as we're trying to make transit systems part of the solution, rather than just being [a means of] transportation for those who can't afford an automobile. Now, transit has become a very important part of what happens in our society and the improvement of quality of life, quality of air and a lot of other things. I think that is a substantial change from what transit was in the past.

When you got started, did you ever suspect that mass transportation agencies would have that kind of role?

When I first came into the business, it was [heading] downhill, but some of us saw the potential for it to come back. We realized it needed to be set up differently, it needed to be financed differently, and I think the reason it failed as a private sector [entity], obviously, was because it had to make money and it wasn't. But, that didn't mean it couldn't be successful as a public entity. The advent of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, now currently the Federal Transportation Administration, saw an infusion of money that created an opportunity to really start to build transit back to where it was, to try to get a bigger share of that market. In the large cities like Minneapolis back then, buses were running three-minute headways from downtown. At the point where I began in the industry, transit was a real viable part of that area. In California where the sprawl and the build is different and development is more linear rather than vertical, it really became a much greater challenge to provide public transit.

What were some early goals when you started at Omnitrans and what challenges did you face trying to meet them?

It was a system that had stagnated and was at a level that everybody was comfortable with. Getting the system to grow was a real challenge.

The challenges were getting the board excited about public transit. The [system's] staff had slacked off a little bit in their desire to make change because making change wasn't really appreciated. We created a different attitude. We started some very aggressive team building and found processes to really knock down those paradigms [by allowing people] to make suggestions with no restrictions, regarding how [they] would want to grow this agency and find our niche markets. That led us to some really creative things.

Shortly after I came here, we started [using] alternative-fuel [vehicles]. We are now 100 percent natural gas fleet, which is supplied by Clean Energy Fuels Corp. We've got about a 91 percent customer satisfaction based on our surveys we did recently, which I think is really remarkable in today's world. We have a 90 percent on-time performance goal, and we usually perform at 95 percent or above in our time record.

Approximately four years ago, we started into this process of creating a bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor, which we have named the SBX for San Bernardino Express. One-third of this corridor will be center-running exclusive lanes through the downtown core of San Bernardino and to Loma Linda city limits. It connects a major Cal State University in the north, with the Loma Linda University and Loma Linda Medical Center on the other end, so we've got two really powerful anchors. We also have the Veterans Hospital in the area. In Loma Linda alone, there are about 40,000 people a day coming into that little town and they all come there for the Veterans Administration, hospital, school, etc. But, those that come to the hospital have nowhere to go, there's limited restaurants and hotels. Now, they will have a service with 10-minute frequencies that takes them right to the heart of hospitality lane, which is the core of all the great restaurants and hotels.

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What other types of accomplishments over the last 15 years are you particularly proud of?

When you look at our system, we have substantially improved our ability to collect and gather data with extremely sophisticated software and hardware systems. When I came here, [all that existed] was this building and a small maintenance area. Now, we have a new building that represents some great work on behalf of the staff and our board of directors. We have purchased facilities for our Access paratransit operation, and currently own a 29.5-acre piece of land in Rancho Cucamonga that we will eventually develop into our Mid-Valley Facility. We have had the forethought to bank land when it was less expensive and where we needed to have facilities. We set a goal to try to have a transit facility in each of the 15 cities where we provide [service]. I think that's a pretty significant goal. We've accomplished that in several cities and, in some, we've accomplished that in connection with the Metrolink [rail] service.

Another goal we are currently working on is the acquisition of land in downtown San Bernardino to build our Downtown Transit Facility. We have hired a consulting firm to not only develop that facility, but also to build transit oriented development in the area.

When I came here one of my greatest [goals] was that I wanted to accomplish one million riders a month - and everybody almost passed out. Now, we have exceeded that goal. We have gone from about seven million riders a year to over 15 million riders a year during that time period. When you talk about visions that have happened, it was the growth of this system. We've more than doubled in size the number of passengers, number of buses and number of employees. We've increased the quality of our facilities tremendously with new facilities in some cases, renovations with others. We have also developed a very professional staff.

Being a smaller system, how much has the lack of funding impacted your plans?

Like everybody, whether you're big or small, it's all a matter of percentages. The state pulling our funds has [had a] huge [impact]. When we look at our short-range transit plans for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, unless something changes substantially in the state with sales and sales tax revenue generation, we're going to have to look at taking some action.

We have a significant amount of reserves that we could use to offset that loss, but if we do that and we use up our reserves and the money still isn't back, then we're going to end up having to make service reductions. The question is what level of reserves do you use, what level of service reductions do you use to balance that out over that four-year period as you watch what the economy does and determine if you want to keep the service out there or if you're not going to be able to support it long term? That is a big challenge for us and everyone.

What has been more crippling at this point: the fact that the state doesn't have a budget or the funding mechanism at the federal level?

There are probably three parts to the problem. The [first being the] state not having any money and choosing not to follow the funding mechanisms that are in place that have been voted in by the general public. We have filed a lawsuit against the state, in the appeal we won substantially, and they are now further appealing to see if they can get that reversed. I think that it is very devastating when you have to go through those kinds of actions to get your state's elected officials to follow what the voters have put in place.

Then, you bounce to the federal side with the reauthorization, and there's a great desire on the feds' part, particularly some specific federal legislators, but they are tied with a deficit issue that is huge for our country. They have no way of funding what they want to do unless they increase the deficit. The problem we're faced with going to the feds, asking for money and reauthorization keeping our funds whole, is we simply get asked if we're in favor of increasing the national deficit, and if your answer isn't yes then they say they can't fund us. If your answer is yes, then you're looked upon as somebody who doesn't care about your country because you're so greedy you want to increase the deficit just to keep your operation going.

So, when you put those three things together, it creates not only a big question right now but a big question for the future of transit as to how we continue to move forward if there is no dedicated funding and, the dedicated funding that does exist, is not put into a trust fund and kept specifically for transit.

How confident are you then that they will be able to pass a favorable reauthorization bill?

I think the reauthorization follows an allocation process of funds, it isn't a politicized process of getting money like the ARRA funds were. We have good projects, long-term projects that need funding. The difficulty is finding the money to support these kinds of things. In most cases it's not an issue of wanting to support them, and it's not an issue of an infusion of money to pump up the economy. Both our state and our federal leadership are just stymied with how they create this huge pool of money that's really being demanded.

What's next for you?

There's a lot of things. I like the great outdoors a lot and don't get to spend enough time in it. One of the things I want to do is spend more time fishing, hunting and golfing. I have seven grandchildren I'd like to spend more time with. I'd like to do some traveling. And, we've got some business stuff in Nevada with real estate that I want to play around with a little bit.

You are walking away from public transportation for good?

Yeah, people always say that I can be a consultant now that I'm retiring. But if I was going to do this, I'd keep doing it right here. I really want to unplug. It's been 39 years and I just want to be passionate about other things.

 

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