"Consultants have a model -- time is money," Gunn said. "The more time, the more money. Once you get in the hands of the consultants, you're at their mercy. . . . It's really important to have people on your staff who work for the authority, who are pursuing your goals and who drive the project. You want to keep a nucleus of key engineering folks. You need to keep institutional memory."
Mr. Gunn speaks with some expertise, having turned New York transit around in the 90s. In fact, he was so successful in attracting riders back to the system that they didn't have enough equipment to seat them all! He's cleaning house at Amtrak, starting from the top. When he started in Amtrak had 80 odd Vice Presidents, about three quarters of whose positions he's abolished. Mr. Gunn has gone toe to toe with the (unelected) President to get funding for Amtrak and today his trains are running full. The same can not be said for the airline industry, which despite receiving a five billion dollar bailout after 9-11 is back asking for more.
Now there are occasions of truly unusual situations that require outside consultants. The access project is not one of them. The highway department (mis)designed 35W in the first place, and there seems to be quite enough "institutional memory" enshrined in the Highway Building to manage or mismanage a redesign of the Lake Street access to 35W without the assistance of consultants. Same for the NoWest Corridor Bus Rapid Transit- The Highway Department has been designing bus facilities since the 70s, and did not Minneapolis own engineers include transit in their classic Nicollet Mall design in the 1960s? The grossest example of the misuse of consultants is the Hiawatha light rail line, where under the ludicricy of "Design-Build" we let the consultants openly partner with the builders to write themselves a check on the public coffers. Highway engineers have been involved in railroad engineering for years. Historicly, Minneapolis streets were engineered with streetcar and freight rail lines, and there was a gap of not even a generation between the running of the last streetcar and the first railway acquisition by a Minnesota county. Our dear city of Minneapolis even owns a locomotive as well as rail lines, so clearly some expertise in rail engineering should exist in the hallowed offices of the City Engineer? Currently about a dozen Minnesota counties own rail lines, so surely some rail engineering expertise should be present in the county's transportation engineering departments too? With the Hiawatha line nearing completion, the Northstar Corridor in the planning stage, and many more passenger and freight rail projects to come, one would think that the Highway Department (AKA MNDOT) would develop some rail as well as highway engineering ability?
But Noooo.... that would be to simple.
hanging on in Hawthorne... where the crime has abated enough for us to put up more fences!
Dyna Sluyter
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
