William Crosbie will be new NJ Transit executive director

[Mystic River Dragon]

Anyone have any ideas on this? Good, bad, awful? What was he like when at Amtrak? And why on earth would he take a job running NJT? (Why would anyone, for that matter?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/nyregion/ex-amtrak-executive-is-picked-to-lead-new-jersey-transit.html

http://www.app.com/story/news/traffic/commuting/2016/04/06/nj-transit-director-amtrak-crosbie-hakim/82618762/

I'm not sure if the links will link (with my tech skills, I'm lucky to get as far as the copy and paste part). However, one article is from the NY Times and the other from the Asbury Park Press, so they should be legitimate. Of course, with the wonderful fact checking that papers do now, they each give him a different title for when he was at Amtrak.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Links do work for me--hopefully, they will for everyone else, too!

 

[jis]

Bill was a good COO. If he goes and pulls Gunn at the Mickey Mouse Club (MMC) to shake things up a bit that will be a good thing, and it will upset a lot of lifetimers at NJT.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Thanks, jis. Sounds like some good news about NJT, finally! Perhaps he is one of those people who enjoys a challenge, so I will wish him well in shaking up NJT.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Pattyne of the reasons there's not much feedback about NJT is that the AU Jerseyites are moving to Florida! (see jis and Shanghai)

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Hi Jim--

Thanks for looking at this and replying ! That gives me a respectable 4 replies (2 of them were mine! )

You are absolutely right--I may be the last holdout trekking up and down to the office on NJT. Retirement and Florida (for at least part of the year) are starting to sound very appealing. I want to hold out another few years, though--I do like my work, and I don't want to shortchange myself with soc. sec. benefits by retiring too early.

 

[jis]

I just moved to Florida. I did not retire. I am still working full time and then some, but from my home office.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Sorry, jis--I didn't phrase that well. I meant that retirement was starting to sound good for myself (not you much younger people! )

 

[Palmetto]

Mr. Crosbie has changed his mind, according to some reports. NJT is "shocked". If you're on Trainorders, you can read about, and a newspaper articles is quoted.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/nj-transit-pick-changes-his-mind-1461200401

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Drat .

The "reason" given in the news is that he didn't want to move his family from VA to NJ. But he would have thought that out before accepting the job.

I imagine he came for a visit or two and saw up close the nightmare that is NJT and decided it wasn't worth it.

 

[jis]

Maybe he did not realize what it might take to work for the Guv'nor

 

[OBS]

The Gov. crossed my mind as a possible deterrent as well...

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Well, another juicy update. There is an article in today's Trenton Times about this. I am not going to link to it, because it froze up the computer when I was reading it, and I want to be careful not to post a bad link. However, if anyone is interested, google (no quotes):

Crosbie was this the real reason

and the article should come up.

A few nuggets from it:

NJT didn't negotiate his salary before he took the job.

The story that he didn't want to move his family was "according to NJ Transit." (In other words, they made something up that would make him look bad instead of them.)

The Governor is disappointed that someone would break their word.

I will refrain from commenting. If you go into the article, the comments at the end say everything. In fact, I would have posted about this earlier, but I was busy reading the comments--from the tone of some of them, no wonder the computer locked up!

 

[AmtrakBlue]

http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2016/04/incoming_nj_transit_boss_withdrew_over_compensation_package_source_says.html

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

You are braver than me, AmtrakBlue--and also way, way more tech-savvy (we're on opposite ends of the scale there), so thanks for posting the link to the article when I was afraid to!

 

[jis]

I think one of the more unattractive features of the job is having an unsupportive blowhard boss.