Here are excerpts from a Business Journal discussion with Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chief Executive Julian Burke:

? On his friendship with Mayor Richard Riordan: You know, that’s always mystified me. Before he called me to see if I was interested in the post that would have been about late June of last year I hadn’t spoken to the man in over 30 years. I first met him at O’Melveny & Myers. I came there in 1957, he arrived a year or two later. We had contact for several years while we were both there; our families were both in the Pasadena area. But then I left the firm and we each moved our families. I lost track of him. Then came this call last year and all of a sudden I’m referred to in the media as a close friend of the mayor and a confidante.

? On his first impression of the MTA: I had a sense that the agency had not been carefully managed over a long period of time. The culture had run amok. I can’t say whether the fault was with Franklin White or Joseph Drew or with the board itself.

The agency needs attention in a careful management way. It needs to convince its employment base both unionized and otherwise that we are doing respectable work, that we have goals in mind. I don’t think any of that existed at all.”

? About his management style: I certainly don’t do all of this work alone. You have to have a close-in group who you talk to all the time and who help you develop the ideas. First they have to be convinced and they in turn have to convince the next level of management, and then it just flows down from there. That holds for whatever you are managing: You must make sure to bring the view from the top down through the organization, because otherwise, you will never be able to implement anything.

? On improving bus service: What we are trying to do is to get 1,800 buses out every day, and it is proving very expensive. The maintenance is very large and the overtime in the maintenance area is unbelievably high. It affects our ability to get buses on the street, which causes us to lose our reputation and to lose ridership.

As you know, we have announced plans to purchase at least 1,300 new buses. But there are other problems. We do not have enough dependable buses. The buses that run on alcohol (a methanol fuel) only go about 20,000 miles before the motors need to be rebuilt. So we are switching to a cleaner-burning diesel fuel; in so doing, we are replacing older, more polluting diesel buses with newer, cleaner-burning diesel buses.

But even when we have buses out on the road, we still have problems. We should electronically monitor all of our buses so we know where they are at all times. And we should electronically count our passengers. Do you realize that we have our people out at bus stops manually counting the people standing around? That’s absurd.

? On the feasibility of dedicated busways: Dedicated busways are possible. We already own the rights of way that we could put exclusive busways on, including Burbank and Chandler boulevards in North Hollywood and Exposition Boulevard. We also own rights of way in the South Bay and near the MTA headquarters building. I need to have all these rights of way looked at to see if it is possible to put busways on them.

Some people say we ought to be looking at synchronization of signals for buses and extra lanes on the sides of streets. But that might take some street parking away. That issue in turn might be solved by building extra parking structures.

All of these things need to be looked at as shorter-term measures while we are considering when or even if we should be doing more rail projects.