Harris/44″ with box/mike1st/mark2nd

Tony Harris

Title: District 7 Director, California State Department of Transportation

Born: Louisburg, N.C., 1960

Education: B.S. in civil engineering from North Carolina State University

Most Admired Person: His father, a tobacco farmer, who “although he had very little, was always willing to help everyone”

Turning Point in Career: Being assigned to manage emergency reconstruction of an Oakland freeway after the Loma Prieta earthquake

Hobbies: Bicycling, reading, coaching soccer and softball

Personal: Married, two daughters and a son

By JILL ROSENFELD

Staff Reporter

For anyone who travels L.A.’s roadways, Tony Harris is an extremely important man.

Los Angeles County has the most heavily traveled freeways in the state, handling 85 million vehicle miles per day. Harris is the person responsible for managing that tremendous traffic flow and planning for its future.

As director of Caltrans District 7, he oversees the state transportation system in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Primarily, he is responsible for directing the planning, design, construction and maintenance of the state highway system 1,200 aging miles of roadway.

Because of the area’s broad expanse, Harris is also a diplomat of sorts. He works with 88 different cities in L.A. County alone.

Harris graduated from North Carolina State University in Raleigh with a bachelor’s degree in 1983, and has worked as an engineer ever since, first for a private consultant, then for the Federal Highway Administration, and then for Caltrans.

Question: How do you envision the future of L.A. transportation?

Answer: The future is going to require some changes. If you look at what’s happening in the region right now, there’s a tendency to think of only transportation improvements in isolated areas, without a good strong sense of long-term benefits. If we don’t stop to address the region as a whole, we’re not going to address the problems that we have today. And those problems are going to be compounded by the growth we’re projected to have. And I think it goes beyond L.A. and Ventura counties. I think we’re going to have to start looking at Southern California as a whole.

Q: Traffic is impossible in L.A., and people are fed up. What is the bottom line here?

A: The bottom line is that it’s going to get worse. Traffic is bad in L.A. because we’ve been adding lanes to the freeway and not looking at the total transportation system. We cannot have one agency looking at the freeway, another one looking at the local streets, another at transit. Agencies have to work together to find ways to solve transit problems, and that’s the only way it’s going to get better. We can no longer focus on our own little worlds.

Q: Do you think a subway is part of the solution?

A: That’s a touchy question. I’m not sure if I have good answer, but I think the question is, is there enough money for it? At this point in time, no. So I think the MTA is doing the right thing in working with different stakeholders to determine what type of transit facilities should be built. I don’t know the solution, but I think the process they’re using is the correct one. They are evaluating different alternatives, trying to determine what to do with the money that’s available. Maybe the solution is to start with a busway, and then go to light rail, and if ridership grows then maybe build a subway.

Q: Is the highway system pretty much built out?

A: Yes. There’s not a lot of room to add new lanes. So we have to improve the operations of the existing system. How do you get more out of it? One strategy is to provide more information to motorists so they can make more informed decisions. They may change their traffic patterns, or the time of day they travel.

Q: What sorts of new technologies are being tested now?

A: We have in the district taken the lead for developing quick-drying, long-lasting pavement. Most of the pavement out there was designed to last 20 years. A lot of it is 30 or 40 years old now. We’re working with industry and contractors to develop concrete or asphalt pavement that will last 30 to 40 years, but that can be constructed in a very quick time period. We need to be able to close a certain segment of freeway, go in, take out existing pavement, put in brand new pavement including striping and everything, and have cars back on the road in less than eight hours.

Q: Your days must get pretty hectic. Any that are particularly memorable?

A: I would say the most hectic day was during the El Ni & #324;o storms. On the way to work that day, I got paged about a major accident on the freeway. Then I arrived at work to learn that we were about to have a major slide in Malibu area, and we had to find a solution. So the first thing we did was close that highway so no one would get hurt, and at the same time we responded to inquiries from the press, elected officials and private citizens about what was going on. Frankly, that’s the kind of day I enjoy, because I felt I could quickly make a difference and personally get involved and find solutions.

Q: What is your average day like?

A: My average day is a series of meetings. Many of those meetings are with elected officials, because transportation impacts everybody, and they want to meet the needs of their constituents. The area I oversee is very diverse, which makes my day interesting. On a given day we could be busy with improvements to the 405, repairs on Santa Monica Boulevard (which is a state highway), and a slide problem on Pacific Coast Highway. All are different terrain, surrounded by different land uses.

Q: What is your role in improving transportation in Los Angeles?

A: My job as director is to form working relationships with various levels of elected officials. There’s the state level, the federal level, and the city level. Caltrans alone cannot solve the transportation problems and challenges we have here.

Q: Two others have held your position in the last three years. Why the high turnover rate?

A: This is probably one of the most difficult district director jobs that we have statewide, and I think it takes the right mentality to do this. And I think, frankly, you have to look at the pay scale of government service vs. private industry.

Q: What does your job pay?

A: Less than $100,000, let me put it that way. When you look at what comparable transportation professionals are paid in private industry, it’s about 50 percent to 100 percent more.

Q: So why are you in the public sector?

A: Because of the level of responsibility I have, and the opportunity that I have. It’s difficult to envision going into private industry and having the level of responsibility and accountability that I have in this job. Not too many jobs can do that.

Q: L.A. is quite a different world from the one where you grew up, isn’t it?

A: I grew up in a small town called Louisburg, North Carolina, population of less than 1,000. We lived outside the city limits, on a 50-acre tobacco farm. My mom was an elementary school teacher, and my dad never completed high school. He ended up fighting in World War II. My mom and dad had eight kids.

Q: What was it like growing up on a farm?

A: Being a tobacco farmer, especially a small one, is a very difficult life. We were too poor to have irrigation, so the crop was really dependent upon the rainfall. If the rainfall was bad or there was a harsh and cold winter, then the amount of profit you made that year was severely impacted. Having worked on a farm, and seeing how hard it was, I quickly realized it wasn’t the goal in life I wanted for myself. So I worked really hard in school, and I was able to get really good grades, especially in math and science.

Q: Where do you live, and what is your commute like?

A: I live in Rolling Heights, so I drive to the train station in the City of Industry, which is about five minutes away, and I take Metrolink to Union Station, where I either take the subway or the bus.

Q: Is that really convenient?

A: Very. I do that almost every day unless I have late meetings. The reason it works is because the trips are usually reliable, the time comparison vs. me driving is about the same, or maybe a little less, and the systems are integrated a couple of minutes at most to wait between each leg. Unless we build more systems like that, that provide flexibility, that are cost-effective and are timely, the traveling public is going to continue to do what they do now, which is get into their individual cars.

Q: How do you provide incentives for people to rideshare and use mass transit, when they’re used to their cars?

A: A lot of things come down to cost, time and service. That’s what makes people change their habits. Most people are not ridesharing. There are reasons for that. For one thing, we don’t have an entire carpool lane system in place yet that will generate the time savings. And not many people go straight to work and straight home, where it’s convenient for them to carpool. We need to stop and look at land-use patterns.

Q: How can it be made more convenient?

A: We need to start building freeway-accessible transit centers, places where you drive to and then you take some other mode of transportation that is concentrated on moving people, instead of moving vehicles.

If we create a system where transport centers are surrounded by things people typically use, like child care centers, grocery stores, athletic clubs, I think people will be willing to change their patterns. The carpool system, in conjunction with some type of light rail or train system, gives people options. If people have options they will change their transit habits.

Q: Are there other ways to reduce traffic?

A: We also need to look at how traffic movement is impacted by goods movement coming out of the airports and the port. For example, cargo comes into the port and it’s put on trucks, which deliver it to another site and then generally drive back empty. We can put in place a process where we eliminate empty trucks, so when the truck driver goes out, he brings back a full container or delivers something locally.