Transit Agency’s Revolving Door Costs Big, Causes Turmoil

North County transit passengers catch a bus in Oceanside. Some of the passengers would rather take the Sprinter, but it's been shut down since March.


The turnover among upper management at the North County Transit District has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and has, at times, put riders at risk. inewsource calculated that 21 of the agency's top 25 positions have turned over since 2009 when Executive Director Matthew Tucker arrived. Some of the positions revolved as many as five times in three years.

The exodus took its toll — in dollars alone. Within three years, Tucker paid out more than a quarter-million dollars in severance payments among just 10 of those managers, many of whom he laid off. He then paid recruiters to replace them.

The constant change in management has caused problems with communication, and as one former employee said in her resignation letter, it has lead to "a vacuum" of knowledge within the agency.











Following are examples of positions that have turned over at NCTD:











Tucker: Are you sure you’re accurate?

inewsource: Yes, I have all the invoices.

Tucker: Huh?

inewsource: I have all the invoices.

Tucker: no response.

Recruiting fees paid by NCTD

Recruiting fees paid by NCTD















Inside the agency, the job of overseeing the contract with American Logistic was constantly changing. Five people held the position in three years. The audit said that no one even knew the location of their contractor’s local office.






inewsource reporters Ryann Grochowski and Kelly Paice contributed to this report. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: May 3, 2013 An earlier version of this article stated the former Chief of Transit Enforcement was let go in 2010. He in fact resigned.


Avatar image for user 'spl'

spl | May 2, 2013 at 1:43 p.m. ― 7 months, 3 weeks ago

If the COASTER wireless internet and the electronic ticketing are examples of Angela Miller's abilities as an IT administrator, then as a regular COASTER rider may I say, with all due respect, "good riddance?"

The wireless system was taken down in December of 2012 and is still non-functional. It was something of a botch from the get-go, with spotty coverage, dropped connections, timeouts, and general flakiness. While I admit that setting up wireless on a platform that is moving at up to 80 miles per hour on a route on which it is difficult maintain a cell phone connection, much less an Internet connection, is a non-trivial task, it should have either been proven to work under those conditions or not deployed at all. I think I only had a good solid connection between my stops at Pointsettia or Encinitas and Sorrento Valley maybe once or twice. Usually, I could not even get a DHCP lease, much less a connection to the outside world.

And the electronic ticketing system is a mess. The user interface on the ticket vending machines is a horror show. I have been approached on at least a half dozen occasions by senior citizens or folks with limited English for help in navigating the system. I saw a couple of other riders almost get into a fight when one of them was unable to get a receipt for his purchase of 20 or so tickets for a school field trip and he blamed an innocent party for what was clearly an issue of poor user interface design.

There is a special ring in Dante's Inferno for thhe person who sited the Pointsettia ticket vending machines. The glare on the machines makes them impossible to read on sunny days. Thank goodness we rarely have those here in Southern California. More than once I've had to help confused patrons at those TVMs.

When I rode regularly and had a monthly pass, the "Tap and Ride" facility rarely worked properly and I found myself being chastised by the fare enforcement officers on the the train for not "checking in" (why this is necessary is another story -- if I've paid for my pass and it's valid, why do I have to check in, anyhow? There's no reason, since monthly pass riders are not charged by the ride.).

Ms Miller may have saved a bundle of money going "green" but her user services are a total botch.

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Avatar image for user 'fallbrookcoasterrider'

fallbrookcoasterrider | May 6, 2013 at 4:41 p.m. ― 7 months, 2 weeks ago

This is disgusting. Why does Mr. Tucker still have his job? There is no reason for such a high turnover rate other than poor management. Can someone please show me some evidence that Mr. Tucker deserves his salary? How can he possible justify spending so much on recruiting, especially when bigger transit districts and cities spend much less? Why isn't that money going into - oh, I don't know - making the Sprinter, Compass, and adding more frequent bus stops? (Though he says that rider mileage has increased, what is in their published reports shows differently.) Tucker is throwing away money. I say the board needs to throw him out. Maybe the best expense they could spend would be for U-Haul for him back to Virginia.

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Avatar image for user 'alexw'

alexw | May 6, 2013 at 10:24 p.m. ― 7 months, 2 weeks ago

Problems don't get much more obvious than this!!! Some of the positions revolved five times in three years? You have got to be kidding!! You don't have to hear anything else to know that there is a huge problem here!! Has there been any kind of independent investigation??

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Avatar image for user 'jtk'

jtk | May 7, 2013 at 9:37 p.m. ― 7 months, 2 weeks ago

I've worked at many companies, and I've never seen such a mess. My tax dollars are paying for hundreds of thousands of dollars of recruiting fees? Is the board of directors corrupt, or just stupid?

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