From Art Ida’s serene, low-key, unassuming demeanor, you never would guess that the Transportation Director is the most decorated executive at City Hall.
In recent years, under Mr. Ida’s imaginative, ambitious leadership, Culver City’s futuristic-oriented Transportation Dept. has been nationally recognized annually as a member of America’s elite.
Since Mr. Ida never has been accused of overspeaking in public, Mayor Mehaul O’Leary’s request at the outset of the second round of budget hearings yesterday was ironic.
On Monday, Mr. O’Leary and his City Council colleagues had sat patiently (?) through 4½ hours of sometimes-theoretical, sometimes-arcane speculation about what could be if only the funding were available.
In the most diplomatic language he could manage, Mr. O’Leary requested brevity all around, particularly regarding questions from his Council colleagues in the pocket-sized Dan Patacchia Room. That wish did not come true, although Mr. Ida’s comments, reliably, were abbreviated. Council inquiries may have eaten more of the clock than Mr. Ida’s unadorned responses.
The municipal transportation world is vastly more complex, more competitive, more innovative, more diverse, and perhaps more clouded than when Mr. Ida landed at City Hall 15 years ago at the birth of the century.
Unprecedented changes are roiling the universe of transport, with blur-paced technology far from being maturely developed.
He devoted a sizable portion of his observations to the rapidly expanding pursuit of organized marketing.
This need has been dictated – but not only — by the explosion of diverse forms of transportation suddenly, broadly available across this region.
Curiously and encouragingly from the standpoint of Mr. Ida’s Transportation Dept., as services broaden so does ridership from a perhaps unexpected corner.
As new commerce arrives in Culver City, he said, they are employing Millenials who, unlike their immediate predecessors, are attracted to various forms of transit. They don’t come accompanied by cars because they don’t necessarily drive.
At the conclusion of Mr. Ida’s presentation, it was evident that in the Year of Trump, quiet leadership is underappreciated.
In Passing
On this day, four of the seven contenders for City Council seats were budget hearings eyewitnesses. Besides Councilperson Meghan Sajli-Wells, Thomas Small joined, Goran Eriksson and Scott Wyant.
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