Photograph by Frank Di Piazza
Larry Salci was a car guy. Everybody in his family worked in Detroit’s auto industry, and he went straight from college to Chrysler. Then, at 29, he took over Detroit’s new public transit system. When he went back to manufacturing, it was rail cars, and he evolved into a chief executive with a knack for saving troubled transit companies. At 54, he retired.
Plucked off a Hilton Head golf course three years later, in 2002, to serve as president of Metro, Salci was hailed as efficient, smart, a consensus builder.
That last part’s over.
Salci brought private-sector instincts to a politically charged job, and he didn’t tiptoe. When Metro caught flak for hauling dirt during excavation for the Cross-County Extension, Metro sued University City and the city of St. Louis. Then Metro fired and sued the Cross County Collaborative and took over the project. During the trial, Salci called KTVI reporter Elliot Davis a “clown” who “fits right into St. Louis”—and had to make a public apology. Then Metro lost the CCC lawsuit, and all eyes turned to Salci.
He resigned.
Ever wish you’d never left that golf course? No. Had I known that I probably wasn’t wanted politically, I probably wouldn’t have come here. But the fun was fixing the agency.
What do you mean, you weren’t wanted? I thought I was a unanimous hire, but I wasn’t. About half of the commissioners didn’t want me. They wanted somebody who was willing to make change in—I’ll call it “the St. Louis way.”
Slowly and nicely, right? That’s the way it’s been explained to me. But when I got here, we had an organization that was hemorrhaging cash; bus ridership was down almost 18 percent; and people were reluctant to talk about raising fares, because they thought this was a social service.
You raised fares—what else? People had been here 20 years who weren’t the right people, and they had to go. Bus parts had been sitting in our inventory for 10 years and were no longer even useful. Workers’ comp was viewed as an entitlement, and we were incurring costs in excess of $6 million. We reduced annual operating costs, increased on-time performance, reduced the tax dollars per passenger.
Will St. Louis ever be as easy to navigate by train as New York City? You have to build a network. We started with a single line, then Illinois built a line—when I got here, it was a 37-mile line. Metro’s trains average 33 to 35 miles an hour; New York’s go as fast as 80 miles per hour. Metro has two-car trains that run every 10 minutes; New York has 10-car trains that run every two minutes.
So what’s wrong with us? There are two kinds of cities in America. New York, Chicago, Boston—their infrastructure was in place long before the auto became dominant. When suburbanization came, they developed commuter railroads on top of rail systems. The Detroits and St. Louises got rid of their streetcars—and with that came the weakening of the urban core, as it started to depopulate.
But we’re as old as those pre-auto cities! You are, except that you gave away all your streetcars. You have at least two generations here who have not experienced any form of public transportation.
So we have a line and a branch. What’s next? Ideally, Kingshighway or Grand would be a great cross. But while the transit needs in the city are probably greater, your tax base is the county. And if you are going to raise money in St. Louis County, St. Louis County is going to demand more service.
How green did you leave Metro? Remember the very ugly black smoke that came out of buses? Those days are over. The bus engines recycle emissions, and some use compressed natural gas and biodiesel fuel; 20 percent of it is B20, an organic soybean mixture.
The Cross-County Extension you inherited is a bit of a lightning rod—would you have done it differently? One observation: The station in Richmond Heights allegedly serves the Galleria, but it’s across the street. I would have liked to see the system penetrate that mall. And we have weak off-peak in Illinois, it’s a bedroom community, but if Metro could serve the St. Clair mall ...
Phase I cost $27.3 million per mile and Phase II cost less, but the Cross-County Extension cost about $81 million. Why? Phases I and II were built in abandoned railroad freight right-of-ways. With the Cross-County project, we took the train to the oldest, most densely populated suburbs, put in 1.6 miles of subway and 3 miles of elevated bridge structures and had to move 950 utilities. I removed Forest Park Parkway 1.3 miles, 60 feet down—I’m hauling millions of cubic yards of dirt; and communities don’t want me to come through. I had to sue U. City and the city of St. Louis. I won both cases, but I hated to have to sue the cities I was serving.
What has stopped some communities from welcoming MetroLink? The phony race issue, all the nonsense about people taking TVs. I’ve never had it explained to me why somebody would go on a fixed guideway system with full-time security if they wanted to steal a TV.
What did you say to suburbs when they wanted more service? “It’s the way you design your communities. Your cul-de-sacs—I couldn’t operate a bus here if I wanted to. Suburbs are designed not to be penetrated. I need a grid.”
You took some flak for your “closed-door” management style. I had a very disciplined and efficient organization. My time was critical.
What about your famous quote, “The only people I really care about are my 10 commissioners that hired me, and I care what Wall Street thinks about me, and I care what my headhunters care about in the case I have to go somewhere else. And other than that, I just don’t care”? [He recites the last line by heart as it’s read, then sighs.] Let me give you the context. The RFT asked about my difficulties with elected officials. I don’t have a difficulty with elected officials. The reporter said, “Why are you having so much conflict?” and I said, “Well, I have priorities ...” It was a setup to continue the character assassination. And to those playing the game, my answer is still “No, I really don’t care. I was here to protect taxpayers and my customers.”
Did the CCC really hire a PR person during the lawsuit? [He nods.] I know who they paid, and I know how much. Part of their defense was to character-assassinate me personally and tarnish the agency’s reputation.
Did they succeed? Obviously. The press—most of it’s been taken out of context and played over again and again. I had to make tough decisions, I had to make a lot of them, and people who didn’t know me probably misread that as being aggressive. But there isn’t much I would do differently, and if anybody here was offended, they shouldn’t be.
