A private consultant who was once Massachusetts’ top transportation official is to be the new president of NYC Transit.
Richard Davey, currently a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, will take over a job that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has filled on an interim basis since Feb. 2020, when Andy Byford resigned amid a feud with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Davey will take over on May 2, and will lead a staff of roughly 54,000 people who operate New York City’s subway, bus and paratransit networks.
Davey, 48, began working in Massachusetts public transit in 2002 and said in a statement he lived in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks.
“My experience being a New Yorker that day at that time is why I am coming back, because public service and more importantly public transportation is so important to me,” said Davey. “I hope that whenever my tenure ends, New Yorkers can look back and say that guy from Boston made a difference.”
Davey replaces Craig Cipriano, who since August has served as interim NYC Transit president. Cipriano took over the job from Sarah Feinberg, who in Feb. 2020 took the job on an interim basis after Byford resigned — and planned to stay just a few months before the pandemic hit.
From 2010 to 2011, Davey was general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the fifth largest public transit agency in the U.S. He was Massachusetts’ state transportation secretary from 2011 to 2014 before heading to the private sector.
Davey is a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting, which does business with the MTA.
The MTA board in March 2020 approved a contract with Boston Consulting to advise its job-slashing “transformation” team. But the contract never got final approval, and the transformation team was shut down last year by MTA chairman Janno Lieber, who said he was “not thrilled” with its results and the staff shortages it caused.
State records show Boston Consulting Group in 2017 scored a $3 million contract to advise on former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “Subway Action Plan,” which brought in contractors to make quick fixes to the city’s subways. The contract came the same year Davey started working at the company.
Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee at the MTA, said Davey has a mountain of problems to fix when he starts the job.
“It’s a tough time, it’s a tough job and New York is a tough town,” said Daglian. “New York transit riders have had an extraordinarily difficult time, and the transit system needs a push in the right direction.”
