SEPTA veteran to head operations

SEPTA has promoted maintenance chief Luther Diggs to be its new assistant general manager for operations.

Diggs, a 26-year veteran of SEPTA management, has most recently been responsible for maintaining the transit agency's 2,000 buses, trains, trolleys and subway cars.

He replaces longtime operations head Patrick Nowakowski, who resigned to lead Washington's Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. Diggs will assume his new post Monday, with a starting salary of $170,000.

Diggs takes charge of operations at a pivotal time for SEPTA.

With ridership increasing, the Regional Rail lines are near capacity as SEPTA awaits new railcars; its trolley routes are chronically late because of a flawed collision-avoidance system; and the agency is moving to replace its tokens and tickets with a "smart card" electronic fare-collection system. And its labor contract with bus drivers and subway and trolley operators expires in March.

"I've been heavily involved in operations for a long time, so I'm pretty familiar with the issues," Diggs said in a brief interview yesterday. "We're in the service business, and we've got to act accordingly. I believe in managing the details, as well as the big picture."

He said that he hoped to pull the disparate elements of the SEPTA system together into a cohesive team, and that he and the agency's managers "have to look at things from the passengers' perspective, not just your own life experience."

One SEPTA union leader expressed support for Diggs yesterday.

"He's a bottom-line guy. We think it's a good choice; we're firmly behind him," said Tom Dorricott, of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

Diggs, 58, joined SEPTA in 1982 as a maintenance manager and moved up through a series of maintenance, operations, and labor-relations positions.

A Philadelphia native, Diggs lives in Christiana, Del. He said he commutes to work on the R2 Newark rail line, where regular riders aren't shy about sharing their complaints about SEPTA.