1. Grace Crunican was born on 1955 and is a mass transportation specialist who most recently served as general manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District.
23 Facts About Grace Crunican
1. 2.
Grace Crunican had previously worked for the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Seattle Department of Transportation, and at the mass transit lobbying organization called the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
3.
Grace Crunican began her career in policy in the 1970s in Washington, DC.
4.
Grace Crunican's first transportation-related appointment was in 1979 to the Presidential Management Intern Program for the US Department of Transportation.
5.
Grace Crunican then served as a Professional Staffer for the Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee.
6.
Grace Crunican served as Deputy Administrator at the Federal Transit Administration from 1993 to 1996, under the presidency of Bill Clinton.
7.
Grace Crunican testified twice to the Railroad Safety Committee while in the role.
8.
Grace Crunican began serving as director of the Oregon Department of Transportation in May 1996 under Governor John Kitzhaber, and was the first female to serve in that role.
9.
Grace Crunican's resignation came on the heels of two other state agency director resignations, but a spokesman for Governor John Kitzhaber said that the spate of resignations was coincidental and not part of a purge.
10.
Grace Crunican's work was praised by Republican state representative Bruce Starr, of Aloha, who expressed surprise at her resignation, as well as by Gary George, the Senate Transportation Committee chairman who had previously been critical of ODOT.
11.
Grace Crunican began serving as the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation in 2002, becoming the second person to serve in that role.
12.
The Seattle Department of Transportation had been created in 1997 with the name Seattle Transportation Department, and Grace Crunican replaced outgoing director Daryl Grigsby.
13.
Grace Crunican was criticized for going on vacation while the snow had not cleared out, and for failing to take responsibility and lacking a customer service mindset.
14.
However, shortly after the mayor's job was turned over to Mike McGinn, Grace Crunican announced on December 28,2009 that she was resigning and would start her own consulting company.
15.
At the time of Grace Crunican's resignation from SDOT, it was reported that Grace Crunican was a finalist for a county administrator job in Clackamas County, Oregon.
16.
Grace Crunican was general manager for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District.
17.
Board member Lynette Sweet said that during the interview, Grace Crunican impressed the board by identifying things that the board was doing wrong.
18.
Grace Crunican was formally appointed as general manager on August 31,2011.
19.
Grace Crunican got a $20,000 raise in annual salary six months later.
20.
Grace Crunican pushed back against union demands noting that the money comes from fares and taxpayers, whose interests need to be protected, but she received criticism for excessive executive compensation.
21.
Grace Crunican oversaw replacement of the BART train seats to vinyl ones that were more hygienic and easy to clean, and the award of a contract to Bombardier Transportation in 2012 for the delivery of new train cars.
22.
One of the factors in deciding to hire Grace Crunican was her skill at securing external grants and other funding, later validated by her subsequent success at getting Metropolitan Transportation Commission funding for the BART train car upgrade, and the passage of Measure RR, giving BART $3.5 billion in infrastructure funds.
23.
Grace Crunican is single and has had two adopted children, from Russia respectively.