Bay Area native and long-time San Francisco resident Jeffrey Tumlin will take over Muni’s parent agency, SFMTA, on December 16. Mayor London Breed announced Tumlin’s new position as Director of Transportation at a City Hall news conference this morning, subject to appointment by the SFMTA Board of Directors (expected to be a formality).
Tumlin will take over the permanent job held by Ed Reiskin for the past eight years until Reiskin announced his resignation earlier this year. SFMTA’s Director of Sustainable Streets, Tom Maguire, has been filling in on an interim basis. Tumlin and his husband live in Noe Valley; he is a regular Muni rider and bicycle commuter.
Details on Tumlin’s career are here in this Examiner story, and here in SFMTA’s news release and in this SFMTA blog post.
We especially recommend the blog post to gain a perspective on Tumlin’s values and priorities. A couple of excerpts give insight. First, it’s clear one of his top priorities is “getting more people out of their cars and onto our buses and light rail vehicles”:
Getting people to change their travel behaviors won’t be easy. But living in San Francisco has taught me that we’re all in this together and riding Muni taught me how to be a San Franciscan.
And perhaps, most relevant for our nonprofit advocacy group, its members, and our many supporters and friends, this concluding remark:
Another thing that excites me is that, in San Francisco, we incorporate a sense of delight into mobility. I love taking the F Line, riding the cable cars at dawn, biking on the Embarcadero, driving across Golden Gate Bridge. What we have here is special…and unique.
We at Market Street Railway are excited about Jeff Tumlin’s arrival at SFMTA and look forward to working with him. We also thank Tom Maguire for doing a great job in the interim.
