Marin resident appointed to lead Bay Area’s top transportation agency

A Marin County resident has been named executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the leading transportation agency in the Bay Area.

Andrew Fremier of San Anselmo is taking over the agency at a time when it faces daunting tasks. It must stabilize a transportation network still reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic while implementing significant projects throughout the region.

Fremier, 62, had been a deputy director with the agency since 2005. He is a former chief deputy director with Caltrans District 4, where he worked for 20 years in various positions, including overseeing bridge and highway construction and maintenance.

The commission voted unanimously Wednesday to give Fremier the top position, which comes with an annual salary of $380,000. He will replace Therese McMillan, who retired.

“You’re the right person at the right time,” Alfredo Pedroza, the commission chair, told Fremier after the vote. “We have a lot of goals, we have a lot of outcomes that we need to achieve, and you’re up for the challenge.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is a government agency responsible for transportation planning and funding in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties. The agency also leads the Bay Area Toll Authority, which collects and distributes bridge toll funding for the seven state-owned bridges in the Bay Area.

In an interview on Friday, Fremier said he is committed to implementing the commission’s Plan Bay Area 2050, a $1.4 trillion, 30-year effort that aims to improve transit services; to improving access to affordable housing, especially near transit systems; and to adapting the Bay Area’s transportation network to climate change.

“There are really three fronts,” Fremier said. “There is the transit investment, there’s the housing investment and there is an investment in resiliency and sea-level rise that are all really going to force the region to work hard to find new revenue in order to make those systems work. And that’s what we’re committed to doing right now and for the foreseeable future.”

Fremier’s appointment comes as several of the Bay Area’s largest transit providers are facing a fiscal crisis. Billions of dollars of federal coronavirus relief funding meant to cover revenue losses from reduced ridership is set to dry up, and ridership remains about half of what it was before the pandemic, Fremier said. Agencies reported that without new funding, significant cuts would take place.

Without these federal funds, these services would essentially be “shut down” unless alternative money can be found within the next few years, Fremier said. Additional federal funding is likely not going to rescue these services, Fremier said, while Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed cuts to transit funding in the upcoming 2023-2024 budget to cover a projected deficit.

One option being considered is to put a regional funding measure before voters to prevent major service cuts that would affect essential workers, worsen traffic congestion and result in more greenhouse gas emissions, Fremier said.

“We’re continuing to build coalitions across the state that have the same concerns we have here in San Francisco and try to find new revenue from state and local opportunities when the time is right,” Fremier said.

At the same time, the commission recently adopted a plan that seeks to integrate the Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies. The plan includes simplifying fare payments across different providers; improving mapping and wayfinding for passengers; and prioritizing transit services on state highways and on the approaches to the Bay Bridge and Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to incentivize transit ridership.

While the commission faces challenges, Fremier said, recent funding will provide billions of dollars toward key transportation projects in the Bay Area, including BART extension to Silicon Valley, flooding improvements on Highway 37 and a proposed Highway 101-Interstate 580 interchange in Marin. In addition to funding available through the $1 trillion federal infrastructure package, hundreds of millions of dollars in bridge toll revenues collected through Regional Measure 3 were recently freed because of a California Supreme Court decision. The toll measure, approved by voters in 2018, was passed to raise $4.5 billion for transit and transportation projects in the region, with about $550 million collected so far.

Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters sits on the commission and worked with Fremier when she chaired the governing board of the Transportation Authority of Marin, the local congestion management agency. She said Fremier has a “detailed knowledge” of North Bay transportation and transit. She said he was key recently in helping to form a coalition of state agencies to plan for the rebuild of Highway 37 in response to rising seas.

“This really is a watershed time with the release of Regional Measure 3 funds as well as the state and federal infrastructure dollars,” she said. “This is a time when its really go time with our transportation projects. We have many needs in the Bay Area. Andy has a track record of successful project delivery.  He knows how to run an organization to get things done.”

David Schonbrunn, president of the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund in San Anselmo, has been critical of the commission’s planning efforts through the years, which he said have resulted in the existing congestion and transit issues. He said he does not expect much to change under Fremier’s leadership.

“After spending many billions of dollars on transportation projects over the past four decades, all MTC has to show is more auto traffic,” Schonbrunn wrote in an email. “MTC is a profoundly dysfunctional agency, badly in need of world-class leadership. The Commission’s decision to hire in-house says: ‘We’re doing just fine.’ More of the same is denial.”

Jim Wunderman, president and chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council business organization, said Fremier’s experience will be “invaluable as the Bay Area confronts some of the biggest challenges we’ve ever faced when it comes to keeping the region moving.”

“Andy has always prioritized getting things done, which we need now more than ever as our transit systems struggle to recover from the pandemic, funding becomes more uncertain and we continue to push for the investments necessary to keep our highways, roads and bridges functioning and updated,” Wunderman said.

Anne Richman, executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin, previously worked with Fremier at the commission.

“He brings institutional knowledge and has years of expertise in transportation projects, planning, and funding,” Richman said. “He understands our regional challenges and priorities and has long-standing agency partnerships, and we’re glad to have him as a neighbor too.”