Rick Cotton's Valedictory

Note to readers: For those who tussled with the link, apologies. I have now heard from so many who did read it, how remarkable it is, here, in full and directly, is the speech.

What a journey this has been. Serving as the Executive Director of the Port Authority has been one of the great privileges of my life.

Tonight, a short reprise: a reprise of how we approached the challenge and thanks to all of you who helped along the way.

The Port Authority is a storied, century-old institution that was built to do hard things across borders, across rivers, and across political cycles.

History

Just in its first decade alone, it built three iconic bridges and an astonishing tunnel under the Hudson River, all still in use today.

Over time the agency’s portfolio expanded to include the Region’s airports, the four bridges and two tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey, the world’s busiest bus terminal, the second largest Seaport in the US, the PATH commuter railroad, and the 16-acre World Trade Center campus that has become a gem of lower Manhattan.

But somewhere along the way, the Port Authority began to falter and lose the public’s trust.

Scandal hijacked the agency’s mission. Controversies and disagreements started to dominate the agenda. Crisis intervened in the form of the 1993 bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attack. Time, resources, and focus rightfully shifted to rebuilding the World Trade Center. Development stagnated and projects stalled.

Think back just a decade ago.

The Midtown Bus Terminal was an embarrassing eyesore in the heart of Midtown Manhattan with no plan to rebuild it or even where to start.

All three major airports were consistently ranked at the bottom of every single passenger satisfaction survey. They were regularly mocked by the media, comedians, and even a Vice President.

The Port Authority had become synonymous with dysfunction and gridlock.

The World Passes Us

In contrast, places like Shanghai or Dubai and other Asian and European cities became symbols of best-in-class, efficient transit hubs – especially their airports, which stood as shining, welcoming beacons.

In contrast, the Port Authority had been written off. The public did not believe that the agency could deliver the best-in-class infrastructure needed to compete with the great cities of the world.

New Leadership

Thankfully, the region was fortunate to have leaders emerge who believed in a strong infrastructure agenda.

Leaders like Governor Kathy Hochul, who has kept me on as Executive Director when she became governor; Governor Andrew Cuomo, who appointed me originally and introduced me to the infrastructure industry; and Governor Phil Murphy, who provided essential support.

And Governor, knowing that you delivered your State of the State speech yesterday and the demands on you surrounding that event, I want to say that I am particularly grateful for your being here tonight.

And a key part of the turnaround story was that, the same day I was nominated to serve as Executive Director, Kevin O’Toole was selected by the Governor of New Jersey to chair the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners.

In what was frankly an extraordinary break with the past, Kevin and I formed a true and uniquely fruitful partnership that focused on getting things done in service of our region and ending the agency’s paralyzing conflicts and dysfunction.

New Standards

World class

The next step towards change was to insist that the agency embrace and publicly commit itself to a new quality standard – that standard was to be best in class, best in the world.

No matter how difficult and no matter how distant that goal might have felt when Kevin and I first took office, we were intent on applying this standard across the agency, including not only our employees, but also our partners, contractors, and consultants.

True believers were few and far between back then when we started, including I suspect, many if not most of you here this evening.

Action not words or promises

We had to also drive home a harsh lesson to the agency – particularly in public service, there is no credit for effort, planning, or promises.

There is only credit for results.

There is only credit when something is built, completed, and put into service in the real world.

And best in the world meant new approaches

Taking risks and doing things differently – all in the interest of achieving results better or faster – needed to be the order of the day.

The phrase “But we’ve always done it that way,” needed to be banished from the agency’s vocabulary.

That empowered the agency to operate differently. Integrity was non-negotiable.

What did that mean in practice?

Public private partnerships

We focused on the scale and role of public-private partnerships across our ambitious agenda. Without these partnerships, we would not have been able to achieve the true best-in-class transformation we are making at the airports and at the Seaport.

Five different large-scale public-private partnerships at the airports enabled us to leverage tens of billions of dollars of private financing – a scale never seen before – and without which the scale of our $50 billion dollar airport redevelopment program would never have been possible.

It’s not just about the money they brought to the table – they also brought expertise. We have been able to draw on the skills and knowledge of these private companies. They, in areas like customer service, have experience and capabilities that are not the bread and butter of government agencies.

At the seaport, we focused on restructuring our marine terminal leases with the private operators who run our public port facilities. These new unprecedented lease arrangements tied long-term leases to higher performance expectations, more favorable revenue sharing, higher capital investment, and shared responsibility for keeping the system competitive.

During Covid, our Port became the second busiest seaport in the nation and outperformed virtually all of the ports in the nation in avoiding congestion. Our new lease provisions put us on an ambitious path to even higher standards and are setting the gold standard around the country and around the world.

Elevated focus on customer experience

We also focused on the experience of the customers and the travelers that we serve, and the airports are probably the most visible and relatable example to most of you in this room.

They are a prime example of our new playbook, which is now our standard practice, with results that showed what achieving best-in-class meant in the real world.

We made customer experience a daily test and constantly asked ourselves – does this best serve the public?

The answer meant demanding excellence in the big things — dramatic, appealing design and architecture: bright natural light, floor-to-ceiling windows, inspiring views of the airfield, the city skyline, or the waterfront.

We focused on creating a signature “sense of place” -- meaning New York and New Jersey -- at each of our new airports that reflected the character of the region.
We focused on putting public art front and center – commissioning respected local and international artists to create New York– and New Jersey–themed artworks that energize and delight travelers.

We elevated another key element of the customer experience, which is the level and variety of the concessions – food, beverage, and retail – again with major participation by local New York and New Jersey shops and brands.

Serving the public also meant obsessing over the small things that shaped customer experience and perception. It meant bright, spacious bathrooms — not the dingy, stainless-steel prison-style facilities of decades past.

And it meant elevators and escalators that actually worked and are consistently monitored remotely with maintenance crews on call 24/7.

Because those are the things people remember, and the clearest proof to the public that the traveler comes first.

We backed these changes with measurement: credible third-party surveys, real tracking of wait times, coupled with serious work to identify and focus on addressing other pain points.

Keep facilities open during construction

Given their role as gateways to the region, we had to keep LaGuardia open and are keeping Kennedy and Newark Liberty open and operating while rebuilding them. This is an extraordinary feat of engineering and planning.

We acknowledged that short-term disruptions would be difficult for our customers but continually reminded them that they would ultimately be rewarded with major long-term benefits.

Safety, security and sustainability

Across our facilities, we raised standards around safety and security. We raised the headcount of the Port Authority Police Department to its highest level in history and, with our federal partners, we embraced every cutting-edge security technology we could find.

We treated sustainability and innovation as fundamental responsibilities that should be baked into our redevelopment projects from the outset, not future aspirations with distant implementation dates.

We recognize climate change is an existential threat. We design to the highest resiliency standards in the business to protect against seawater rise, higher storm surges, and intensified storms. We have one of the largest solar and renewable programs in the business. We remain intensely focused on converting our fleet vehicles to electric.

To put it plainly: we are committed to being Net Zero by 2050. And, I’ll add, we just hit our 2025 greenhouse gas reduction target of 50 percent.

Concern for Community

In today’s world, in order to succeed, large infrastructure projects simply must have significant support from the surrounding community. Too often in the past, the Port Authority was perceived as arrogant and unengaged.

So, we set out to change that: we showed up, engaged with the communities where our facilities operate, and delivered tangible benefits in return.

At our airports, for example, we delivered record-setting levels of contracts and business opportunities to local, small, and diverse businesses. Specifically, these record-setting efforts delivered: $2.3 billion of contracts to minority-and-women-owned businesses at LaGuardia and a staggering $3 billion of such contracts at Kennedy.

And beyond the airports, the $11 billion transformation of the Midtown Bus Terminal that is now finally underway may be the clearest example of what it means to listen to and work with the community.

Originally, the reaction to our plan from the community and the city for our initial design was…I think the technical term is…”no fucking way.”

Criticism focused on a lack of attention to getting idling buses off city streets and the omission of sufficient street-level amenities and green space that would contribute to the revitalization of the surrounding Hell’s Kitchen community.

So, we listened. We held hundreds of meetings. We assessed the feedback. And we decided the community comments were right and we methodically changed the design. Dramatically!

The result was nothing short of astonishing.

After being mired in community controversy and deadlock for decades, our new plan won the support not only of the local community board – a major feat in and of itself – but also of every elected official (many of whom are here tonight) whose districts encompassed the project – from City Council member all the way to its congressional representative.

This 10-year, multi-billion project, in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world, broke ground seven months ago and is now at long last moving forward.

It showed our new approach was working.

Results and awards

Port Authority employees began to take pride in delivering best-in-class, and soon that standard became a habit.

What once seemed impossible became simply the next thing to do.
Through the hard work of our re-energized team, and our partnership with the private sector, the Port Authority actually transformed LaGuardia from America’s worst to best, literally.

Ten years ago, LaGuardia was a punchline. Fast forward, LaGuardia has won almost every award in the book, including the Forbes Travel Guide having now named LaGuardia the Best Airport in the United States for two years in a row. And that designation was based off of the feedback of five thousand frequent flyers and travel experts

And if anyone thought that LaGuardia was a fluke, we immediately moved on to produce those same best-in-class results at Newark Liberty Terminal A when it opened, which was recognized as the best new airport terminal in the world by SkyTrax, the leading airport rating organization.

And finally BOTH LaGuardia and Newark Liberty Terminal A subsequently earned Skytrax’s highest award, its coveted five-star rating. In the entire United States, only three airports have facilities with five-star ratings – and two of them are the Port Authority’s. That’s never happened before. That’s best-in-class.

And we’re not stopping. Like I said, what once seemed impossible becomes simply the next thing we do.

We’re bringing best-in-class to the transformation of Kennedy, to a brand-new Newark Liberty Terminal B, and with the agency’s newly approved capital plan – our 10-year financial roadmap – we’ve set the stage for another decade of transformation across the agency.

These are not just construction projects.

They are statements.

Statements that public institutions, when led with conviction and integrity, can deliver generational change.

Statements that the Port Authority can deliver best-in-class results time and time again, which is what the people of our region deserve.

Today, the agency is once again delivering some of the most consequential infrastructure projects in the world.

As I pass the Executive Director responsibility to the extraordinary Kathryn Garcia, I know the Port Authority will keep boldly pushing forward.

Thank you to ABNY for this evening and your partnership over these years. Thank you to the business and political leaders and elected and civic advocates here who supported our important work.

And, of course, thank you to my family for their love and support, and especially thank you to Betsy, with whom I enjoy the very best version of a public-private partnership.

Our region, and our Port Authority, are both thriving. And the best is yet to come. Thank you.