Search title image

TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

Bookmark and Share

Fall 2012

Greta Ericson Distinguished Service Award:
Sense of Responsibility Lasts Dorothy Dugger a Lifetime

Dorothy Dugger’s career at BART spanned nearly 20 years, including serving as the first female general manager in BART’s 54-year history. During her tenure, BART’s rail cars were refurbished and BART opened extensions to the San Francisco International Airport and to Dublin/Pleasanton. (Photo: BART Communications Department)

Growing up in Auburn, Alabama, on a working farm with 10,000 chickens, Dorothy Dugger learned a keen sense of responsibility that has lasted all her life. She graduated from Rutgers University in the early 1970s ready to right the world.

“Where I learned my strong passion for social justice was growing up in a still-segregated South,” Dugger said. “I’m a child of the ’60s with a strong sense to contribute to make the world a better place.”

Dorothy Dugger is this year’s recipient of the Greta Ericson Distinguished Service Award for career achievement in the transportation field (named for the former MTC commissioner who spearheaded the creation of the MTC Awards Program in 1977). On the career path that led to BART, she worked in the political and public policy arena, including time at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as director of Governmental and Public Affairs. Dugger was recruited to head up BART’s External Affairs group in 1992, became deputy general manager two years later, and was selected as the first female general manager in BART’s 54-year history in 2007, ending her nearly 20 years with BART in 2011.

One of Dugger’s early accomplishments was delivery of the BART extension to SFO. By various means, including use of her Southern charm, Dugger obtained crucial funding from Washington and what has become one of the best airport connections in the country was completed on time and within its revised budget.

Through the toughest years economically in BART history, Dugger steered a steady course, averting layoffs and reductions in core service. Under her stewardship, BART renovated railcars’ original seats at half the cost of new cars, boosted its region-best fare-box recovery ratio to more than 68 percent and opened its first infill station at West Dublin/Pleasanton. Dugger was also deeply involved in the eBART extension to Pittsburg/Antioch, the first leg of the extension from Fremont into Santa Clara County and the Oakland Airport Connector.

“Dorothy definitely went beyond the call of duty,” said Alix Bockelman, MTC’s director of Programming and Allocations. “She was a leader in regional transportation policy discussion, she was dedicated and put in long hours alongside her staff during very challenging times for BART, and she’s been a role model through her involvement in WTS (Women’s Transportation Seminar) and other civic organizations.”

“It’s been a great privilege to work with such dedicated and capable employees,” Dugger said, “leading a team that delivered service reliably to some 350,000-400,000 riders daily. It took all of us to achieve a safe, reliable and very important component of environmentally clean mobility.”

Since her retirement, Dugger has been occupied with family matters and travel. “The future is wide open,” she said. “I’ve retired from BART, not from life. My contributions to make the world a better place are not over.”
— Georgia Lambert

Transactions Fall 2012 Issue: Contents