Will Kempton, Caltrans Director

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For Will Kempton, every hour is rush hour. He is constantly checking on projects, meeting with transportation officials, finding and hiring contractors, evaluating his staff and working to make sure the entire San Francisco Bay Bridge is built by 2013. As the director of the California Department of Transportation, Kempton is always moving, managing the day-to-day operations of an aged agency known for stalling.

He usually takes light rail to work in the six-story Caltrans building one block south of Capitol Park, but much of the time, Kempton is out and about, traversing the state's network of more than 50,000 highway-lane miles. Since 2004, when Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed him director, Kempton has been pumping new life into the heart of California's clogged transportation system, a job that requires both time and tough skin. 

"The first 10 weeks of my job, I worked every single day," says Kempton, 60, who lives in Folsom with his wife, Beverley. "My wife thought I was crazy, like, what did I get myself into?"

Even with more than 30 years of transportation experience, Kempton knew he would have a rough road ahead of him. For years, Caltrans has been the oh-too-easy cursing target for motorists stuck in traffic and taxpayers watching projects take forever to be finished. The agency's trademark orange has come to represent something like sloth, and its employees have served as the butt of cold-blooded jokes.

Perhaps you've heard this one: "What's orange and sleeps four? A Caltrans truck." Or this one: "Caltrans is going to be laying off large numbers from their road crews. It seems someone has invented a shovel that will stand up by itself."

"There's a lot of old ones, but I haven't heard any new jokes in several years, so maybe that's a good sign that what Will Kempton is doing is effective," says Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government, an organization that has bumped heads with Caltrans for years over outsourcing issues. "Will puts a great deal of stress on project delivery, on time and on budget. He is easily the best director that department has had."

In the past two years, Kempton has been praised for his punctuality and for bringing his business sense to the agency that handles everything from building freeways and fixing potholes to overseeing public transit systems and removing snow from mountain roads. Caltrans has an annual operating budget of more than $13.8 billion and $10 billion worth of transportation improvement projects in the works. That means Kempton still has a lot of make-up work to do.

The Road to Recovery

Kempton believes that this business is all about building bridges. On the job, he joins forces with other transportation organizations at the local, regional, state and federal levels, a trait many say was uncommon for Caltrans.

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