So that’s what the “new CEO” thing I mentioned in the open thread was all about: CHSRA Executive Director Mehdi Morshed will retire in March:

Morshed announced his decision in a letter sent today to Board Chairman Curt Pringle. The 72-year-old leading advocate for high speed rail projects across the country plans to step down March 31.

Morshed wrote in the letter that the 2008 passage of a $9.95 billion bond to fund the project and the Obama administration’s support for high-speed rail assured him that the proposed 800-mile track linking Southern California to the Bay Area and Sacramento will become a reality.

Morshed’s resignation letter can be read here. One passage is especially worthy of quotation:

During the past 11 years the project was declared dead many times. Annually we were prepared to close the office. Sometimes, the objectives are so noble and so compelling that it can survive numerous hardships. This is one of those.

Well said.

Jeff Barker explained to the Sac Bee the next steps for the CHSRA:

“We’re going to search for someone who has managed and delivered large public construction projects, preferably someone with rail experience,” he said. “Someone who knows California, as well, although that’s not a necessity.”

I’ll ask again: Bob Doty?

Morshed has a long background in California high speed rail. In 1982-83 he helped oversee Governor Jerry Brown’s first, halting effort to bring bullet trains to the state. When the project was revived over a decade later, Morshed was hired as the Authority’s executive director in 1998, and has overseen the project’s development ever since.

Morshed says he’s leaving because he’s accomplished his primary goals of getting the bonds approved by voters and brining federal funds to the project. It does seem like a good time to retire – he is 72, and can be sure that his absence won’t leave the project any weaker.

And it might make it stronger. Morshed did great work in getting HSR this far, but may have begun to reach the limits of his effectiveness. Anna Eshoo was notably annoyed with his engineer’s approach to HSR at the Menlo Park, and Morshed hadn’t been experienced at delivering a project like this to completion. New skills of capital project management are needed, and so this is a fitting time to bring those skills to the HSR project.

I for one would like to thank and congratulate Mehdi Morshed for his service, for his great work at the Authority, and wish him a good retirement. I also think it’s time we start talking about who we think should fill his shoes.