Fixing the MBTA – Name & Shame Edition

Comments

1. rcmauro says

   February 18, 2015 at 1:59 pm

   Back in my web dev days I would have used some system to mask the exact email addresses so all these people don’t get spammed. Not sure if that is still recommended? Although the spam might be deserved in some cases…

   • chris-rich says

     February 18, 2015 at 2:07 pm

     They probably get crawled a lot as it is. If personal e mail addresses were provided, it might be an issue.

     It would be interesting to know what sort of filters they set up on their end.

     • Patrick says

       February 18, 2015 at 2:20 pm

       I pulled all of these from the MA Legislature website where they’re listed out in plain text and hyperlink format.

2. paulsimmons says

   February 18, 2015 at 3:37 pm

   So far, Boston, and Boston area voters are divided, per a massINC/WBUR poll released today:

   …most transportation experts, including conservatives and business leaders, think the system needs more money, or at least relief from some of the debt load that consumes a large part of its budget. Both the Governor and House Speaker Robert DeLeo have said they want to understand what went wrong before committing more money…

   Voters are less equivocal about the root causes of the T’s problems. Two-thirds think the current failure is due to the T’s aging equipment; less than a fifth (17 percent) blame bad management during the storm. And when asked who is most responsible, more than half point to the lawmakers who have controlled T’s purse strings: the legislature (27 percent) and past governors (25 percent).

   Voters want action, but they are less clear about what should be done. They are split over the root causes of the T’s multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. They are also divided as to whether the T should halt expansion to focus on fixing the core system, or balance both. On the question of paying more in taxes and fees to fix the T, half are in favor and half opposed. We didn’t go too deep on this question in this regional poll, since new revenues would be a statewide issue. Our past work suggests the details of revenue proposals for transportation can make a big difference in support levels.

   Link to cover article

   Poll Toplines

   Poll Crosstabs

3. paulsimmons says

   February 18, 2015 at 4:04 pm

   …having nothing to do with competent or accountable transportation planning:

   However, the biggest obstacle to dealing head-on with the MBTA crisis is not Beacon Hill’s “reform before revenue” mindset. It is the expansion reflex that has solidified into a ‘you got yours, now we get ours’ paradigm…

   Bringing the MBTA up to modern standards requires billions, money that other regions of the state aren’t willing to give up to divert to Big Dig Boston. Again.

   Rosenberg admitted as much. “The unending appetite to expand public transit, for good reason, basically has resulted in building a system that is inadequately supported in both its size and its age,” he said Tuesday. “There is significant demand for more commuter rail…in western Massachusetts [and] other parts of the state.”

   In other words, let them ride the T.

   • SomervilleTom says

     February 18, 2015 at 4:22 pm

     Expansion is to public transportation what sales is to a private company and evangelism to a religious organization. A company that stops investing in expanding sales is DEAD. An executive team that proposes to cut sales spending is choosing to kill the enterprise.

     Of course, killing the enterprise — “starving the beast” — has been the desire of far too many of our leaders. We are now seeing the results.

     I’m confused about the meaning of the third quoted paragraph. Since there is “significant demand for more commuter rail…in western Massachusetts [and] other parts of the state”, then that says to me that expansion plans are an appropriate response to that “significant demand”.

     I do speculate about some motivations for the odd resistance to expansion:
     – It increases the influence of now-outlying regions. That will change the political dynamics of those areas.
     – It increases the wealth of those regions. That will change the dynamics of who controls the agenda
     – It increases the minority population of those regions. That will change the dynamics of how legislators campaign.

     During the all-too-brief time that I lived on Cape Cod (in Hyannisport), the most common objection I heard to re-establishing commuter rail to the Cape was “we don’t want all those *** here.” In Medford and Arlington, the resistance to expanding the Green and Red Line (respectively) was similarly “it will bring more of the undesirable element to our town”.

     Whatever the problem is here, the opposition to expansion is inconsistent with the apparent will of the voters.

     • paulsimmons says

       February 18, 2015 at 4:41 pm

       …if it’s sustainable.

       What I’m seeing (and this is not limited to mass transit) is an addiction to vanity projects paid, presumably, by the Tooth Fairy.

       To his credit, Senator Rosenberg addressed this, and I applaud his intellectual honesty and political courage for doing so:

       “This is de Tocqueville writ large,” Rosenberg said in a meeting with reporters at his State House office. “That’s the America we live in. We want excellent public services. We expect our government to work efficiently and effectively, but at the same time we’re not willing to invest the resources where needed.”

       The reference in the paragraph you cited refers to growing resistance to Boston-centric projects from elsewhere in the Commonwealth, not the probability that transit projects will expand there.

       …the opposition to expansion is inconsistent with the apparent will of the voters

       It’s also equally inconsistent with the apparent (and demonstrably stronger) will of the voters to oppose new taxes and fees.

       Something’s gotta give…

       • chris-rich says

         February 18, 2015 at 5:08 pm

         And, if you think about it, what is this meager rail expansion if not an effort to get out to constituents that aren’t in the metro ring?

         The people who pack the trains for sports spectacles do so because they dread driving and finding parking in Boston.

         As a lifelong non driver it took me a while to appreciate what an insane time waste the search for parking is in congested cities like my own neighborhood.

         All I gotta park is my ass. The problem of seeking a berth for a fat metal thing is not mine. But I’ve scouted it because it’s helpful for the wretches who do and I like being helpful.

       • paulsimmons says

         February 18, 2015 at 5:10 pm

         From the Globe:

         Senator William Brownsberger, a Belmont Democrat, said if it were up to him, the Legislature would seek “greater funding sources” for the T, but he acknowledged that any MBTA fix would probably happen within the no-new-taxes paradigm.

       • Charley on the MTA says

         February 20, 2015 at 10:57 am

         that’s getting blamed for extending the T beyond its means? The New Bedford/Fall River line? The extension from Worcester to Springfield?

         It’s the *response* to Boston-centricity that’s stretching the system. Because these things are popular!

         Hmmm …

     • chris-rich says

       February 18, 2015 at 4:48 pm

       Except that they moved there anyway. So much for that plan.

       I remember that it was said to be the reason the Red Line just stopped in a wetland on the Cambridge/Belmont border.

       But it left Arlington with fairly intensive bus service as a fix to basic coverage as if those scary coloreds don’t also used buses.

       There are few more preposterous and repulsive spectacles than White Masshole Bigots agonizing about spectral, phantom coloreds.

       As a white masshole, I’m often considered ‘safe’ company when those knuckle draggers wind up a good racial detestation drool fest.

       I don’t try to argue, I just cross them off the list of acceptable people to know.

   • chris-rich says

     February 18, 2015 at 4:34 pm

     Or the outcome of lawsuits in the case of Old Colony/Greenbush.

     There are often Fed Matches or initiatives involved where it is Mass getting a share of stimulus money during the recession.

     http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/ is the current project list. Most of it is fixing existing stuff other than the Green Line Extension.

     There is a small extension to West Fitchburg but that line used to go to Gardner. So is it expansion when it involves route restoration?

     Wouldn’t true expansion be something like making a complete new line out of whole cloth to places not served like a Middleton Line?

     It still looks like dog whistle whining about that law suit. I’m surprised it isn’t accompanied by activist judiciary grumbles.

     When I looked over a lot of the system since I came back, it looked like the Patrick administration was mainly trying to claw back stuff that was taken away in the long run since Weld.

     The poll data looks pretty good in the sense that the public sampled have a fairly fair assessment and are trying to give the system the benefit of the doubt.

4. Gumby says

   February 18, 2015 at 7:15 pm

   DeLeo’s home town of Winthrop is so into driving that they don’t even have MBTA buses. Winthrop buses are outsourced to a private bus company

   • Christopher says

     February 18, 2015 at 8:09 pm

     It has always baffled me that a Rep. from Winthrop would not be more sympathetic to the T.

   • stomv says

     February 19, 2015 at 12:42 pm

     Who owns Paul Revere Transportation anyway?

     • chris-rich says

       February 19, 2015 at 1:03 pm

       http://alternateconceptsinc.com/history.html.

       Smells like nepotistic featherbedding, a common characteristic of the ward heeler species (Grabbus buckus)

       • stomv says

         February 20, 2015 at 10:52 am

         but do they own it?

         • chris-rich says

           February 20, 2015 at 11:44 am

           I get the sense that these things are like deal packagers where the fleet probably belongs to some leasing company who also handles payroll and they ‘own’ whatever deal is set up for the duration of a contract.

           That’s a common trend in service sector schemes to divert public money into private channels.

         • TheBestDefense says

           February 20, 2015 at 12:53 pm

           that has two people, Jane Daly and James F. O’Leary serving in all five of the required positions (President, Treasurer, Secretary and two Directors) to be properly incorporated. Their offices are at One Liberty Square, Boston.

           Daly and O’Leary have long histories at the MBTA. The most telling language about the nature of the company comes in their history statement on their website:

           Today, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, ACI and its several thousand employees serve customers from New England to the Caribbean and from the east coast to the southwest and Colorado. ACI provides its customers with a diversified, bilingual team of professional employees who are dedicated to safely and efficiently managing many modes of transportation systems.

           Their claim to having several thousand employees across the country leads me to believe that they are the direct owners of Paul Revere Transportation, as it seems unlikely that a company with that large a payroll would not be the owners of a transportation company in their own backyard. Capitalization of a company with only two bus routes in the region would be minimal and I expect a tightly held firm like ACI would not want to act as a manager for another company and risk the failure of the other.

           • chris-rich says

             February 20, 2015 at 1:36 pm

             I just couldn’t tell how compartmentalized the set up was.