Update, resources for action: Sign the Transportation for Massachusetts Petition for Reliable, Safe Transit — they’ve got 2,000+ signatures. Considering the magnitude of the problem, we need more. Call your reps (find out who they are) at 617-722-2000. Here’s a good template for a letter — likely better than my rather ill-tempered one to mine.
===
First, I wish everyone safety and comfort right now. For real. This is not fun. It’s a little — maybe more than a little — scary. Whatever comfort you can find – prayer, meditation, music, phone call to Mom … do what you gotta do.
And let’s appreciate the employees of the MBTA, trying to keep it working against all odds. They deserve better than this, too.
I feel bad for @mbta_cr @mbta conductors and staff, they are the Sisyphus of 2015. Working w/old trains, no money & #snowmaggedon.
— Kelly Moran (@morank5) February 10, 2015
The T shutting down rail service through tomorrow is a real shock, though I suppose hardly more shocking than its total collapse over the last two weeks. We knew it was bad, and we’ve been complaining about it for years, and our legislature always found an excuse to do less than the minimum necessary.
I feel like a James Bond villain in welcoming Charlie Baker back to the scene that he’s at least partially responsible for. Welcome, Mr. Baker; we’ve been waiting for you all the while. Call it karma, payback, whatever — but he’s not suffering the worst of it. And honestly Schadenfreude is worth a bucket of warm spit when you can’t get to work and get paid and pay your bills. It’s a luxury we don’t really have right now.
Like somervilletom, I was glad to hear Beverly Scott speak with such candor this morning about the under-investment and inadequacy of our systems. She put the ball squarely in the court of the Governor and legislators — where it mostly belongs. I have no brief for the quality of her management one way or another; it’s simply impossible to assess how she’s doing when she’s heading a system set up for failure.
Charlie Baker refused to say this morning whether he has confidence in her. I will only say that if he fires her and sticks with his cuts to the T; or does nothing about the funding problem, then it proves he doesn’t really give a rat’s ass. And it will be yet another slap in the face to every T commuter, every employer of T commuters, every driver who benefits from those folks not also driving … and everyone who derives from the manifest economic benefits of good transit. That’s just about all of us.
Those who don’t take the T, who live far enough away that it’s not an option, or those whose travel patterns simply don’t happen to match up with the T’s hub-and-spokes … surely they can appreciate that they derive benefit from the vibrant Boston economy. That it doesn’t help them if their neighbors can’t get to work. That this costs the state’s economy and the state’s tax coffers immense amounts of money when people can’t get to work. And when the state runs a deficit, it’s going to cost you things that you care about. Not fixing this is more expensive than fixing it. Whether you live in Greater Boston or not, this matters to you.
This is not a quick fix, to say the least. The maintenance backlog is generational in scope. It takes forever to get from RFP to rolling stock on the rails. We just ordered Orange Line trains that will only all be in service — theoretically — by 2023. I’d call that pace glacial, but even glaciers disappear faster than that these days.
Charlie Baker, Bob DeLeo, and Stan Rosenberg only have one choice, which is to fund the MBTA. There is no more wiggle room. This is the age of consequences. It doesn’t much matter what Charlie Baker campaigned on, what he promised he’d do or not do in the campaign. No one’s going to be fooled by that kind of talk anymore. By calling for the necessary revenues, this could be Baker’s Nixon-to-China moment. He’s got a chance to right the ship — even though he essentially promised not to do so. No matter.
Live for the future: #transit2024
has me puzzled. There are few better times to act than when the public is with us.
1) Write/email/call your legislator and make it clear that decapitating Beverly Scott is NOT an answer to the current problem;
2) Ask the legislator what they will do to improve the situation;
3) Write to your local paper asking the same questions.
This ain’t rocket science. Legislators panic about emails that are even mildly critical and that are public. A pile of them is what we call “motivation.”
The Wicked Local syndicate and Patch are always interested in crowd sourced content.
In many ways they are more useful than the big city dailies. The gateway city dailies are also good bets such as the Patriot Ledger or the Sun.
The commentariat is still mainly over at Tom’s related post but they’ll show up eventually.
Swampscott, by the way, has pretty good T bus service out of Lynn. So the Governor’s back yard is doing just fine.
I use it to get to Marblehead when I want to visit the MAS Marblehead Neck Sanctuary and the rail trail system made from an old Salem line.
…suggests that the diary is so well-written and reflecting of the consensus here that there seems little to either add or disagree with.
is leaving babies out in the cold.
Read the whole link. Funding the T and making sure there are enough buses making frequent trips is about more than just boosting the economy. There are people in Boston and Massachusetts who live with a deeper frustration than anything Charlie Baker is feeling right now.
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2015/02/05/the-mom-the-baby-and-the-bus-stop-barbara-howard
It’s freezing, kiosks, where they exist, are buried. Supplemental schedule information at stops is all over the map. Availability of schedules varies widely, even though one could argue that smart phone access moots them.
They are the lowest status option but have a lot more route flexibility than anything tied to rails. Seattle didn’t have a subway system when I was there and doesn’t have much now, but its bus system is great and a source of pride.
You’re an adult, who has been telling other adults for years to pay for needed maintenance, obvious maintenance.
And these adults, of whom Charlie Baker has been called the “smart guy,” has been saying, “No, let’s put it off.” He helped found the Pioneer Institute who have made these bad ideas look like they came from smart people.
If Charlie’s car started to have trouble shifting gears, he would have the mechanic fix it or he’d pay for a new one.
But Charlie does not make decisions about the Commonwealth & the MBTA as if he shared in the responsibility. His decision-making is a lot more like a teenager going for a joy ride. And he expects other adults to haul the car back on the road.
I tried to find a transcript so I could get the wording exactly right, but that is basically what Governor Baker said when pressed at a news conference today about whether we needed to raise more revenue to fund the T. He also tried to explain why the T was saddled with debt referring to a consent decree that had been signed 25 years ago. The use of the passive voice stuck out in this case because wasn’t Baker himself directly involved in this arrangement? He said that new revenues had come in via the gas tax increase last year, but the problem with that is that it has since been repealed.
Any half-decent elected official, or human being for that matter, can look good being out front on something like this saying we are doing everything we can, but everything we can may not amount to much if we refuse to invest. I struggle to hope for much improvement in this regard if the premise as stated in the title of my comment holds throughout his term.
“He said that new revenues had come in via the gas tax increase last year, but the problem with that is that it has since been repealed.”
I did not think the gas tax increase was repealed. The 3 cent increase in the gas tax is still in effect, it was the auto indexing that was repealed.
Did I miss something?
I thought the initial indexing included an increase from that amount and repeal returned it to 24 cents. Here is the Secretary’s summary and the arguments pro and con.