WBUR is doing a fine series on traffic and transit this week. From yesterday — If you think your commute is getting worse, you’re not alone …
WBUR Poll: Boston-Area Residents Say Traffic Is Getting Worse, But MBTA May Be A Solution | WBUR.
Traffic is getting worse. That’s the conclusion of Boston-area residents surveyed in a new WBUR poll (topline, crosstabs).
Fifty-seven percent say it’s gotten worse in the last five years. You could point to the rebounding economy, but whatever the reason, almost 2 in 5 residents say traffic has caused them to be late for work. And 14 percent say they’ve considered leaving the area to get away from the traffic.
And what’s the solution? 79% of those surveyed in Greater Boston say “repairing and modernizing” the MBTA! This is the MBTA with a $7 billion repair and maintenance backlog.
This is, of course, completely at odds with our Governor and Speaker DeLeo, who insist upon the strategy of “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” Budget cuts, austerity, no vision, no hope ever.
I stipulate that the politics are exacerbated by the unavoidable, structural regional rivalries for transit dollars; and the looting by the T’s contractors and unions; absurdly outdated procurement; so that even approved money gets lit on fire. Better procurement is obviously necessary, but it’s not sufficient.
That $7 billion is never going to come without … ahem … a “political revolution.” Even our vaunted progressives vote for DeLeo for Speaker-for-life and hold fundraisers with him, for the scraps he throws their districts. (Of course, it’s not just transit that suffers under the current leadership.)
Again: Gov. Baker can be Mr. Fixit or a “fiscal conservative”. But not both. It’s pretty apparent that DeLeo just doesn’t care.
If this seems like a cynical, impotent rant … well, it is. But with scant leadership from electeds on this, I suppose we’re left to complain and bang on the table. Someone show me a better way.
For the record, I attended a fund-raiser for Denise Provost last Sunday afternoon, attended by Pat Jehlen and Maura Healey. There was a comfortably large crowd. Mr. DeLeo was not, to my knowledge, present.
Ms. Provost voted against making Mr. DeLeo speaker-for-life, proudly advocates increasing taxes on the wealthy, and loudly advocates increased funding for the MBTA. The crowd, all Somerville voters, loudly applauded those stances.
There are some good-guys in Massachusetts government. The three political leaders present last Sunday are strongly supportive of doing the right thing regarding the MBTA. Each of the three are progressive Democrats.
Indeed, we need to change things. I’d also like us to continue to recognize and support those officials who are already doing all in their power to do just that.
… but I wonder what price Provost has paid. Jon Hecht voted against Speaker-for-Life and lost his committee vice-chairmanship, along with 10 others.
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/price-leadership/
I heard an amazing statistic the other day (on WBUR): 60% of Boston residents drive to work by themselves.
60%! In fairness, since it’s Boston residents, the T is much weaker at getting OUT of Boston. That is, any destination beyond 617 is harder to reach.
The commuter rail system is heavily biased against “reverse” commutes. This delayed a major IBM facility in Littleton, MA for years.
Even within the city, a minimal threshold of acceptable performance is that the MBTA should be faster than walking between two given points. The MBTA does not meet that standard for much of Boston much of the time.
For years, I lived in Coolidge Corner and worked in Cambridge (Kendall and Central Square). It was generally faster to walk across the BU bridge and through the neighborhoods than to take the T. I seldom drove because parking in Cambridge is so difficult (never mind the traffic).
Green to 1/CT1 beats walking CCorner-Central for sure. And Bridj does too, though it costs more.
I was headed towards 22-24 Landsdowne Street in Central Square, about a 10 minute walk from the buses/T stop.
The bus seldom achieved the posted 8 minute time the few times I tried it. The spacing of 1 and CT1 is posted at 10 minutes The C line was often 10 minutes between cars, and often difficult to jam onto. Coolidge Corner to Hynes is often 20 minutes once on a car, sometimes more. Coolidge Corner to Park is generally 30 minutes, sometimes more.
It was easy to end up spending 50 minutes this way:
5 minutes: Walk to Coolidge Corner
10 minutes: Wait for C line
20 minutes: Green Line to Hynes
10 minutes: Hynes to Central
10 minutes: Central to destination
—-
55 minutes total
Green to Red was a bit slower:
5 minutes: Walk to Coolidge Corner
10 minutes: Wait for C line
30 minutes: Green Line to Park
5 minutes: Wait for Red Line
10 minutes: Park to Central
10 minutes: Central to destination
—-
65 minutes total
I could walk from home to my office at Central square in 45 minutes:
10 minutes: Walk to BU bridge
20 minutes: Walk to 640 Mem Drive
15 minutes: Walk from 640 Mem Dr to Central Square
—-
45 minutes
The big advantage of walking (other than its health benefits) was its predictability.
This was a few years ago (as in more then 10 🙁 ), so I probably would walk slower today. I’m not sure the bus choices were the same then. I remember trying the 1, and finding it notoriously unpredictable. I also remember trying the 66, and not having much luck with it.
but you’re right, even at it’s best, it’s not that much better than walking. Of course, it is typically drier than a wet walk and warmer than a cold walk…
In fact, huge areas in 508 have little meaningful public transit at all.
So kvetching about a delay on what is non-existent for most of us doesn’t elicit much sympathy.
n/t
Here is a direct quote from my train last night to Salem:
I completely agree with that passenger. I overheard a Wentworth student telling some New Yorkers who were appalled at the slow pace and sardine packing on the Green Line that this is the oldest line in North America and second oldest in the world. “yeah and it fucking shows’ said the caustic New Yorker. Can’t argue with that, it’s no longer a point of pride for our ‘innovation city’.
Jim Aloisi made the great point that the GE deal didn’t come with any new incentives to bring better transit to the Seaport. For that kind of bread, GE could’ve at least ponied up like New Balance has and built new BRT silver lines that could transport their workers to the campus.
This was the #1 issue on the minds of the MIT Graduate Student Council I was delighted to attend last night. It’s the #1 issue on the minds of millennials and urban dwellers and got scant mention in the 2014 campaign.
It’s a big reason I joined the UIP and work for it, since Evan Falchuk was the only candidate consistently talking about passing a progressive income tax to fund transit and education. The very same stated position of Progressive Mass and Raise Up. Jennifer Flanagan and Jerry Parisella have done nothing on bringing better T services to their districts on the commuter rail, but our UIP candidates in those communites have pledged to make that a priority. Denise Provost and Jon Hecht need allies, and you won’t find too many of them in the Democratic party at the local level.
And it’s high time we had that. And we absolutely should pare these increases in revenue and public investments with high quality private sector management. The public loses it’s trust in the T as an investment when it’s own auditor is off on the high salaries, high overtimes, and high bonuses by a magnitude of over 50%. Expand it, bring it further out into the burbs, and turn drivers into T riders and T voters. It’s gotta happen.
Methinks many residents of my South Coast community would be grudgingly willing to pay higher taxes if some of the benefits remained local. We pay a chunk of our sales tax, as do residents of central/western MA and the Cape, to support the MBTA even while we get little benefit.
Please don’t extend rail in my direction. Let’s just create a functioning bus system across the South Coast so people can get to work. Let’s build the GLX. Let’s make the Blue/Red Line interconnection happen. I remember the curmudgeonly sainted Fred Salvucci’s comment about the Blue/Red interconnection. He said it is not about making it easier for the elite students at Harvard and MIT get to Logan during vacation season. It is about making it possible for low wage workers and immigrants in the gateways of East Boston, Revere and Lynn get to jobs in Kendall and along Rte 128 (I know the Red Line does not got to 128 but there are businesses that run shuttles from Alewife to bring their low wage workers to their workplaces).
We could model it off the Bogata system and really connect those places to the city and decrease auto usage without spending hundreds of millions on new tracks and tunnels. It would still cost money, but it’s a more doable option. I regret that Boston doesn’t have rails running in the median of its highways like Chicago. They are a rare example of brilliant urban planning and foresight from the first Daley.
…it was slightly over 50% of our sales tax, pledged to pay off bonds. then more for current operations.
How’s this? Fix the school aid formula which redirects money to New Bedford, Chelsea, Lowell, et al – because they NEED it – and do the formula review pending since 2003. Stop screwing us over on state aid, and THEN we can talk about even more of our sales tax being subsumed.
Cape residents have many reasons to complain about tax inequities but this post is a classic part of Cape Cod stupidity.
Nobody pays 50% of their sales tax to “pay off bonds,” Porcu’s point to the contrary. She(a Cape resident) and I (a South Coast resident) both pay an extra chunk on our sales tax to subsidize the MBTA. It sucks, given that both of us get next to nothing for our taxes, but her rant is just stupid and wrong.
Porcu has some ground to complain about state aid on education but since she makes zero real points about local aid, nobody should take her comments seriously.
When I was involved in the effort to roll back the sales tax hike, we looked at two alternatives. One (my favorite) was to take it back to 5%. The other was to lower it to 3%.
Why 3%? Because the sales tax cannot go any lower. Back then, 3% of the 5% was legally pledged away as collateral to issue bonds. The tax cannot actually BE eliminated, which is what Carla Howell wanted, because that money was already gone before it was collected.
The group wound up going for 3 to inhibit the issuing of new bonds by the MBTA and Pike, which were outside the state bond cap and were largely unsupervised, by limited their access to collateral. It failed. But I don’t see why saying half of sales tax is dedicated to bonds is wrong – by now, it may be worse.
With due respect, if you don’t know if it is worse, you almost certainly don’t know if it’s better. It could be that some of the bonds have been paid off since your porc-n-Howell days, thereby reducing the 48% share to something lower.
My bet is that it’s largely unchanged — but I’m not the one asserting the claim.
And will report back. But part of the problem is that now, it has become MassDOT, which is ENTIRELY bond-funded (there are no longer transportation lines in the state budget). Now, virtually ALL the sales tax goes to MassDOT and since they do not publish a budget and are unaccountable to the state auditor, it may not be possible to make a apples-to-apples comparison of 3% gone to bonds then and a percentage now.
Why not?
I live in a peculiar part of the Commonwealth. It is one of the poorest parts of the state yet has incredible natural resources and opportunities. We don’t need to be a suburb of Boston. We deserve, we have the right to be our own place.
We have one of the richest fisheries in the continent, but it is dying. I recall a previous post you made about this but it missed the fact that the dollar value is largely based on scallops, while cod stocks and other white fish are in trouble. We are in a fisheries death spiral. We won’t last for more than a few years.
We have great ports, great seafarers, enormous skills among our people who work their asses off. We need to put their talents to use. Off shore wind is our future. It is also the future of the planet. We either harvest the wind or we kill the planet.
I don’t want to see another skinny leg barrista who comes here because we have inexpensive housing. I want wind turbine industries, a tech-based economy that invests at the community college level in energy efficiency.
We, the people of the South Coast, do not need a $2 billion investment by the Commonwealth in a fucking train track. Let us keep half of that amount of our taxes and we will invest it in energy for the entire state, and a transition for our fisheries.
Just for the record, there already IS rail right-of-way between Boston and Hyannis, the Cape Flyer has been running on it for two seasons now.
Whatever the advantages or disadvantages, the costs are in equipment and operating costs, not building “a fucking train track”.
When did the Cape Flyer start serving my neighborhood? It does not come close to here. Don’t be stupid.
There is a reason it is a tourist train, not a real one for working people.
Tracks don’t care who rides them. The tracks that connect Hyannis to Boston can hold commuter trains as easily as “tourist trains”.
I don’t know and I don’t care where “your neighborhood” is. The fact that you accompany your comments with tough-guy macho shit doesn’t make them any smarter or more correct.
Weekend trains for tourists are not the same as transport for local workers. Maybe you should limit your comments to Somerville.
First, the Cape and the South Coast are very different places.
Second, the Town of Bourne voted to join the MBTA in hopes of getting the Cape Flyer to become a real commuter train. The MBTA refused to serve them.
I guess the people who live in Worcester are stupid too.
They are so stupid that they’re actually happy that they’ll be getting express rail service between Worcester and Boston that makes the trip each way in less than hour, starting May 23.
Another really stupid politician must be Worcester District 2 Councilor Philip Palmieri who said when the service was announced last October (emphasis mine):
What a maroon. That guy actually thinks WORCESTER can be a suburb of Boston. He ought to keep his mouth shut so that smart people like TBD can explain why investing in a “fucking train track” is a terrible idea. I guess that “skinny leg barrista” that TBD despises so much will land in Worcester instead.
I’m sure we won’t hear any complaining from our “South Coast” contingent a few years from now when the media is telling us about the resurgent Worcester, the new growth in Lowell (aided by the new commuter rail service connecting Boston with Concord, NH), and how the expanded rail service to the Cape is revitalizing the region. Nah, we don’t need no “fucking train track” in Massachusetts.
What does Worcester have to do with the South Coast?
It takes a special kind of intellectual dishonesty to compare the two places. Worcester already has rail tracks. It already has rail service, inadequate as it is. Worcester deserves better service. Worcester is the second largest city in New England. It does not require a massive investment, not the more than $2 billion to create the rail connection that would be required in my South Coast region to build rail.
Worcester is a great city. It is a great place to invest with a great collection of colleges/universities and a social life. Great museums too.
The state is already investing in lifting bridges to open rail transit along the Worcester corridor and further to Springfield. Further improvements in rail from Springfield to CT is also important. Pissing away $2 billion for MBTA service to the South Coast will wreck that effort. You can pretend to be a rail advocate but your ideology, if anybody follows it, would screw the rest of the state.
Your inability to know the difference between the CapeFlyer and the South Coast is more proof of ideology over reality. There is an hour drive between Porcu and her home on the Cape, and my home, about the same travel time as between your home and Worcester.
When you find a way to converse with me without phrases like “Your inability to know the difference between the CapeFlyer and the South Coast …”, then perhaps we might try again.
You still miss the difference that Porcu pointed to, that there is an hour of travel distance between her Cape home and mine on the South Coast. It is not arrogance. It is simply a matter of geography.
I suspect the tracks are already there as they are in many other places and there probably should be SOME connection to Boston.
You’ve gotten awfully generous with your insults of other participants again on this thread:(
…would tell me, especially better than someone who lives there, whether it would make sense for the South Coast to be linked by rail to Providence. I come here to have a discussion. Either participate in a way respectful to others or butt out.
n/t
Or you’ll be banned. Again.
I’m not your mom.
n/t
but I’d rather (also?!) like to see the Commonwealth invest more in the economic prospects of New Bedford and Fall River. Those two communities have the infrastructure capacity for growth, and I’d rather folks travel there to work rather than all the way to Boston or Providence.
The high cost of the South Coast Rail means we should have some honest discussion over whether to build it now, or keep it on the list for that magical time when our society isn’t built around governmental austerity.
But no one should kid themselves — the South Coast Rail would be a huge deal for New Bedford and the South Coast.
And it wouldn’t turn Lowell into a suburb. Lowell isn’t a suburb of Boston and doesn’t resemble one. Like New Bedford, its’ a city large enough and diverse enough to be its own thing. But it’s a city with some of the same struggles as NB, and is about the same size and distance away. Like NB, Lowell also has a gorgeous downtown.
Yet, Lowell’s seen as up and coming — and while NB’s certainly seen it’s share of improvements (especially downtown), I don’t think it’s doing anywhere near as well as it should, and fewer people have figured it out.
A train wouldn’t turn NB into a suburb. It hasn’t done that for Lowell, either. But it would provide a modest, but not anywhere near insignificant, chunk of the NB community access to decent jobs they don’t have access to now. That, in turn, means more middle class families in NB, which in turn means there will be more investment in NB’s local economy. That could impact everything from higher graduation rates at the schools to more tourism dollars as more people realize how great NB is to visit, with its rich history, gorgeous downtown and waterfront, and great local food — and skip driving entirely.
One final warning: The rail may not be the most efficient dollar-for-dollar investment in the region, but if it’s killed, so may be the only significant chance to invest in the region in a big way for a very long time to come. You want dollars to help transition NB away from fisheries? This is probably it.
Governor Baker and Speaker Deleo certainly aren’t the ones who will be cooking up other ideas, but they sure would love the convenience of being able to point to residents in the region who’ll give them an excuse to kill the rail project without having to take all the blame themselves.
…extending that line is getting play again north of the border. That won’t turn Manchester into a suburb of Boston either. Extending the Lowell line into NH is a key issue for a friend of mine who’s running for Governor this year.
I truly appreciate your comments, more thoughtful than someone else here. One of our most prolific writers keeps pumping South Coast rail as a new suburbia, cheap housing for people who cannot afford Somerville. Even while he failed the test of knowing the difference between the Cape Flyer to Hyannis and the South Coast.
Let’s pretend I am dictator of Massachusetts and have 2 billion dollars to spend. Should I spend it on a rail line with massive environmental problems? Or maybe spend one-quarter that amount building a world class wind turbine production and deployment center. An economic center for the future. The locus of off shore wind. A permanent employment hub in a poor part of the state.
Naw, let’s go with the ideology of a Smotherville guy. We can tug on his ponytail for fun.
And our infrastructure was in the state it’s currently in, there’s better ways to spend that $2 billion. Sure. I wouldn’t deny it.
But, like our current political leadership, you may decide that of that $2 billion that could be better spent, virtually all of it would be spent elsewhere, because more people who vote at higher rates, give more campaign dollars and have accrued more legislative power live elsewhere.
Now, I’m not the Dictator of Massachusetts, but I do have some understanding of how the these projects unfold. Where money gets spent isn’t as much of a net sum game as you may think. If the state invested in a South Coast rail project, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t also invest in a new wind turbine industry that is naturally fitted for the South Coast. Alternatively, if the state was convinced not to invest in the South Coast, it doesn’t mean it would divert even a single solitary cent that would have gone into it towards other projects for the South Coast.
The South Coast money would go back into the state’s pot, and the South Coast would have to compete for projects starting from zero. They’d get awarded by priority — by need, cost, and how far those projects are into the process, etc.
Our previous administration worked really hard to push the South Coast Rail further into the process, specifically because they wanted to make it difficult for this administration to kill. And Deval Patrick was fairly successful in doing that.
But if it’s killed, it will not only kill the South Coast Rail for generations, but will mean very, very little of the money that would have went into it would be redirected toward other projects in the South Coast. And of the money that will be, it’s highly doubtful it would be for wind turbines or some other transformative, non transit project, because energy and transit come from different money pots. It’ll be to fix pot holes or repave a highways or maybe buy a few new buses. Good things that need to happen at regular intervals, but not transformative things — and all things that would have happened anyway.
I certainly don’t see any other major South Coast transit project with a lot of steam moving in its direction that could help transform the region and provide many new opportunities for people who live there.
Again, I’m not saying your arguments don’t have any merit. It is a costly issue and there are environmental concerns, but I think the South Coast deserves that investment more than almost any region of the state given how much the state ignores it. I think the environmental issues can be mitigated, and that we shouldn’t ignore the cars that would come off the road with rail.
But if a majority of the population within the South Coast doesn’t want the project, it shouldn’t go forward. Yet, if it’s killed because a contingent of the population of the region has turned against the project, it should be done with the full knowledge that it doesn’t mean the state will find big, new projects for the region to help ‘make it up’ to everyone who lives there who have been wanting rail for ages, with great hope. Because, in the real world, where we aren’t dictators, when it comes to big, transformative transit projects in the region… it’s going to be this or nothing.
Your post is great, very thoughtful, even while I disagree with big parts of it, even the major thrust. Our state capital budget is a zero sum game (as is our annualized budget but that is a different subject). Your proposition
The Commonwealth lives within pretty strict capital spending limits. We borrow money in markets that are internationalized. We have limits that are imposed by state law AND credit limits imposed by international markets. The five year capital spending plan is a worthy read.
But the state should not build the South Coast rail just because some of my neighbors want it. We can build something better at a much lower cost, a world class wind power system.
Let’s not pretend your a dictator anywhere. There are enough insecure macho-posturing assholes in the world already, and you’ve already demonstrated your style here.
EOM
have in the past, and go there frequently.
third paragraph, first sentence. Meant to write it wouldn’t turn New Bedford into a suburb. Hope that was clear in context.
Nor does Commonwealth.
You don’t get to refuse access into your community on the one hand and then demand to sell energy to the rest of the state on the other.
With respect to membership in the Commonwealth, you either is or you isn’t.
With the government retaining political control of a for-profit entity economically answerable to public markets and a bottom line. Let real estate development subsidize the transportation system in a virtuous cycle that has worked in other major cities.
I know I sound like a broken record suggesting this every time the subject comes up, and I don’t mean to belabor the point, but it is an alternative as the lengthy informed discussions on the subject here and elsewhere have made clear. This can be “a better way,” and is in other cities.
The status quo is unacceptable in my opinion, but also unlikely to change without a restructuring of the T that enables it to access billions in new capital.
To what effect?
If someone other than you suggested this, I would think it was a way around union contracts.
Do you sound like a broken record, your words? Yup.
You have no plan, just an ideological point. Put a plan in print and make it clear how it is not a massive transfer of wealth from the public to private profiteers.
Restructure the T like Hong Kong’s MTR: transfer all of its assets, including as much real estate as possible, and all of its debts, into a company that can be listed on the stock exchange. If it doesn’t have enough assets, give it more: especially real estate and development rights around stations and over tracks. If it has too much debt, spin some or all of it off into a separate entity, or leave it with the state if that’s not possible. If it needs capital, commit some, presumably from future state revenues. Then, list it on the stock exchange to access additional capital and impose a measure of accountability on management. Right there, as you can see, is a constructive reality check and move toward creating a financially sustainable entity instead of the morass of obfuscation and wishful thinking that presently exists. Change can generate political support in a way that demanding billions for a mismanaged Green Line extension evidently will not. I support unions and think the new entity should use union labor: lots of very successful private businesses do. A profitable, successful, expanding transit system will add billions of dollars to the economic value of the area it serves (does anyone doubt that the area served by the T would be relatively impoverished without the system?) and should offer lots more opportunities to its employees than the current declining and increasingly reviled and under-funded system. If it makes money for its shareholders, so much the better. Since the state will retain a major stake, it too will make money: the government in Hong Kong has made billions from its share in their quasi-public listed transit system — with service that is almost as far ahead of ours, now, as ours was of Hong Kong’s a century ago.
The secret to beating Bobby Fischer in chess is to be one move from checkmate when it’s your turn, and of course recognizing it.
Your plan consists of
1. Make the MBTA quasi-public
2. Give ’em a bunch of money
3. ???
4. Success!
You’re assuming (3) just works out because of the magic of private enterprise (as though private enterprises never fail), and you’re also assuming the financial infusion from public coffers.
Plenty of folks have plans to fix the MBTA that involve massive injections of public funds. The challenge, methinks, is figuring out how to get a commitment of those very funds.
Do you have any domestic examples of this model working?
And respond to Charlie’s request: “Someone show me a better way.” Hong Kong’s subway system is vastly superior to ours, profitable, able to access huge sums of capital, and expanding. Ours is declining, with no realistic prospect for improvement. Why not consider that just possibly it is a better structure. It is indisputably a better outcome. WRT domestic examples, when Boston’s subway as the most advanced in the world it was built and owned by a private company. But that was a long time ago, and the T made progress as a public agency too, for a while. More recently, the best mass transit systems in the world are all overseas. A quasi-public system offers the possibility of combining private sector efficiency and performance with public sector control of a key element of our infrastructure. Alternatively, maybe Charlie Baker will propose $7 billion in new spending to start to bring the T up to standard that Hong Kong, Singapore, and other cities achieved years ago.
But China is a bad model. China is a dictatorship, essentially, and large portions of the population work for almost nothing. It’s a bit easier to build things there.
Your “plan” fails in real life for many reasons.
In the US, we try not to steal privately owned property. Or at least we make a (pretense) at taking it by eminent domain. The HK bull shit worked at the MRT but this is a different country. We actually try to respect property ownership.
I spent a lot of time working on the GLX. I know you were never there for any of the meetings. We had a small window of opportunity for the state to buy the old liquor store and and the supermarket that is now the WholeFoods but you were nowhere around.
Don’t pretend you had a plan.
Restoring the MBTA to its former glory would be a pretty great way to do it. That would mean more revenue or the state assuming a good chunk of the Big Dig debt it (and Charlie Baker, when he was head of A&F) dropped on the MBTA.
In many ways Baker caused the MBTA’s current financial problems, but he also has the power and clout to fix them. And if he does, that’s what he’ll be remembered for — the fixing it.
Even if the corner office and the Lege were in agreement that the MBTA should become a source of pride, it will take more than 8 years to get it there. We need to acknowledge that fixing the MBTA involves many, many years of capital projects and many, many years of improved hiring, firing, promoting, and training.
Don’t get me wrong, things could be made quite a bit better rather quickly, but it can’t be restored in 8 years.
I think it’s fair to say that the T is at a crisis point. Some governor has to begin the process, and Baker could seal his legacy by being the guy to do that.
Of course, Deval’s response was to sweep the dirt under the rug by creating an unaccountable 5 person board with no duty of transparency to be funded outside of regular appropriations, which gave legislators SOME input. It can’t be a crisis unless a Republican can be blamed.
Winter 2015 made it a crisis.
The D’Alessandro report was published in November of 2009, nearly seven years ago. Here are the first three paragraphs of the section title “The Outlook is Bleak”, from that report (emphasis mine):
I agree that the “unaccountable 5 person board” of Mr. Patrick was no more practical then the regime that several Republican governors were unable to work with. The dysfunction between Mitt Romney and the MBTA were legendary. His appointee, Daniel Grabouskas, was not exactly successful.
There was a crisis in 2008, when Ter’rese Edmonds (who was killed in the crash) ran through a red signal, injured seven passengers, and caused $8M worth of damage.
Deval Patrick tried and failed to address the issues of the MBTA. His predecessors made a terrible situation worse.
Your effort to pretend that this is just politics is shamelessly self-serving. The MBTA is in crisis, it has been for years, and Mr. Baker has an opportunity to make a real difference.
I would think that anyone who supports Mr. Baker would seize on, rather than attack, that opportunity.
I’ve never heard about micro-sleep.
Article was full of euphemisms for “Fat woman dozed off while driving a train”
I had the same reaction at the time.
The report said more than that, though (emphasis mine):
The faults that produced this 2008 crash go well beyond one sleepy operator. They have only gotten worse in the eight years since this incident occurred.
The legislature has zero interest in solving the “crisis.” Zero. I would go so far as to say that, if forced to choose between solving the “crisis” and paying market rate for parking on Beacon Hill, they would pay for parking. They like having the occasional GOP governor upon whom to blame the “crisis” when people get pissed off, but the reality is that the crisis is far beyond the ability of any governor to address by the tinkering around the margins as they are able. It requires significant legislative action and legislative investment.
So, yes, this chirping at the governor is purely superficial political blather, utterly without substance. Known by local Democratic politicians to be untrue, but asserted anyway in order to deceive those voters who make the unwarranted assumption that a “(D)” on the ballot conveys some kind of meaning.
Please … reread the thread.
This thread is, instead, highlighting an opportunity available to Charlie Baker.
It IS a crisis, a worsening crisis. The comment I responded to is the only one on the thread that attempts to turn reality on its ear in order to offer yet another cheap and snarky political dig.
Surely you know by now that I share your contempt for the legislature in its handling of the MBTA — but that’s not what this thread is about!
HE created MassDOT in 2010. Initially an effort to merge the corrupt Pike and MA Highway, it turned into a transportation satrap – he swept the RMV, all the Regional Transit Authorities, and even MA Aeronautical (for when they land planes on highways?), into this criminal conspiracy. Every transportation agency in the state except for MassPort (with its OWN political structure) and the Steamship Authority into this monster, and THEN did not create an accountable entity but replicated the failed and mismanaged structure of the Mass Pike to supervise all of them!
He was TRYING? Trying to do WHAT, exactly?
Let’s say Governor Baker has a come to Jesus moment and does want to save the T. He spends 2.5 (or 6.5) years trying to do just that, and makes all the right moves.
Then the next governor undoes his work. Or the next lege. Or the next general manager. Or whatever.
Putting in all that work, spending all that political capital, making those investments as governor are necessary to have the legacy of “Governor Charlie T” but they are not sufficient. Not by a long shot.
Someone has to start the process, no?