I wrote this letter to the governor just a moment ago and I thought I would share it with all of you in my moment of frustration.
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Dear Governor Patrick,
This morning I plopped down $151 of my hard earned dollars for a zone 2 commuter rail pass. This afternoon I got on the train for the ride home. We had hardly left South Station when the lights and the heat went out. We rolled along for a minute and then stopped in the middle of nowhere. After sitting, in the dark, without heat, for several minutes the train finally started moving again. This surprised no one, as it is a regular occurrence on all three of the lines I regularly ride. I called to complain while we sat there, in the cold and in the dark, and was put on hold for even longer than we sat motionless on the train. When she finally came back the woman told me that it would take two weeks to get me a letter explaining why the train I was riding broke down.
Her supervisor, Miss Jordan, explained to me that it would take 14 days because first they had to go through the difficult task of sending an e-mail with my complaint and my request in it. Then the e-mail recipient will have to work extraordinarily hard to find my train in the maintenance log, and compose a simple letter to me. Sealing it and placing it in the mail is the final step in this arduous task. If my boss asked me to look something as simple as that up, and then I told her it would take two weeks for her to get an answer, I would be long fired before that fortnight was over.
It is unfathomable that it should take so long to accomplish such a simple task. The only possible reason I can see for such a delay is that there are so many complaints that the MBTA has a huge backlog. In that case it would be far more productive to put those resources into making the trains run on time than fielding complaints from frustrated commuters like myself. I can understand if there is the occasional delay because of an unforeseeable accident, or if there is a blizzard, but this is a regular pattern of poor service. It even seems to be getting worse, not better.
While paying for my pass this morning I looked over at the poster on the wall and saw that the Fairmount Line, which I ride most often, had only a 58% on time record. I have two questions for you. First, what do you plan to do about the abysmal service I and thousands of other commuters receive every day on the Commuter Rail? Also, please don’t pass the buck to the MBTA as I have already complained to them and plan on sending an e-mail to Daniel Grabauskas as well. You have no problem putting your name on MBTA signs and literature, so I hope we can expect to see some results from you as well. Secondly, since the trains only perform as they should 58% of the time, it seems fair that I should only have to pay 58% of the fare. May I have my $63.42 back, please?
BFK
No.
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p>Sincerely,
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p>The EmmM B Teee Ay.
BFK,
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p>Openmass.org is publishing open letters sent to any rep, sen or the governor. All you have to do is copy openletter@openmass.org and provide your real name an contact info.
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p>We just published one related to the governor’s veto of some funding for homeless shelters. You can see that open letter by visiting the governor’s profile page @ http://www.openmass.org/member…
The commuter rail line is contracted out. Not staffed nor directly managed by MBTA workers or T management. This is exactly why privatization doesn’t work for taxpayers and riders.
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p>Private contractors are about profit not service. Private contractors are insulated from the riding public. Shame on the MBTA Board of Directors for renewing a 3-year contract with this company.
…to whom is commuter rail contracted out? If it’s contracted out to Amtrack, that’s not exactly a private company.
is the contractor.
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p>http://mbcr.net/
It may be contracted out to the MBCR, but on my schedule I see the names of the Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of Transportation and the MBTA General Manager. If they are going to put their names on something, they should take pride in it and make sure it works like any small businessman does. If it doesn’t then they open themselves up to hear my complaints.
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p>That’s why MBTA found a private company to run it — Amtrak refused!
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p>2. Are you implying that MBTA management does a good job on Red, Green, Blue, and Orange lines, and therefore they should directly manage the Purple (commuter) line too?
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p>Read this and you’ll sing a love song about non-MBTA management.
Seriously..there’s no need for you to have to go through something like that. The ordeal that you went through to get home was nasty enough, but the bureaucrats who run the public transportation system here have just added insult to injury by dragging their feet on finding out what really and truly went wrong yesterday afternoon. It’s true that our public transportation service is getting more expensive while at the same time getting worse…and there’s no excuse for it.
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p>It’s bad enough that our war on Iraq has had a definite and negative impact on the states’ budgets. Sorry you had to go through that, BFK. All the best of luck to you.
End the war in Iraq!
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p>You are a nut.
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p>Same to you, buster.
The point mplo is making, as I understand it, is this:
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p>There are inadequate funds for MBTA, which could impact performance.
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p>The Iraq war is taking up huge amounts of funds.
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p>This is valid. When funding deficiencies exist, examples of huge waste are relevant. I don’t think mplo is saying that Iraq money will somehow go directly to the rail network upon the ending of the war.
Your post articulately points out exactly what I’ve been trying to say. I couldn’t have been more articulate myself. Thank you again, demredsox.
…that you aren’t writing to the president, cc: the single payer/universal healthcare system boss asking for your deceased loved one back.
Where is Mussolini when you need him?
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p>I ride the commuter rail and it is not a well run operation. However, to fix it one must get rid of the debt the MBTA is saddled with or provide suitable funding outside of the fares paid to cover debt service. A portion of the sales tax was supposed to do this when the state (Comm of MA) shifted the debt to the MBTA and changed the funding from a “the state makes up the deficit” to a system of budget and forward funding out of operating revenue. The state did not provide adequate funding nor any mechanism to arrive at it. This problem will be eternal unless it is properly addressed.
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p>As riders, we would like to think that the next fare increase will improve service, but it will not. It is only going to go for debt service like the last one. This is all very similar to the problem with the states roads and bridges. A truly amazing amount of money is required to catch up the maintenance that has been foregone. The public doesn’t believe that tax increases are needed so the work never gets done. Eventually people die as bridges collapse or trains derail and we all wring our hands and cry “how could this happen”. It happens because we are too cheap to do it right. It happens because we believe in stupidity like “tax cuts increase revenue”. (see Laffer curve, only true at tax rate upwards of 93%). Unless taxpayers are willing to get real, the remaining infrastructure will continue to crumble. And don’t go and say I’ll drive because the roads may be worse than the trains.
Mussolini didn’t make the trains run on time. Mussolini couldn’t even win a war against a bunch of jungle bunnies* in Ethiopea.
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p>Eventually people die as bridges collapse or trains derail and we all wring our hands and cry “how could this happen”.
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p>Next you’re going to be yelling what about the children, THE CHILDREN! like Christopher and AmberPaw do here. As far as I can tell, the only people who have died as a result of bridge collapse in recent (and not so recent) decades–other than those caused by earthquakes–have been the ones in Minnesota in the last year or so, and the ones on the incompetently designed Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State. The latter occurred in 1940.
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p>People do, indeed, die, when trains derail and when they collide. But how often does that occur?
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p>*Sarcasm, folks. Directed at the Italians who believed they could easily defeat the Ethiopeans.
The usual “solution” proffered to bring the MBTA back to sanity is to give it more cash. This, given the very long and horribly sordid history of this “authority”, is the very definition of insanity. Why do seemingly rational people continue to offer this?
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p>What’s needed, and what I have continued to advocate for years, is a complete flushing of the entire mess. We need a new system that is not a public Authority. The “Authority” structure is a sham: allowing the MBTA to hide behind the protections of a private company when convenient yet wielding the power of the state to slam down any opposition (Greenbush, Silver Line, etc). This “Authority” is special: it has its own police agency. On top of the MBTA’s corruption, having the powers of law enforcement at the ready tends to legitimize and through the power of intimidation, grease the skids where needed.
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p>The first and best thing we can do is eliminate the MBTA altogether. There are plenty of good ideas out there and plenty of cities around the world that know how to do it properly. Creating a new structure won’t require a science project. Getting decent people, who are true professionals with a commitment to the achievable ideals of public transportation will be the greatest challenge.
Money plays a role, yes, but a big part of this is the ownership of the rails themselves.
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p>Various rail corporations (CSX, etc.) own portions of the rail lines. They get first dibs on their trains running on those rails meaning that if CSX and MBCR want to run a train on the same track at the same time, tie goes to the owner of the rails.
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p>Problems with money? Yes. Problems with union personnel intentionally slowing things down? Maybe. Antiquated diesel equipment that should be updated to an all electric system? Absolutely.
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p>None of that, however, will solve ownership of the rail tracks themselves. Congress (if someone knows the federal law please let me know, I can’t recall the name of the act) gives ownership of the rails to the private companies and allows them to run roughshod over us.
Samson1 is right. Yes, there are problems with MBCR. Emphatically, yes, I disagree with the recent decision to continue the contract. But a large part of it comes back to lack of funds, resulting in deferred maintenance. The state picking up the debt is a key step. I would advise both calling your reps and, more importantly, getting yourself involved with the T Riders’ Union:
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p>http://www.ace-ej.org/tru
just simply throwing good money after bad at the problems won’t solve anything. There’s got to be a set of solutions before anything in the way of money or work can be devoted to solving the MBTA’s problems, which, as is pointed out, have a long and sordid history to them.