Updated to include link to 2009 report commissioned by Governor Patrick.
A Green Line D train derailed just outside Kenmore Square this morning, where the C and D lines branch.
Get used it — crashes like this will happen more and more frequently until we actually DO SOMETHING about the state of the MBTA.
It isn’t as though the safety issues of the MBTA in general and the Green Line in particular haven’t been identified. Massachusetts government has long history of refusing to fund, and therefore refusing to invest in, the changes needed to bring the MBTA into the twenty-first century.
There is, for example, the May 28, 2008 fatal crash in Newton. The probable cause, as reported by the NTSB, was (emphasis mine):
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the May 28, 2008, collision of two Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Green Line trains in Newton, Massachusetts, was the failure of the operator of the striking train to comply with the controlling signal indication, likely as a result of becoming disengaged from her environment consistent with experiencing an episode of micro-sleep. Contributing to the accident was the lack of a positive train control system that would have intervened to stop the train and prevent the collision.
An extensive MBTA Review was commissioned by Governor Patrick and performed by external authors/researchers including David D’Alessandro (of John Hancock). The money quote from report is found on page 16:
The Bottom Line: A private sector firm faced with this mountain of red ink would
likely fold or seek bankruptcy.
The response is, sadly, predictable — reported, for example, here and here.
2009 crash
2012 crash
Our subway system is dangerous and unreliable. In spite of Deval Patrick’s best (and herculanean) effort, our legislature refuses to raise taxes enough to bring it into the 21st century. The 2014 Budget proposes the following spending on transportation in Massachusetts:
Rail and transit: $448,932,165
Roads, bridges, and tunnels: $1,480,834,763.
That’s right, $1.48 BILLION dollars for roads, compared to $0.45B for rail.
Get used to more and more subway crashes. More and more injuries, deaths, and property damage.
In another thread, folks talked about the “urgency” of another matter on which the legislature reacted with lighting speed.
How many people must be injured or die to raise a similar sense of urgency about our public transportation system?
As I discussed on the other recent transit thread the feedback loop is as follows:
Step 1: cut government
Step 2: government performance incompetently
Step 3: Use incompetent performance to justify more cuts
Step 4: Rinse and repeat
The way to break this is by getting MBTA officials and the Governor out in front calling out the legislature and taxpayers who refuse to pay for a competent T the real culprits. Otherwise it’ll be the same old story: ‘those clowns at the MBTA again, guess I better drive to work, and they better damn well not raise the gas tax!”
Partial privatization, full privatization, breaking up the system into smaller units, and many, many more. The choice is not just, or should not be just: more funding from the legislature or accept further decline.
Passenger rail has ALWAYS lost money. ALWAYS. The heyday of passenger rail service happened because that service was useful marketing expense.
I am aware of only one model for privatization that might work — the government funds the infrastructure (right of way, signals, stations, etc) and private companies and individuals operate vehicles that use that right of way. This is the model used to build our air and automobile/truck systems.
There is NO alternative to increased funding from the legislature. Not doing so will only hasten the collapse of the already failing system.
Your claim that “there are lots of other potential solutions” is a chimera. The effect of making it is to effectively endorse the suggestion made here recently that we turn the Green Line into a rail-trail system.
I’m, sadly, beginning to believe that that might be the best outcome.
Using Hong Kong as an example, but I would really like to know the costs and benefits of such a program and how they implemented it. Privatization seemed to have bad effects on the British rail system so it should not be viewed as a panacea. Privatization in Chicago has been an abject failure on the Skyway and on our parking meters. Worse service and the revenue is now going to Morgan Stanley for a century, it’s truly a swindle, they compensated the city for maybe 10-15 years of legitimate service and about 80 of pure profit. Anytime the City Council wants to modify parking rules it has to pay a hefty fine to Morgan Stanley.
In other countries non profit or specific private ventures for infrastructure with strong public regulations might be viable, in our current climate I don’t see how big finance wouldn’t just get it’s grubby hands on it and give us a more expensive and even worse service . You’d have to find an American example where this has worked.
Not sure why you have this odd, generally pretty right-wing idea that privatization guarantees better performance. The commuter rail under MBCR was privately operated and by any reasonable metric was riddled with problems. Certainly not an improvement from the Amtrak days, which now look like a veritable golden age.
Now, if you turned our rail and bus network over to a private company and gave them carte blanche to raise fares and shut down lines, sure, that would “work”, but it would be a terrible situation for obvious reasons. Your Hong Kong example works in a city with massive inflows of capital based on covering its landscape with towering malls and luxury housing, but again. Obvious reasons.
both people I know and reading in the press, they are generally happy with the service but the fares are very very high.
Not sure what the net/net is (like how much does the MBTA cost really? Does anyone really know?), or whether lower income people somehow get subsidies to defray the costs.
It’s not a fiasco by any measure. People from the UK seem genuinely surprised we still have governmental entities running our local transit so maybe the idea is one you rapidly get used to.
Doesn’t appear to be a consensus opinion among urban policy scholars.
Sounds exactly like the fine print screwing us over in Chicago on the meters.
In thinking about the MBTA, I was referring to local transit.
My quote was referencing the bad contracts for the Underground which would be our closest MBTA equivalent. As for their Amtrak they foolishly privatized the lines and the rolling stock and had different companies running them at different levels. They’ve since re-nationalized the lines and thanks to consolidation only four or five companies run rolling stock upon them, leading to charges of fare collusion. It also seems far less accountable if something goes wrong.
The author of that article Stephen Smith is a blogger with an undergradate degree in an “unrelated major” (http://marketurbanism.com/stephen-smith/). No “urban policy scholars” were cited in this article.
Now the conclusions of the article may be spot on, but claiming this is the work of experienced scholars is bogus.
Some people in the UK have their local transit run by “private” companies that themselves are owned by the RATP, the state-owned entity that runs Paris’s incredible Metro system (not to mention tramways in DC and several western U.S. cities).
The fuel taxes in the UK, according to wikipedia, are:
At the current exchange rate ($1.66/pound-sterling), that’s:
– $3.63 per (US) gallon fuel tax
– $1.42 per (US) gallon VAT (for gas @ $3.45/gallon retail price)
That moves the retail price for gasoline from $3.45 to $8.50/gallon — an increase of TWO HUNDRED FORTY SIX PERCENT.
With that kind of gas tax (which I, by the way, am inclined to support if need-based exemptions are granted), the funding problem for the T would be solved — with no privatization required.
The $3.45 price here already includes federal and state taxes, so having a UK-level tax instead wouldn’t quite raise it to $8.50. But otherwise your point is well-taken.
Corrected price information:
I assume the existing state tax would be replaced at the higher UK rate. The VAT is inclusive of all taxes. Better, in my opinion, would be a much higher federal gas tax rate with significant portions rebated to the state where the tax was collected, but that’s a different topic for a different thread.
Here’s the revised breakdown:
2.76/gallon pre-tax retail price
+ 0.419/gallon Fed gas tax
+ 3.63/gallon MA gas tax
+ 0.026191/gallon UST/Spill Clean Up/Inspection fund tax
+ 1.367/gallon VAT
—-
$8.20/gallon
Your promotional tag makes no logical sense.
I’m sorry, I disagree with Bob’s premises. The MBTA is totally strapped for money, and infrastructure investments are nigh impossible. Put that together with forced infrastructure investments based on what legislators want, and you get a recipe for disaster. I find it interesting that the T has garnered its bad reputation since Forward Funding and Big Dig debt was put into place.
I know the MBTA is terrible with PR; but structurally, it’s a funding problem.
The Green Line was running normally this morning. They worked through the night to fix this. They also announced, within a reasonable time (2ish I think) that yesterday was shot, so people like me could make other arrangements (or brace themselves for the shuttle buses).
if I read Bob’s note correctly, he’s saying money won’t solve all the problems. We need to rethink the model of the way the T runs/funds/etc.
Can you point to any specific flaw in the T’s management? Their maintenance policies? Their capital program?
Because I can: they don’t have enough cash. They can’t do maintenance. They have to keep old cars in service. They’ve been warning for years that they’re deferring desperately needed capital buys, the state hasn’t stepped up, and here we are.
The cause is unknown, but you see the number on that type 7? 3602? That train is made from two halves of previously scrapped trains. You don’t need comprehensive reform to buy new trains. You need cash.
Anyone who’s spent a winter on the MBCR’s playground knows exactly how much privatization guarantees performance.
plan for pretty much everything in the Commonwealth. Don’t spend money on it and blame public employees, pensions, and big gubmint.
I believe MBTA funding goes through the MA Joint Committee on Transportation, which always seems to be carefully packed with members from outside the MBTA service area — see committee membership. Of the 20 members of this committee, I count only one (Mark Cusack of Braintree) who has a district actually crossed by a subway line. There are several members on commuter rail lines, but still it’s hard to see this as anything other than a concerted effort by the exurbs to prevent the T from getting too much state money. Or maybe there’s another explanation for the presence of reps from Nantucket and North Adams on the committee while there are none from Cambridge/Somerville/Brookline/Newton (and the only Boston member is from West Roxbury).
Mike Rush (WestRox) would probably have significant direct constituent interest in subways, and certainly the MBTA bus system as well. But, the point is an outstanding one — there are remarkably few legislators on that enormous committee who are even the MBTA service territory — and even then, we’re talking what, 2 or 3 who have subway or bus?
1. “Fix it don’t fund it.”
2. So, we don’t have to fund it. Whew, dodged that bullet!
3. PS We don’t fix it either.
4. Hahahahaha you poor saps
5. Repeat
So pardon me if I greet this idea of funding not being the problem with skepticism. Money not the whole problem but, you know what? It is most of it.
As for the rest, at this point the dysfunction extends far beyond the T.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/08/1283178/-One-Photo-which-says-everything?detail=email
… if we weren’t waging war everywhere all the time.
It repeats a Friedman mistake by comparing our (relatively) open and transparent democracy to a totalitarian state. Of course their government can build trains wherever it wants since it doesn’t have any opposition. Goodness help someone complaining about safety or pollution though.
Better comparisons would be to our neighbors to the North or across the pond. I was also quite impressed with the public transit system in South Korea, which is entirely public financed, and can build an entire new bullet train from Incheon airport (where I was) to the 2018 Olympic grounds in time for the games at a cost of $135 million. I want to know what firm they hired and compare them to the grifters that did the Big Dig ($12 billion and 15 years overdue). I suspect that comparison would be fair, and would make America look quite bad 🙁
Privatization is profitization.
Why is it better?
Hong Kong’s privatization was made on the backs of breaking the trade unions, which were stronger under British control and are almost non-existent now in the ‘workers paradise’ that is ‘communist’ China.
It also lost a third of it’s value and only recently recovered it on the stock exchange. It also enjoys low cost, low interest loans and still enjoys government backed first dibs on choice land (which is at a huge premium in China). Might also not be wise to compare our system which will require democratic input with a totalitarian one (Thomas Friedman makes this mistake all the time).
Lastly a key to it’s recent success has everything to do with new housing developments being required by law to have transit hubs, which in turn, increases demand for new lines and ridership. Cars, gas, are ridiculously expensive and taxed. Significant taxes, government funding, and regulation are required for this system to be successful. And it operates autonomously from democratic regulatory oversight and input.
I really don’t see how it’s a model for Massachusetts.