In case you didn’t see it, given all the headlines about the Tsarnaev trial, Governor Charlie Baker’s Blue Ribbon Panel on the MBTA released their report today. The Globe has the full report here.
While this report is a lot to ingest, I think it has something for everyone (whether you’re on the “Reform Before Revenue” or the “Revenue Before Reform” side of things). In fact, the panel themselves highlights this on Slide 5:
Many past reports on the MBTA have attempted to quantify the financial needs of the agency. This report is different. It reject the ‘reform vs revenue’ debate because the MBTA needs both.
My initial reaction reading through the report was that while it didn’t make any body-checks against the politicians who helped the push the agency to the brink of collapse, I think it takes a fairly round approach to all of the areas that need to be addressed – management, revenue, executive changes, legislative changes & oversight. As The Globe reports:
Rafael Mares, a senior lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation and public transit advocate, said he sees hope in those findings, even as the Baker administration’s rhetoric has focused more intently on reform than revenue.
“I’m encouraged by what I find in the report,” he said. “I’m discouraged by the story they tell about the report.”
So with all of that in mind, here’s my fast gut reactions to the full report:
- The Panel finds a lot of fault with the T’s management. The laundry list is quite long – the revolving door of GMs hasn’t built sustainable vision or momentum; they haven’t used their full capital budget each year; they haven’t fostered a “customer-centric” mindset; cost controls are non-existent; goals are not built around manageable metrics; absenteeism is rampant. Overall I felt the report was measured & fair in its criticisms – read separately from the MBTA, we would except any government agency to be run along the lines of what the Panel proposes.
- The Panel pushes for the State to take over the T’s Big Dig debt – While they say this is not crushing the T in the way it’s typically characterized, they recommend the state do it to free up more money in the T’s operating budget.
- The Panel pushes for sensible transit planning & capital plans – The Panel was blunt in pointing out that most expansion plans to date have been hackneyed, short sighted and often happen in fits & starts. They recommend the T put together 5 & 20 year transit and capital plans outlining how they’ll address the regions transit needs.
- The Panel doesn’t close the door on new revenues – While they push for structural reform in the T, they do say that the State should be a willing investor into major capital programs (expansions, new stations, etc), that assessments should be reconsidered, that special taxation districts should be an option, and that the cap on fares should be removed. The Panel also pushes for the T to bring in more non-fare revenue by expanding its property development, concessions, parking and other possible revenue streams.
- The Panel pushes for fiscal responsibility in the T’s pension plan – They cite the large unfunded liability the T currently has and pushes for a full independent audit and transparency
- The Panel pushes for legislative changes that would allow the T to use more cost-effective planning & acquisitions techniques, to bring them inline with other state agencies.
- The Panel goes into details around a few “structural failure” case studies such as the 25+ year acquisition of new Orange & Red Line cars and the redevelopment of the Government Center station.
Overall I thought the report was good and while it takes on the operational failures of the T, it doesn’t contradict many of the financially focused studies of the T from the past.
While I didn’t watch Charlie’s press conference on the report, my reading of the report leads me to hope that we can get some meaningful reform & improvements out of this crises. I think this winter showed that we can’t just abandon the T and all jump in our cars – we need the T to be an engine for commerce & development. It’s also needed if Boston 2024 can pull off a miracle and get the voters behind its Olympic bid.
Anyways, that’s my $0.10 on a first read. I’ll need to give this more time after work, but until this I’d like my fellow BMGers to weigh in.
of labor rights, so sentences like “The current collective bargaining process creates inefficiencies and has delayed recent legislative reforms” arouse my suspicion, though not my skepticism at this point. Here’s where I disagree or question:
1. “Evergreen provisions” exist to insure that management bargains in good faith and in good time.
2. This statement is factually incorrect: “The MBTA has the only public union in the Commonwealth with binding arbitration settlements, which are not subject to approval.” Binding arbitration exists for police and fire, according to the MMA, but must to be approved by the Joint Labor Management Committee. The Boston Firefighters, for example, went through binding arbitration with the City a couple of years ago, to the tune of a 19% raise. It seems odd to give MBTA workers binding arbitration as a matter of course, but I’d like to know more.
3. “This process disincents collaboration between the MBTA and its employees to address short-term issues and long-term structural concerns.” Discincents is not even a word, and “This process” doesn’t clearly refer to a specific process.
All of this suggests that the Panel doesn’t understand and hasn’t thought really thought about the labor aspect of things. It’s very possible that the contract needs work. Many MBTA workers may be hacks hired due to patronage. I don’t know. I do know from experience that bad management leads to bad work. There may be aspects of MBTA work that workers can be held accountable for, but aren’t.
The report contains some sensible measures, but there are some things that go too far. For example, forced overtime? How about hiring more employees instead? And just what does “the present dynamic and culture do not allow for the achievement of individual potential and inhibits productive partnerships between management and labor/key contractors” exactly mean? Sounds like a fancy way to say “they’re all a bunch of lazy bums”.
Also, why so shocked that “15% of the employees took a paid day off during the winter storm recovery”? That was an extraordinary time period, and MBTA employees have the same challenges as everyone else. What do you do with your kids when the schools unexpectedly close for several days in a row? Or when you’re stuck in gridlock? Take a day off if you need to.
The section about absenteeism is ridiculous. If you read the fine print, it says that the number of days includes: Union Business, Compensatory, Bereavement, Court-ordered, Jury Duty, Military, Other Protected, Sick Paid Protected, Sick, Reported Injury, Worker’s Comp, SNLA, ADA, FMLA, Parental, AWOL, Non-Authorized, Unexcused, Miss, Red Miss, Suspended, Disqualified, Excused No Pay, Inactive, Leave of Absence, plus vacation.
That means that if someone is injured and is on Worker’s Comp, those days add to the “absence” category. Yet they characterize it as “working only 4 days a week”, as if every worker is just slacking. If there is a problem with worker’s comp or even the FLMA, then address that, but don’t make it sound like every worker is taking 15 weeks off per year.
That’s one recent MBTA revision that they got right. They took the page right from Prop 2.5:
* Frequent, smaller fare increases, and
* limit total revenue growth on existing ridership to +2.5% per year.
It’s a great policy — it recognizes that transit riders need to keep up with inflation and that they’d prefer smaller, more frequent increases. Conversely, it recognizes that riders can (and should!) only dig so deep, and that the system has to figure out how to make it work.
We want more people to ride the T. Raising prices (in real dollars) isn’t the way to get there. Now, raise other revenue within the MBTA operations, like parking rates, fines issued, real estate payments and collections, programs to increase the sales of monthly passes, corralling in more Green Line stations to ensure 100% payment even during rush hour? Sure, you bet. But fare increases? The MBTA’s found exactly the right way to do that, of all things. Leave it alone.
Fully subsidize riding the T by the same logic that most roads do not collect tolls. Parking at T stations should also be free to encourage people to drive only as far as the nearest station.
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If you want people to use something, which I assume is the case, you drastically reduce or even eliminate fees. The MBTA is a public good and should be treated as such.
Bear in mind I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world.
Parking at commuter rail stations is already scarce. The lots are mostly full. So you don’t get much if any ridership bang for your buck by giving it away.
(I will say that this is something that should be tweaked on a station-by-station basis. Maybe parking should be cheaper or even free at some stations.)
On the other hand parking fees serve to encourage carpooling and the use of local suburban transit systems, if any.
In the long term they might even lead to the establishment of local transit systems, were the commuter rail frequent and reliable enough; similarly they encourage denser mixed-use development within walking distance of the train.
That boosts use and ridership.
There really is no other explanation for your proposal. So let me start with State Government 101. Government services are not free. We all pay for them.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides services to its residents and visitors by raising revenues from a mix of taxes, fees and lottery money. Those fees include approximately $625 million in fares from MBTA riders. You don’t want to have to pay that fare. You don’t want to have to pay to park at MBTA garages either. Boo hoo.
Sure, let’s just cut $625 million from the programs that the Commonwealth offers to low income families because obviously they are living high on the hog these days. Screw poor kids who go to inadequate public schools, people with mental illness and the homeless. You want a free ride into Boston.
Let other people pay for you, you say, regardless of whether they use the MBTA. Sure, stick it to residents of western MA, the Cape or the South Coast. Let’s just take the money from their programs because you find it burdensome to have to pay a modest amount to get an already massively subsidized ride into Boston.
Let me guess: you are Gen Y. It’s nice that you are willing to throw the poor and downtrodden under the bus.
Next time you want to propose another massive program whose only plausible funding source is money being spent on the poor, health care and education, think twice. You might even propose an alternate funding source that is not pie-in-the-sky.
And I think Christopher was arguing from a point that lower income people use the T, so why should we be jacking the rates that they depend on? Charley made a similar point calling the fair increase regressive, as did friends of his namesake . You can disagree with the economic and public policy case for that, as stomv and Tom artfully have below. But his motives are not libertarian or self interested, and I have no idea why you are trashing Gen Y. We are the future of Democratic politics.
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Christopher makes no such comments about lower income people. Read the rest of his comments in this thread. They are about him, about driving as close to his destination as possible, to hell with his impact on Alewife or Sullivan Sq traffic congestion, and paying nothing. Doubt this? Here is just one of his later posts:
I drive as far as either Alewife or Sullivan Square because at that point the hassle and expense of going farther by car is greater than it is to pay to park and take the subway the rest of the way. However, I am still driving that far and if you want me to drive even less the alternative has to be dirt cheap. I’m not talking externalities and I think you know that. I am talking about up front out of pocket expenses for this particular trip at the time I am taking it. The one job I had in Boston I could park at my employer owned the lot so it did not cost either of us anything. (It was the Charlestown Navy Yard, so thank you federal taxpayers!)
Christopher wants a freebie and the only way that can happen is to take from the programs that serve the poor and needy, unless you have a serious proposal to raise an additional $625 million from non-MBTA riders just to keep the system in its shitty state. That will let MBTA users get a free ride paid by everyone else, if you think a majority of state legislators are stupid enough to hand a massive freebie to MBTA users when they don’t even have the guts to raise the revenue we need to make the system run right.
Gen Y is the future of Democratic politics? Naww, more like the self-absorbed end of almost one hundred years of shared sacrifice and benefits where people actually voted for candidates who supported democratic policies, not just showing up to vote when it was cool to vote for the black guy.
From what I can tell Christopher is saying that, if we want to encourage transit use, we have to arrange things so that — with both cost and convenience taken into consideration — it’s an attractive option compared to driving.
If we’re going to play generational games, maybe it was the people, millions of registered Democrats included, who voted for Ronald Reagan who represent “the self-absorbed end of almost one hundred years of shared sacrifice and benefits.” That happened before Gen Y folks even were born.
I want to expand the pie, not cut other necessary services. If that means raising more general revenue, and it probably will, so be it. Please don’t credit/blame me with proposals I have not made. I don’t know why it matters but I believe 1978 births are considered Gen X. I’m probably the last person you should patronize about taking government classes seeing as how I have undergrad and grad degrees in that, not to mention a resume that includes legislative internships. I have also proposed expanding public transit to not be quite so Boston centric. Again I will call on you to disagree without being so hostile.
And I had thought you had me by ten years and apparently thought correctly. And most polls show Millenials are the most progressive generation of all time, particularly on social issues but on economic ones as well. And we should be happy to have more genXers in the mix as well, polls show they are closer to Alex Keaton than they are to Sam Searborn.
The data indicate that when attitudes are cross-referenced by race, the premise of “the most progressive generation of our time” tends to break down.
I would remind you that a majority of white male millennial voters supported Romney in 2012. Per Pew:
Furthermore:
Finally, insofar as racism is concerned, there is little difference between white millennials and their parents.
My generation is significantly less white than my parents was. Even if race continues to steer a plurality of white voters in a more conservative direction, the overall electorate will become significantly less white and significantly more liberal as the millenials and their successors age into the voting booths and the silent generation and boomers age out.
In either case, deriding an entire age group as selfish is not a path to winning it over or getting it more involved with progressive politics.
…and politics aren’t static.
I’ve seen the “New Generation” paradigm played before.
What does not exist – and hasn’t existed for more than forty years – is competent outreach and organizing on the Left. The result is a lot of unfocused populism out there that benefits the Right because, in all too many cases, their operatives and activists are the only ones embedded, and hence credible, on the ground.
Furthermore, it is dangerous to mirror-image one’s own political attitudes.
Case in point: Anti-progressive sentiment on the part of a majority of black Chicagoans (as well as the legacy of thirty years of black-Latino tensions) was a major factor in Rahm Emanuel’s victory this past Tuesday.
Insofar as your last sentence is concerned: As a baby-boomer, deriding another generation for selfishness would be a case of pot meeting kettle, and I try to avoid overt hypocrisy.
When that video came out recently of the U-Oklahoma SAE chapter singing that racist chant on the bus I just wanted to ask, “When were you born, again?” It was mid-90s; they barely remember the 20th century. Yet there they are acting more like the KKK. As far as I know nobody on that video stood up to say “not cool, guys.” How did so many miss the memo that these days we are supposed to be judging by content of character?
Hence my insistence that many of the positions you have articulated are not yet appropriate:
– Support for VoterID laws
– Support for making various policies “Color blind”
– Disagreement about the reality of white privilege, especially when it comes to police and law enforcement
Maybe some day I might agree. In today’s America, however, racism (and sexism) is far too pervasive to begin dismantling the government programs and policies that have so far been our best effort to eliminate these attitudes.
In my view, we should building on and expanding such programs rather than ending them.
It might as well be from the race that treated color as if it were a problem to begin with. Colorblindness gets us where we need to be. I don’t like the term privilege, but to the extent that we have it I think it comes with an obligation to be the ones to stand up and pledge we will no longer see color. Whites built the construct of racial difference and thus superiority for themselves in this country and therefore whites can and should be the ones to end it. Certain such programs force us to be mindful of color, which is exactly what we should be discouraging to get to true equality. On the more cynical negative side if a policy acknowledges color exists it just gives the racists another excuse to say we’re helping “those people” at “our” expense.
Anyway, we’re off topic. I just looked up and was reminded this is an MBTA thread!
Christopher was saying we should take $625 million from the current state budget and use it to subsidize his ride into Boston. I think he was saying that we should make changes to the amount of revenue coming into the state’s coffers and use the new revenue to pay for mass transit rather than making the users pay out of pocket.
This is exactly we do for virtually every road in this state. Only the Mass. Pike, the tunnels, and the Tobin Bridge have tolls. Free public transit does exist in numerous cities around the world.
Whether there’s any likelihood the current governor and legislature would do that is a different question – Christopher was just stating his view of what should happen. The personal insults are neither necessary nor helpful.
I would have treated his post more seriously. There was no comment about new revenue, simply words about him not paying in the future.
If you want to be treated seriously when you propose a new $625 million benefit of a small audience, back it up with how you will pay for it, in a reality based world.
on a blog, expressing his preference for the future of the MBTA. Since when does that require a full funding proposal that has some likelihood of gaining the approval of Speaker DeLeo & Co.?
I don’t know about a “small audience.” To get to $625 million you’re talking about every T rider. In some comment on this that I seem to recall for a week ago, Christopher said he was bringing up his personal experience because a lot of other people go through the same thought process when deciding how to get from A to B. We’d have more support for the T if more people feel like it’s something they use.
Here’s why I’ve got some sympathy for Christopher’s point of view. Given the cost of housing in and near Boston, a lot of people end up living farther out and having to commute. Making the commute manageable should be important to all of us, if we care about the quality of life of ourselves and our fellow citizens. Someone coming in from a far-flung burg on the commuter rail every day has to pay almost $300 for the pass, another $100+ to park (at $4 or $5 per day). That’s over 10% of the take-home pay of a person making $50K or less just to get into town, and they still need to worry about owning a car unless they live in one of the very few truly walkable places in Massachusetts.
By the time they drive to the T, wait, ride the train, and get from North/South Station to work, it’s 90 minutes or more each way. Costly and inconvenient. That sucks, and it’s pretty cavalier to say “just live closer” when housing costs are so high closer. Our population won’t shrink and we have to figure out how to get people around more efficiently.
Of course I don’t support raiding programs for the poorest in our Commonwealth to eliminate commuter rail fares, but we should start thinking bigger about how we’ll handle transportation in the future. Interested to see what Sec. Pollack has in mind.
We pay two gas taxes (fed and state) both of which are used to pay for the roads with are using when we buy the gas?
…but we don’t pay a user fee for the roads themselves with a couple of exceptions or a fare like we do to board public transit. I’ve had to answer this question a lot and I’m not sure why it’s not more obvious. I know of course that government services are funded by taxation. When I call something free I mean it in the sense of my first sentence. Just like I consider it free to use my public library even though of course we all pay for through taxation.
Whatever differences or agreements I may have with pretty much anyone here, specifically including both you and Christopher, those differences have to do with policy, priorities, values, and perspective — not when we were born.
While I appreciate the frustration that Christopher sometimes provokes in me, and perhaps you, I encourage you to perhaps walk back the references to “generation x” or “generation y”. Such generalities strike me as coming perilously close to the kind of scapegoating that so poisons political discourse today.
While I think Christopher is dreadfully incorrect in his stance on this issue, I think it has very little to do with when he, you or I were born.
I don’t want waitresses or janitors paying money onto a Charlie card either to get through the turnstile.
Tourists riding for free in a stile-free MBTA are not a risk to revenue loss if MBTA sells (Who’s today’s ILGWU?) union-made souvenir apparel branded with the names either of Boston, MBTA or Massachusetts.
Boston Strong shirts woven in Haiti? Tacky. I eat Haiti mangoes, but would rather buy socks knit it North Dighton, Massachusetts.
I don’t believe Charli Baker; Baker will axe the Board of our MBTA:
https://youtu.be/hPksSO3diJY
That’s me singing on the link above… like charley-on-the-mta
I’ve been toying with an idea for a while, and I wonder what christopher and others think.
Collecting fares increases revenue, but it comes at a cost. Not just the capital and operating costs associated with fare boxes, Charley Card infrastructure, armored cars, counting the money, etc., but also in quality of service — where the fare is collected on the vehicle at entry (above ground trolleys, buses, etc), it also comes at the cost of slower service because the vehicle must be stopped for longer to allow payment processing.
So, in light of this, why not a hybrid price system, whereby the buses are free. My thinking is that, to a first approximation: bus riders are poorer than commuter rail and subway riders. It’s not a perfect correlation to be sure, but it’s not crazy either.
So, given that bus riders are the poorest and given that bus service is noticeably slower because of fare collection, and given that the cost of collecting the fares is highest on buses (each vehicle needs fare collection equipment, and needs to be serviced individually every day, as opposed to the stations being serviced for subway), why not make bus service have no accompanying fare?
Look, I get it, we’re not taking any existing revenue off the books. The MBTA needs reform and revenue, so removing revenue isn’t part of the future. But, as a mental exercise, how does no charge for bus service sit with the liberal hive mind.
P.S. While no fee for parking at T stations may encourage people to drive only as far as the T station, it also encourages people to drive there instead of walk, cycle, bus, or carpool to that station. I’d rather the MBTA focus on (i) actually and completely collecting the parking fare, whatever it is, (b) pricing the parking correctly, which means find a price where the parking lot gets to about 95% full on most work days, and (c) where can we build parking garages to increase the number of parking spaces in the outer circle, so long as the revenue we get from the parking users covers the cost of the construction project?
Perhaps it would encourage the MBTA to actually decide whether the Silver Line is a bus or a train.
Interesting idea, I think I like it.
from Logan airport to South Station. You can even transfer to the Red Line for free.
Last time I had to take that route, especially as I had foolishly left my Charlie Card back in Chicago
SL4 (Dudley Square – South Station) and SL5 (Dudley Square – Downtown Crossing fares) are $1.60 with a Charlie Card and $2.10 with cash/Charlie Ticket.
With the Charlie Card there is one free bus transfer and discounted subway fare. With the ticket, there is one free bus transfer only, and no transfer for cash payments.
…but I’m in commuter rail territory. My round trip ticket is high teens AND I have to pay five bucks to park. Throw in schedule not always being convenient and I’m inclined to drive. Fortunately I’m not a daily Boston commuter, but I can’t imagine the hit to my wallet if I were. Before anyone jumps on my personal experience rhetoric I write this with the idea that plenty of others are in the same predicament.
…driving that far is often the only option.
Driving your car is not free, when the subsidies and external costs are included. If you were a daily Boston commuter, and your time is worth anything, then the extra time wasted in the 6+ mile daily parking lot needs to also be factored in. If you park in the city, you (or your employer) will pay many times more than $5/day.
…I drive as far as either Alewife or Sullivan Square because at that point the hassle and expense of going farther by car is greater than it is to pay to park and take the subway the rest of the way. However, I am still driving that far and if you want me to drive even less the alternative has to be dirt cheap. I’m not talking externalities and I think you know that. I am talking about up front out of pocket expenses for this particular trip at the time I am taking it. The one job I had in Boston I could park at my employer owned the lot so it did not cost either of us anything. (It was the Charlestown Navy Yard, so thank you federal taxpayers!)
though maybe not exactly the ones you are hoping for.
that might mean internalizing some of those externalities, and increasing some of your costs.
Sorry!
Even if I counted the cost of gasoline consumed in a trip it is still less than the cost of the train. Yes, I know some want to raise the gas tax which I suppose is less painful now that prices are lower, but I still say the rails should be treated like the roads – a public good paid for by the public coffers.
it would be correcting “your” deleterious “playing with the cost of living.”
(Of course neither you nor I determine what these things cost, though we might if we all worked together. We don’t, though, so the polar bears die while the Koch Brothers gloat.)
By the way, the term “public good” has a specific economic meaning. It is not at all the same as “free.”
Often for business and yes sometimes for pleasure. Those of us living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford corrections. I understand public good doesn’t mean free. I mean being entirely taxpayer funded rather than user fees, see also public schools, public libraries. Even if my terminology isn’t exact I stand by what I am proposing to accomplish. I’m not the one playing with the cost of living. I may be taking advantage of how things are and I have no shame in saying I like it that way. This does not mean I don’t think climate issues are a problem, but lets resolve it without quite so much sacrifice, for both practical and political reasons.
If product x costs less than product y, but we think x should cost more than y there are two ways to accomplish that: raise the cost of x or reduce the cost of y. You want to do the former while I much prefer the latter.
A huge contributor to the mess we’re in is that we have collectively been in denial about the real cost of our dependence on automobiles for several generations.
Your overly casual use of phrases like “playing with the cost of living” exemplifies the cultural attitude that we must change. Much of your “cost of x” is a matter of physical reality. Our choice is therefore whether or not we admit that reality.
Another reality that I would encourage you to become more familiar with in this context is the Tragedy of the Commons. Attempts to make transportation free exemplify this reality.
The physical reality is that transportation is not free. Moving mass — whether freight, bodies, or bodies encased in steel and plastic — is not free. Moving a mass a longer distance is more expensive than moving the same mass a shorter distance.
The very fact that I can travel by plane from New Orleans to Boston in five hours, while the same trip by rail costs 2-3 times as much and takes 2 days, reflects a fundamental disconnect between our current transportation economics and physical reality.
Similarly, even if it were true (and I’m not sure it is), the fact that a trip from, say, Lowell to Porter Square in Cambridge is faster and cheaper (for the individual) than the same trip by rail is a fundamental disconnect between our local economics and physical reality.
If we are to build a sustainable regional transportation system, we MUST align our economics with physical reality.
In my penultimate paragraph.
I’d love to get more options to move around swiftly and conveniently by public transit. Right now since Porter Square is on the Cambridge end of the Red Line if I needed to get there from Lowell I would likely drive to Alewife (US 3 South, MA 128 South, MA 2 East), park there and take the Red Line in. If I tried all public transit I would walk to an LRTA stop (pretty sure I have one close), bus to Gallagher Terminal, commuter rail to North Station, Orange Line to Downtown Crossing, Red Line to Porter Square. Of these the CR is the only part I find pricey, but the timing is awful.
I just checked Google Maps and it tells me a 40 minute drive to Alewife then add a few minutes for Red Line wait and transit, but keeps it under an hour. Alternatively, I’m looking at about two hours in transit if I went entirely public. Driving the 54 miles round trip to Alewife uses three gallons of gas costing $7-8 plus $5 round trip on the Red Line and $7 for parking totaling $20. All transit would be $2 for LRTA, $18.50 for CR, and $5 for the subway, totaling ~$25. I have to admit going through this makes me realize the gap wasn’t quite as wide as I thought though psychologically the gas money doesn’t count since I’m not paying for the express purpose of making the trip. Having to do things on their time instead of mine is still a sticking point for me, however.
For what it’s worth, you can drive from Lowell to Littleton/495 (15 miles, 17 minutes) and then take the Fitchburg/South Acton train to Porter Square. Using the numbers you offered for your 54 mile round to Alewife, that’s about $4.44 in gas per day. Parking at Littleton is $4 day/$70/month. The 7:08 express train arrives in Porter Square at 7:40. So your total commute is 49 minutes using that route. The round trip fare is $19.5 per day/$306 per month.
Rolling that up, using 21 days per month (4.33 weeks/month and 5 days per week), I get:
$27.94/day ala carte
$22.34/day using monthly passes
The latter looks comparable to your numbers for your drive to Alewife.
I still think I’m getting 28 vs. 20 in round figures, but the timing’s good.
Many/most of them have had great success.
The cities where it hasn’t worked tended to be wealthy urban areas with other options, with populations that weren’t interested in buses.
While I’m tempted to suggest that could describe Greater Boston, the increasing gap between the rich and everyone else has made it so that I think a free bus program could become very successful, and the service area of the subway ensures that most of Greater Boston (and even just Boston) doesn’t really have better public transit options than a bus, at least without having to make a transfer first.
The key point is that if there ever was a pilot or attempt at the program, it couldn’t be just for a few months or a year or two. We’d have to give the program enough time for people’s patterns/customs to change. There will be people who have cars and continue to drive until their car’s are too expensive to keep on the road before they’ll try a bus, or until their friends start using the bus.
You’re right that the question is largely academic at this point, but a lot of people are talking about the idea… so it could build momentum. Paying for it wouldn’t cost all that much in the grand scheme of things — so if enough people bought into it, and a pilot program showed it would work and excited the population base, anything is possible.
… It sounds like management buzzwords lacking even plausible connection to reality.
I don’t understand how the T can be more, or less, ‘customer-centric’. The various vehicles, train/subway, bus, boat, whatever travel up and down a given route. They’ll pick up people who are there, or they don’t. The behaviour is exactly the same if there are customers there or not. It’s not like a restaurant with a menu and choices: you either board the train/subway/bus/boat and travel until you get off. That’s it. And, honestly, I don’t want anything more than that. “Customer centric” is posting a schedule and keeping to it.
As far as interactions with any personnel I’ve never had a problem with any conductor or driver or any T personnel. They’ve been unfailingly polite and professional. The only real issues I’ve seen were with drunk people not wanting to pay and or comply. But it’s not like I hop on and ask them to swing round Starbucks for a cuppa before depositing me at my doorstep: I get on, say hi, sit down. When my stop comes up, I get up and get off. I usually say thanks. And that’s it.
Payment is made in a non-human vacuum what with the Charlie Card and online commuter rail passes. . It’s been OK, with some machines occasionally barfing back my money and saying ‘can’t do’ but then I just go to the next. Again… not much room for more in the way of ‘customer centric’ there…
It doesn’t sound like you’ve had to interact with any of the uniformed MBTA personnel occasionally sitting in an underground “information” booth. For example, when no train has come in forever and the signs continue to ask you to please not smoke. Or when the charlie card machine eats your cash and does nothing.
Even in a constrained environment, I think what they mean is to foster a culture where customer satisfaction is near the top, rather than bottom, of the priorities (and therefore values) that drive the organization.
In a customer-centric organization, it would be unacceptable for a commuter train to be 20+ minutes late while the expensive and usually worthless electronic announcements proclaim that all is well.
It is extremely common to find broken gates in the subways. This can be a big problem when there are only two gates at a secondary entrance and both gates are either totally broken or refuse to take Charlie Tickets, which are the only way to get a pass if you take the commuter rail. When this happens, there is almost never a T agent anywhere near. Only the major stations, such as South Station or Back Bay, reliably have an agent there to help you when something goes wrong.
Another issue is that in general when things go wrong on either the subway or commuter rail you are lucky if the conductor tells you anything at all even though they don’t really have anything better to do. There are plenty of times I wish they would just tell you that it is going to take an extra 20 minutes to go the next two stops so that people who could walk or take other lines would have the opportunity to do so.
I think this is less of an issue with the bus because it is usually obvious when you are stuck in traffic so there is less need for the driver to tell you that.
I do feel that the commuter rail is making more of an effort to reach out to customers and tell us what is going on. That is probably a combination of the new management company and getting reamed over their abysmal performance during this past Winter.
of a customer-centric T program was when T management decided that buses should be dispatched according to the printed schedule for buses.
On some routes, the T also added small rectangular displays to the T sign post at each stop that held the schedules for the routes that were supposed to stop there. Not just in shelters, but at every stop.
There might have been some costs to doing this, but it was basically a better utilization of the resources that the T already pays for. To produce a dramatically better rider experience, at very little to no cost.
I think one way to think about this notion is to ask, What would you do to please people if you had to? If there was competition?
Versus what sort of lazy or negative behaviors are indulged in because there is no competition.
The T schedules remain posted at some stops despite the fact that the schedules have long since changed, along with T management.
The Special Panel only knows how it wants to travel, not where it wants to go. Let’s pull out the vision thing phrase. Doing the same stuff in what he sees as a more cost-effective way has long been Charlie Baker’s M.O. Why the devil didn’t the panel define the T it wants.
[I get excited about mass transit. Most of my Left Ahead show today (starting around 7:40 in a 27-minute podcast) was on the report.]
I hold that more revenue from the likes of jacking up the fares and selling more ads and from cost controls like reneging on union deals will in fact Harvard-Pilgrim-ize the T. That is cut services and raise prices, then say, “So there. Done and done.”
If, instead, we want a T so good people don’t want to drive into or between cities, that’s a different path with different methods. If we want fast, frequent, clean, reliable and inexpensive transit, Baker-style austerity won’t get us to that destination.
I contend even if Baker gets his hand-picked Transporation Board, if they start with that destination in mind, they and the legislature (and Feds) can plan how to get there. Pure cost slashing is no way to run a train line.
The nation’s commercial railroads were not stupid, and were not unaware of the negative reaction they faced as they killed their passenger service train-by-train. They killed passenger service because freight is profitable and passenger is not.
Cost-slashing at the MBTA and commuter rail will have the same result, except that there is no freight service to ramp up (unless our state-managed commuter rail right-of-way segments become freight-only).
Vision MUST be the starting point.
because we subsidize the entire industry, including indemnifying them against any of the disasters they cause. When a train derails or explodes in the middle of a town, it’s the government that pays up, not the train companies. It’s not exactly the best incentive to ensure train companies modernize their rail and adhere to the strictest safety standards, etc.
In a system where private enterprise is the default setting the whole point of public utility is to provide services which are necessary, but can’t or shouldn’t be done for profit.
The term “public utility” refers to the services/infrastructure being provided not whether it is provided for profit or not. Most our public utilities — gas, electric, telephone, cable — are provided by for-profit companies but with prices regulated by the government.
Even so, ton for ton, mile for mile, and dollar for dollar, freight is more profitable than passenger. Here are some reasons why:
– By and large, the value of freight service to the customer is not nearly as dependent on schedule
– By and large, the value of freight service is impervious to rough ride, sudden starts and stops, and so on
– Freight does not require food, water, windows, on-board restrooms, tickets, conductors, etc.
– Freight is loaded and unloaded without requiring stations, platforms, parking, and so on. Customers can drop off freight at their convenience, and it can sit for arbitrary periods while awaiting a suitable train
Regarding disasters, rail has a better safety record than shipping by sea or truck. Since most right-of-way is not in the middle of town, most derailments and such occur in lightly-populated areas. Every transportation alternative is indemnified in some fashion, and rail is more exposed to the resulting costs than trucks and aircraft. I don’t know about ships.
Vision is required in public transportation because in its absence economic incentives work against providing passenger service at all.