General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)
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TallIsGood
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And that is why people don’t want tax increases to fund bloat at the T.
F-Line to Dudley
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...and the United States, for that matter!
This dead horse is now beaten beyond gelatinous goo. For the last time: we can levy whatever progressive taxation we want. Emphasis on progressive, since jacking the sales tax is regressive as all hell on poorer pocketbooks. We can use ballot initiatives to affirm/deny it by popular vote. We can even delegate fundraising authority to a third-party agency to administer within certain limitations. But...the House has to be a party to it by originating the bill.
And no, it's not "everybody outside of Boston". A majority of states are modeled more closely on MA (which is in turn conservatively modeled on the U.S. House's power of the purse) than they are on referendum-mad California. This is a lot more mainstream than that is.
None of that is a problem if we have a House that votes the will of the people. We don't, and haven't for ages because of the caravan of crooks occupying the Speaker position. That's what we have to fix, by throwing the bums out who elevate the crookedest bums into the leadership, who then manipulate the rules of the chamber to bunker in. Scalps are a lot easier to collect than votes for a single-issue constitutional amendment that has nigh impossible chances of passing. So instead of ruminating about how we can't have unrelated region's unrelated government's cherry-picked nice things because we're Massachusetts...maybe a better use of energy is making Massachusetts work for us so we can have nice things?
The frickin' Fraser Institute...seriously??? Fraser make local-yokel thinktank heels Pioneer Institute sound like a voice of relative planning sanity. Deeply libertarian and virulently anti-tax, and infamous for publishing non-credible junk science pieces bankrolled by the tobacco industry. Absolutely not a source to ever be presenting sans critique.
Where exactly is the T going to trim 8+ more figures of payroll to help bankroll expansion?
- They let unfilled vacancies following retirements decimate the maintenance ranks, which are nearly all skilled trade labor commanding a premium (and, yes, a union membership because of fierce competition for trades). Those folks don't get hired for peanuts, and not hiring them means they can't keep up on vehicle and infrastructure maintenance.
- They already slashed Red/Orange/Blue operator ranks by two-thirds following the rollout of One-Person Train Ops. It resulted in a temporary glut of inspectors promoted from displacements, but nearly 10 years later that has now normalized itself to baseline from retirements/attrition.
- The bus system is straining under overload, so there's no one to cut.
- Numerous office positions have been left unstaffed at middle-manager level because MassDOT already tried to squeeze the T to hire at below market-rate...and then was gobsmacked when nobody was taking these positions. Mission-critical departments like Procurement were impacted. They've reversed course out of desperation, but it hurt them...and could hurt them again in another budget crunch or in a competitive hiring market if these folks don't stick around.
Really...just another reductionist "BLARGH! UNIONS!" grunt from an astroturf wonktank left presented uncritically??? Haven't we had Governors waging battle against bloated union payrolls at the T for most of the last 25 years? Now it's actually proceeded to a point where the Herald red meat of "Orange operator makes $300K for sitting on fat ass" has become a relative rarity...but at price of going at the payroll with too blunt an instrument and no longer having enough mechanics to keep the buses running. There flat-out isn't much left to cut in raw waste that's not going to be offset by plugging the shortages of high-skill labor who cost a pretty penny to hire and who you need if service in the district is going to get lots bigger.
But we're somehow going to fund EXPANSION by doubling down on a strategy of gutting them again like a fish so there's too few laborers to run the existing, let alone expanded, transit system. Yeah, that'll go over well with a public that got just got slammed with a very regressive sales tax increase.
While 300k for doing nothing is more of a rarity, $60-$100k for doing nothing in makeshift breakrooms for weeks at a time (while telling everyone that Baker is a crook for privatizing the T) is certainly still present. Although it's not like the contractors being brought on are much better, if not worse at times. Won't digress further, but it's bad. I don't have a solution, but something needs to be done.
F-Line to Dudley
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I certainly don't disagree. There's a lot more to that needs to be done. And the only relation that has to expansion is that if the system needs to be bigger it best be operating like a well-oiled machine. Which means staffing the positions they need, and turning more fat into muscle where the waste is still pretty bad.
Nowhere, except in the acid-fever dreams of Fraser Institute and their astroturfing ilk, can it be claimed that busting the union and hiring wage workers or whatever-the-hell instead can somehow provides enough "revenue" for expansion. A simple headcount of who you need to have on-hand for that expanded system and at what going rate to keep them on shreds that argument to smithereens.
stick n move
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...and the United States, for that matter!
This dead horse is now beaten beyond gelatinous goo. For the last time: we can levy whatever progressive taxation we want. Emphasis on progressive, since jacking the sales tax is regressive as all hell on poorer pocketbooks. We can use ballot initiatives to affirm/deny it by popular vote. We can even delegate fundraising authority to a third-party agency to administer within certain limitations. But...the House has to be a party to it by originating the bill.
And no, it's not "everybody outside of Boston". A majority of states are modeled more closely on MA (which is in turn conservatively modeled on the U.S. House's power of the purse) than they are on referendum-mad California. This is a lot more mainstream than that is.
None of that is a problem if we have a House that votes the will of the people. We don't, and haven't for ages because of the caravan of crooks occupying the Speaker position. That's what we have to fix, by throwing the bums out who elevate the crookedest bums into the leadership, who then manipulate the rules of the chamber to bunker in. Scalps are a lot easier to collect than votes for a single-issue constitutional amendment that has nigh impossible chances of passing. So instead of ruminating about how we can't have unrelated region's unrelated government's cherry-picked nice things because we're Massachusetts...maybe a better use of energy is making Massachusetts work for us so we can have nice things?
The frickin' Fraser Institute...seriously??? Fraser make local-yokel thinktank heels Pioneer Institute sound like a voice of relative planning sanity. Deeply libertarian and virulently anti-tax, and infamous for publishing non-credible junk science pieces bankrolled by the tobacco industry. Absolutely not a source to ever be presenting sans critique.
Where exactly is the T going to trim 8+ more figures of payroll to help bankroll expansion?
- They let unfilled vacancies following retirements decimate the maintenance ranks, which are nearly all skilled trade labor commanding a premium (and, yes, a union membership because of fierce competition for trades). Those folks don't get hired for peanuts, and not hiring them means they can't keep up on vehicle and infrastructure maintenance.
- They already slashed Red/Orange/Blue operator ranks by two-thirds following the rollout of One-Person Train Ops. It resulted in a temporary glut of inspectors promoted from displacements, but nearly 10 years later that has now normalized itself to baseline from retirements/attrition.
- The bus system is straining under overload, so there's no one to cut.
- Numerous office positions have been left unstaffed at middle-manager level because MassDOT already tried to squeeze the T to hire at below market-rate...and then was gobsmacked when nobody was taking these positions. Mission-critical departments like Procurement were impacted. They've reversed course out of desperation, but it hurt them...and could hurt them again in another budget crunch or in a competitive hiring market if these folks don't stick around.
Really...just another reductionist "BLARGH! UNIONS!" grunt from an astroturf wonktank left presented uncritically??? Haven't we had Governors waging battle against bloated union payrolls at the T for most of the last 25 years? Now it's actually proceeded to a point where the Herald red meat of "Orange operator makes $300K for sitting on fat ass" has become a relative rarity...but at price of going at the payroll with too blunt an instrument and no longer having enough mechanics to keep the buses running. There flat-out isn't much left to cut in raw waste that's not going to be offset by plugging the shortages of high-skill labor who cost a pretty penny to hire and who you need if service in the district is going to get lots bigger.
But we're somehow going to fund EXPANSION by doubling down on a strategy of gutting them again like a fish so there's too few laborers to run the existing, let alone expanded, transit system. Yeah, that'll go over well with a public that got just got slammed with a very regressive sales tax increase.
Come on F-Line lol, I wasnt trying to bring up the taxes again...Its been beaten to death already. You cut off the quote right before the last sentence.
I was just saying that I was reading about Vancouvers metro expansion, (specifically I was looking for where they are building the new lines to... etc.) But as Im reading it looking for this, they mention yet another tax plan...which Im not looking for, but apparently it seems to be a theme when reading about expanded metros these days, so I noted it. Anyways as Im reading this I come across his part about doing an audit of the whole metro system before any expansion projects are started and I agreed, this should be step one before we also start on any of our larger projects. The GLX started out as a mess but was reeled in and saved. Lets stop it before it even begins the next time. Thats literally what I was saying. Should we never reel in the overspending?
Anyways, I dont really care who wrote it, I dont think it matters. I was just saying that he has a good point and I think it applies to us as well, thats all.
Thats all that I was saying and Stefalarchitects response of (Im not sure if private contractors will be any better, but it is bad, something needs to be done but Im not sure what) is really the extent of a response that was required to this simple suggestion..
And I most definitelly was not in any way implying that “busting the union provides enough revenue for expansion”. No idea where in gods name you got this from... Essentially everything youve said is somehow a response to something Im not even saying, drawn out to infinity.
I literally was just saying that... “step 1” before we do any new expansion project here.. should be to make sure our finances are in order first and were not wasting large amounts of unnecessary money on bs... Aka audit where the money goes before taking on more money... thats it. How you get what you do from what little is said in here I have no idea, but you imply a whole hell of a lot and then debunk the things that your implying that Im not even saying in the first place. Not 1 time did I say an audit will fund the whole thing... seriously wtf bro lol..jesus.
Heres my ENTIRE point... “Step 1, Audit MBTA before taking on more money, Step 2 proceed” Thats what my entire post said in 1 sentence. So this is wrong?
If you would have framed an answer towards the question even being asked, I would know what your answer was... but everything went so far in every direction that I have no idea what you actually said through all of it, because its like 10 paragraphs about the taxes that I wasnt even talking about and then ended with the false premise that I thought that an audit would create all the money for an expansion. Thats like 11 of the paragraphs. Then I still really have no idea what to even make of it after that. Please just stay on target and get your point across in as few words as necessary. Do an audit or dont before taking on more funds.. Yes or no, thats literally it. Now I had to type 10x as much as my post even had to begin with just responding to all of whatever that just was.
Here... forget everything else so far. Ill keep it straight and to the point and hopefully am able clear up all of the other confusion so far...
What is the plan that the city and/or MBTA have for getting the financing and approval together to allow NSRL, SS expansion, RED-BLUE, OL Extension, Fairmount, Blue-Lynn, Seaport-Rail, and anything else thats in the proposal stage to actually move fwd? Where is the money going to come from and what time tables are we realistically looking at?
This should be easier with direct questions than can have direct answers.
-Thanks
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F-Line to Dudley
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^--typo on my part in splitting up the quote for reply.
And also irrelevant because the link you cited was from a thoroughly discredited voodoo economics astroturf thinktank that's not even in this country!!! That's the problem here: by dumping the linkspam from a policy house whose #1 cause above all else is anti-taxation, you ARE backdooring the tax issue and bringing it up again. If that was not your intention, vet your links before posting. Fraser is so thoroughly associated with libertarian taxation causes that the mere mention of them is designed to stoke a strong reaction from the Riflemans of the great white North. Nearly any source would've been better than such a politically motivated one.
Where does a system audit substantially create the revenues to facilitate expansion? Have we not been auditing the system for years now? Where's that getting us except a couple refinancing rate reshuffles of the T's debt service? Nowhere. The debt service has to become manageable by the Legislature acting to take the Big Dig debt off the agency's backs before every $1 saved on payroll or an outsourced parts warehouse doesn't disappear into the debt service black hole.
Does that mean we should continue auditing? Sure, absolutely. But the connection between auditing of payroll and ops with expansion is nil...nothing...zero. It was nil with GLX. We got a crooked bid from an outside contractor, and so the outside contractor was fired with penalty and the project put out for re-bid. Nowhere did GLX bloat its cost projections or slim its cost projections because of an internally laid off bus driver or outsourced warehouse elsewhere. That is a false-false-false equivalence. Doubly false when the state won't even audit all that South Coast Rail is wasting in similar contractor grift at the conceptual stage, so not all projects are created equal with who Beacon Hill is politically OK wasting contractor payola on.
If we expand--on any mode--the payroll's going to have to do *some* expanding in key areas even if more efficiency gains come elsewhere. So while tightening the bolts on waste is always a top priority, it's not like we can get rid of bus drivers or mechanics at all while still aiming to expand fleets/garages and schedules.
You should care who wrote it, because that's exactly how people get fooled into treating politically single-minded thinktank trash as unbiased policy analysis. It's irresponsible.
And once more: Vancouver ≠ Boston. L.A. ≠ Boston. Atlanta ≠ Boston. Seattle ≠ Boston.
Again and again and again and again for another week you're chucking up these transpo funding initiatives from different states...now different countries...that don't function like the institutions we have in Massachusetts for funding these things. Then positing another "Why can't we have these nice things" link about those same MA-irrelevant funding mechanisms. How many times does it have to be answered? We can't have those nice things because those nice things have to be proposed through OUR institutions. Numerous examples have been given as to the how's/why's similar things could be done through the Legislature in spite of the hardships in reforming the Legislature.
Do these posts ever pivot to floating a working theory of how one could better fund transit in MA through MA? No...just turn gaze longingly back to the stuff on another coast we couldn't build that way even if we wanted to. This week with TL;DR junk science that you're now saying doesn't matter. What is the point of all this? That if it gets thread-bumped enough we'll magically turn into L.A. or Vancouver?
How about solving local problems on local turf. That's way more practical.
It came by the act of posting an article from a thinktank that loves union-busting. This is a problem that you won't read your own sourcing before posting that stuff.
If you are completely kerfuzzled about replies to your own posts, perhaps you should read the links in your own posts before posting. Fraser = TAXES!TAXES!TAXES! shouting. That's their whole bag. It's impossible to swerve away from their whole mission statement in life.
It's going to come through the Legislature...which we've talked about for a couple weeks now being THE conduit where you have to implement funding. Progressive funding, regressive funding, whatever.
Something following in the lines of that discussion and NOT what other states are passing under different mechanisms. Continue that discussion if it interests you, because playing this tiresome TL;DR game with replies clearly isn't advancing it any.
stick n move
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Ok, I now understand one part of why we have been 100% on the wrong page. I posted that link (only) to show where I was getting the quote that I was pasting from... thats it. Only because people bitch if you don't show a source on the internet... so there was the source. I wasnt pasting it to use it as an argument. Apparently it seems that you took it as I was pasting the link to show that I agree with all or some of the things written in there somehow transferring to Boston. I was wondering where the hell you were getting 15 pages of shit to comment on, from me just essentially saying with the quote that "we should audit the mbta before the next transit projects". So that makes sense now.
This is literally all I was looking for for an answer or the only thing that makes any relatable sense to me:
Besides that, I never suggested that cleaning up payrolls, contracts, excessive spending, and general loop holes inside of the MBTA would (fund) any transit line extension. I was just saying make sure that before we are going to throw money at the MBTA again for the next project, make sure that we are going into it more prepared than how we went in with the Big Dig and the GLX to allow massive cost overruns and both to have to be scaled back. Step 1 (imo) would be to get the notoriously shaky books in better order, before we take on another massive infrastructure project that leaves yet another sour taste in the taxpayers mouths after corruption, wasteful spending, and then a scaled back end result... thats it.
So yeaa. Im done talking about this, its beaten into the ground... Anyways, transit isnt my "thing" here I have barely posted in this forum, but I came here to learn, but I think that whenever I am just trying to ask a quick question or just say hey how does ___ work, or will ___ work- F-Line you think Im talking about something compleeeetely different because transit is your area and your in a whole different timezone on this shit so it ends up just causing mass confusion between both of us. This thread is a perfect example. Literally if just Stefalarchitect had replied, it would have made perfect sense and then theres 2 replies and everything worked out... vs a whole page of going nowhere. Lol so dont feel obligated if Im asking something, if it looks like it needs a long answer, it most likely doesnt, so its nbd to let someone else roll with it.. Or if something is more in depth and crazy then feel free too, but just know with me here that like 99% of shit probably isnt.
This is literally all I was looking for for an answer or the only thing that makes any relatable sense to me:
Besides that, I never suggested that cleaning up payrolls, contracts, excessive spending, and general loop holes inside of the MBTA would (fund) any transit line extension. I was just saying make sure that before we are going to throw money at the MBTA again for the next project, make sure that we are going into it more prepared than how we went in with the Big Dig and the GLX to allow massive cost overruns and both to have to be scaled back. Step 1 (imo) would be to get the notoriously shaky books in better order, before we take on another massive infrastructure project that leaves yet another sour taste in the taxpayers mouths after corruption, wasteful spending, and then a scaled back end result... thats it.
So yeaa. Im done talking about this, its beaten into the ground... Anyways, transit isnt my "thing" here I have barely posted in this forum, but I came here to learn, but I think that whenever I am just trying to ask a quick question or just say hey how does ___ work, or will ___ work- F-Line you think Im talking about something compleeeetely different because transit is your area and your in a whole different timezone on this shit so it ends up just causing mass confusion between both of us. This thread is a perfect example. Literally if just Stefalarchitect had replied, it would have made perfect sense and then theres 2 replies and everything worked out... vs a whole page of going nowhere. Lol so dont feel obligated if Im asking something, if it looks like it needs a long answer, it most likely doesnt, so its nbd to let someone else roll with it.. Or if something is more in depth and crazy then feel free too, but just know with me here that like 99% of shit probably isnt.
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So I've been curious for awhile how much implementing an off-peak fare structure for the commuter rail might cost so I decided to go through the ridership data to attempt to calculate this, and I thought y'all might be interested in this too.
As the data includes neither payment method nor origin-destination data, crucial for actually estimating this, I decided I would always assume these in a manner that maximizes costly trips; that is to say this is the maximum possible cost of implementing off-peak pricing. To this end I made the following assumptions:
I considered any inbound arriving at North/South Station before 10 and any outbound departing between 3:30 and 7:00 to be peak trains, and I ran this on 3 possible fare structures:
Again when you start to factor in monthly passes and increased ridership the actual cost should be far less than this. All this is to say that there will simply be no excuse for not implementing off-peak pricing once AFC2.0 comes around.
Also here's my data and code (including a json formatting of the 2018 ridership data) if anyone wants it.
As the data includes neither payment method nor origin-destination data, crucial for actually estimating this, I decided I would always assume these in a manner that maximizes costly trips; that is to say this is the maximum possible cost of implementing off-peak pricing. To this end I made the following assumptions:
- All fares were paid as regular price one-way tickets.
- Each person getting off a train was assumed to have boarded at the most recent station with available riders who I hadn't already assumed got off. This maximizes the number of long trips which have more expensive fares.
I considered any inbound arriving at North/South Station before 10 and any outbound departing between 3:30 and 7:00 to be peak trains, and I ran this on 3 possible fare structures:
- Interzone fares are available to off-peak journeys including zone 1a: Costs $93,460.25 per weekday ($23,365,062.50 per year assuming 250 business days_.
- Cap one-way fares at $5 (equivalent to the price of a weekend pass if it were being used for a round-trip): Costs $82,447.50 per weekday ($20,611,875 per year).
- All off-peak fares are $2.25: Costs $140,914.75 per weekday ($35,228,687.50 per year).
Again when you start to factor in monthly passes and increased ridership the actual cost should be far less than this. All this is to say that there will simply be no excuse for not implementing off-peak pricing once AFC2.0 comes around.
Also here's my data and code (including a json formatting of the 2018 ridership data) if anyone wants it.
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First, even without understanding the details, I'm going to say that this is a work of genius on a long-overdue topic.
Second, I'm going to praise your posting of code and data! (but note that I after some confusing error messages crdata.zip seems to have downloaded)
Do these assume ridership would be static? I bet you'd see a 3 part reaction to lower off-peak fares:
1) Some initial shifts from peak to off-peak (as people un-crowd rush hour trains to get the discount)
2) Backfill of rush hour trains (as new riders are attracted to fill the seats that the cheapskates,er, price-responsive customers, vacated.
3) Stimulation of new transit trips, such as we've seen on the $10 weekends (any estimate of how may $10 passes are actually just used for 1 round trip?)
And do we have enough data from the $10 weekends to show what kind of response to discounts is?
I've updated the link with a github repository which hopefully should work better.
Yes since I could think of no good way of estimating ridership increases. The point of this exercise was mostly to show that even when making every possible assumption (to the point of absurdity) in a manner that would cause more revenue to be lost, the cost of off-peak fares would still be quite reasonable.
According to the Globe, the T has said the weekend passes increased ridership enough to actually increase revenue.
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I think it would be reasonable to expect the same response. Whatever the model shows for weekend $10, I'd clone/scale it for weekday midday (not sure about evening)
I don't know if I agree with this, since many of the factors that making driving unappealing (namely expensive parking) still apply in some manner for weekday midday trips, or at least to a greater extent than the weekend. Though I wouldn't surprised if you'd see similar trends to weekends for reverse peak weekday trips.
Also the T did not specify how much ridership went up on weekends, so one wouldn't be able to replicate that for weekdays. (And without knowledge of what percent of weekend fares were paid with monthly passes or weekend ridership data, I can't estimate the ridership increase based on what you'd need to recoup the fare loss)
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millerm277
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There's some limited numbers in this: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/...-dollar-weekends-accessible-minus-T-logos.pdf
Particularly slides 7-8.
I'm going to go to the MBTA fare proposal meeting in Woburn tonight.
My biggest anger about the whole thing is the subsidizes that the commuter rail receives versus the subsidizes that roads receive.
From 2014-2015 numbers, the MBTA reported a fare-box recovery on the commuter rail of roughly 66%. This is with non operating revenues but with assessments.
On the other hand with roads, according to the tax foundation, use taxes pay for roughly 54% of the cost of roads. This is a report from 2014.
Why we're subsidizing roads more than transit makes absolutely no sense to me. Auto subsidizes keep going down over time (cars get more fuel efficient for the gas tax plus inflation). And anyway, commuter rail passes are already as expensive as a car payment. This state has fucked up priorities.
And for people driving from I-93 into downtown Boston, they are using a 20 billion dollar car tunnel without any toll. Meanwhile in the past 10 years commuter rail passes have gone up more than double the rate of inflation.
People live on the commuter rail because they can't afford to live closer. Raising rates is a squeeze on the middle class and working people.
And I could but don't want to go down the rabbit hole on MBTA cost overruns.
My biggest anger about the whole thing is the subsidizes that the commuter rail receives versus the subsidizes that roads receive.
From 2014-2015 numbers, the MBTA reported a fare-box recovery on the commuter rail of roughly 66%. This is with non operating revenues but with assessments.
On the other hand with roads, according to the tax foundation, use taxes pay for roughly 54% of the cost of roads. This is a report from 2014.
Why we're subsidizing roads more than transit makes absolutely no sense to me. Auto subsidizes keep going down over time (cars get more fuel efficient for the gas tax plus inflation). And anyway, commuter rail passes are already as expensive as a car payment. This state has fucked up priorities.
And for people driving from I-93 into downtown Boston, they are using a 20 billion dollar car tunnel without any toll. Meanwhile in the past 10 years commuter rail passes have gone up more than double the rate of inflation.
People live on the commuter rail because they can't afford to live closer. Raising rates is a squeeze on the middle class and working people.
And I could but don't want to go down the rabbit hole on MBTA cost overruns.
Thanks for attending for those of us that cant. Also if you haven't, sign the petition:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfxZqYUEiEMFy0Hb6oiJ2lsWkdwaeNIlJ7RuJTeF4XbU7ja4Q/viewform
Yah that proposal seems very Boston centric as far as the commuter rail zones (I think it's from Michelle Wu), but I did sign it.
Just a small transit proposal, I think Lynn should be in a lower commuter rail zone. It has a huge underused garage, and Lynn is a low income area. I believe that people take a bus to wonderland and transfer to the Blue Line because it's much cheaper. The Commuter Rail there is very underused for what it could be.
Of course frequencies need to increase, but that's a whole other discussion. The Newburyport/Rockport line is constrained by single tracks near Salem, so I'm not sure how plausible that is. I also think the new fare system with a transfer from commuter rail to bus/subway will really help ridership in places like Lynn.
At least with the Subway the MBTA can use the new trains as an excuse. However for the Commuter rail there are no procurement's and few improvements, so why the fare increase?
Equilibria
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Because the MBTA doesn't only spend money on new stuff. The cost of providing the current service goes up too (healthcare, maintenance equipment, energy, etc.)
True, but fare increases have been more than double inflation for the past 10 years.
Anyway it was just a Q and A section at Woburn. They said the bigger meeting will be next Wednesday in Boston. I may go.
From the last stats I saw from the T (I think they are from 2015?) , heavy rail is subsidized at about 61 cents per passenger trip, light rail at $1.39, and CR at $5.75.