General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
Just balancing out the 15 minute (how?!) estimate.

Really, if a person is that picky, they're probably taking a cab or Uber from the airport anyhow. Airport transit is overrated.

Meanwhile the free (thanks MassPort, one of the few sensible decisions) Silver Line does draw tourists away from the Blue Line, making my life easier.

They still need to figure out a long term solution for the whole Silver Line way/D street/power-switching fiasco. It's Rube-Goldbergesque at the moment.
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My real issue with the Silver Line Airport is not the ride from the airport, it is the ride TO the airport, which because of the fakacka routing (no direct tunnel access) take a good 10-15 minutes longer than the inbound ride. That is just plain stupid planning.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

From the airport is pretty bad from my memory too. I actually have stopped taking it. I don't know if it was temporary, but it gets off the tunnel loops in front of seaport and then onto SLW. We were stuck in traffic for 25 minutes about .25 miles from the station.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
It's insane. Bet those same "clergy" drive around in Mercedes-Benz. Doubt that they are protesting that company for something that happened 70 years ago and didn't involve any living persons.
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WHEEEEEE!!! Shitshow time!!!

MBCR prepared to go scorched earth over everyone in court if it loses the contract to Keolis.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Honestly, how can anyone believe there aren't some suspiciously cozy relationships between a bespoke "company" named "MBCR" and the MBTA.

I bet half the riders don't know that MBCR is a private company. They probably think it is an arm of the agency.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

From the agenda for the MassDOT Board Meeting on Weds.:

Request to authorize the MBTA General Manager and Rail & Transit Administrator to execute Commuter Rail Operating Agreement, Contract No. 159-12 Between Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ('MBTA') and Keolis Commuter Services, LLC to provide the MBTA with commuter rail services for a base period of eight years, with the option to extend for up to an additional (4) four years, in the amount not to exceed $4,258,131,062.00, with an initial base contract amount of $2,686,344,294.00.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth it to contract this out. Why not run it inhouse? Can it really be worse than upwards of $350mil/year to serve 70,000 riders and declining?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

aaaaaa said:
Isn't Keolis' parent company the SNCF? (If so, documents outlining failures to punish racist employees were published today by Mediapart.)

Without the contract, will the MBCR cease to exist? Do they have other contracts?
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MBCR the joint venture has no other contracts. So the 3 partners--Veolia Transport, Bombardier, and Alternative Concepts--will almost certainly part ways and dissolve the company if they lose the contract. The company was created for the sole purpose of the T contract. They have no other constituency to chase as a joint venture.


Bombardier does have a contract for the 2 MARC Train routes that don't use the NEC, and several of GO Transit's commuter rail routes in Toronto. It's a tiny side business for them, since they're the #1 railcar manufacturer in North America. They have the least to lose.

Veolia has a huge portfolio of municipal bus contracts in the U.S., their main domestic bread-and-butter. Most of their rail holdings are abroad, but they have operator contracts for the New Orleans streetcar, Denver light rail, San Diego County's SPRINTER DMU line, and Austin Capital MetroRail's DMU line. However, the T would be their second crippling contract loss on a Top 10 ridership U.S. commuter rail district. They lost the L.A. Metrolink contract to Amtrak in the fallout from the infamous 2008 Chatsworth wreck we have to thank for the panic-pushed PTC law. Losing the T and Metrolink together in only 4 years pretty much relegates them to also-rans in the commuter rail market. Every other contracted-out system in North America combined is smaller revenue than what they had with the T + Metrolink. So while this is a small drop in the bucket compared to the massive scale of their international portfolio, it hurts their chances a lot on future U.S. rail contracts. They might need to refocus on domestic light rail contracts as a growth option because the commuter rail picture is slim pickings for the next decade on potential new business with few contracts--and few of any consequence--up for bid.

Alternative Concepts runs the Trem Urbano subway in San Juan and Valley Metro light rail in Phoenix. And are owners of locus bus company Paul Revere Transportation, which runs the LMA shuttles and a couple of the Logan Express routes. They're headquartered in Boston and brought all the local connections to the partnership. They have the most to lose having the smallest portfolio of the 3 and losing the bulk of their hometown pull. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Speaker, and the Gov.'s chief-of-staff aren't going to return anywhere near as many of their phone calls now.
 
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Veolia also runs transit in the occupied Palestinian territories and does a whole lot of shady things with their water management contracts so they're real huge fucks and I'm not going to be sad to see them go.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth it to contract this out. Why not run it inhouse? Can it really be worse than upwards of $350mil/year to serve 70,000 riders and declining?
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That would be the logical thing to do. This setup originated when the system was so small and cobbled-together from its predecessor RR's entrails that it needed a Boston & Maine or an Amtrak to be their eyes, ears, and expertise. Today all the infrastructure, equipment, and facilities have been totally remade by the T, and all the front-line staff homegrown. The operator's role has flipped on its head: they're the middle and upper management 2+ layers removed from the folks on the ground. And it's turned into a parasitic political perk. You'll see how far-removed they really were on Day 1 of Keolis ops when everything is the same and every conductor, engineer, maintenance person, inspector, and foreman has a completely normal, uneventful, and unchanged workday.


Unfortunately, you can't just make the decision to go in-house on a whim. It takes a considerable amount of planning to transition from outside management to wholly inside management, get the organization structure set, and satisfy all watchdogs that it's going to be transparent enough. They have to chart their course on that 3, 4 years before the next contract is up and move deliberately towards it such that it's the worst-kept secret in the world. There's no way they would've been able to do that here. They would've had to have been debating it well before MBCR hit the point in the last 2-3 years where it completely lost the public's trust...not as a reaction or damage-control measure to MBCR shitting the bed. It's not enough time to start the transition.

The time to do it is at the 5-year mark of the Keolis deal, where it appears there may be a bunch of built-in flex for incremental option years instead of all-or-nothing rubber stamp. If they think they've hit that transition point and want to go in a different direction when the term is up, we'll know by 2020 and that 5-year mark whether the shift is underway. But it's not something they could ever do on-deadline by 'bidding themselves' so-to-speak at a contract renewal. They'll be telegraphing it years in advance.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'm not quite sure I understand the value of such a long contract for the commuter rail - why isn't it something that is reviewed every four years or so?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

aaaaaa said:
Without the contract, will the MBCR cease to exist? Do they have other contracts?
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F-Line to Dudley said:
MBCR the joint venture has no other contracts. So the 3 partners--Veolia Transport, Bombardier, and Alternative Concepts--will almost certainly part ways and dissolve the company if they lose the contract. The company was created for the sole purpose of the T contract. They have no other constituency to chase as a joint venture.
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What about the new services that Rhode Island is considering establishing?

Or are those too far in the future to be pertinent to this discussion?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Who runs RI intrastate service may well depend on the timing. The T - whether run by Keolis, in-house, or someone entirely different - has the advantage of inertia. They are already familiar with the track (Kingston service is on its way in the 2015 time frame, which means that the T will be operating over about 50% of the rail miles that RIDOT is seriously considering), and Rhode Islanders will have become used to the purple-trimmed coaches.

If RI doesn't break off their branding until after service gets to Westerly, then CDOT has an outside chance. By that point they'll probably be running New Haven-Springfield and New Haven-Westerly in-house, with definite experience running EMUs on Shore Line East. They tend to play a bit lighter and faster than the T simply because they're a smaller commuter operation, and that could be a very good thing. Note that CDOT added a bunch of SLE trains in May and June, and monthly ridership effectively doubled overnight.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Scalziand said:
What about the new services that Rhode Island is considering establishing?

Or are those too far in the future to be pertinent to this discussion?
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They can continue tethering off their subsidy agreement with the T without alteration. Their subsidy and % ownership share of the equipment pool are a state-to-state transaction between agencies transparent to the T's contracted operator, and expands elastically with every increase in service or +1 stop extension. That's how T.F. Green and Wickford have been able to go online and +1 to Kingston could still follow. The intrastate services are just a natural evolution of that, so nothing fundamentally changes other than RI paying in more with each enhancement. The only thing that would be outside the bounds of this elastic Purple Line sharing agreement is crossing the CT state line...which they don't ever need to do because Shore Line East is eventually coming to Westerly to meet them.


Severing from the T and hiring their own operator means they lose access to the T's equipment pool and staff and have to start from scratch. All-new trains, all-new hires, all-new fare collection backend, all-new maintenance and central ops facilities, all-new everything. Amtrak and the Veolias of the world don't bring the hardware with them when they sign the contract, and RI is too small a state to be able to pay for all that and still expand its service. Hence, they are likely to stay married to the T for several decades more. At least until they are fully built out and fully saturated.

The EGE said:
If RI doesn't break off their branding until after service gets to Westerly, then CDOT has an outside chance. By that point they'll probably be running New Haven-Springfield and New Haven-Westerly in-house, with definite experience running EMUs on Shore Line East. They tend to play a bit lighter and faster than the T simply because they're a smaller commuter operation, and that could be a very good thing. Note that CDOT added a bunch of SLE trains in May and June, and monthly ridership effectively doubled overnight.
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Not likely. SLE is Amtrak-run, and NHHS is going to be. Because they're small and because they run on Amtrak-owned and dispatched track. Getting M8's onto SLE and maintained in a common equipment pool was a torturous negotiation with Metro North that still has minor unresolved fine print to square. And things CT holds nearer and dearer to itself like labor provisioning for thru-running its non-MNRR services to New York are going to be a whole 'nother drag-out fight with the MTA. I wouldn't be surprised if MNRR bitches about poking the M8's all of 400 feet across the RI state line to serve Westerly, and there has to be another truce negotiated to make that happen.

It's one reason why CTDOT occasionally daydreams about divorcing itself entirely from Metro North, and the MTA daydreams about divorcing itself from CTDOT...with the two only sharing custody of the kids from Port Chester to Manhattan in the divorce. SLE has its future hitting the RI border, and NHHS has a future spreading north of Springfield up to Northampton and Greenfield. They have a much easier time crossing state lines staying with Amtrak ops on Amtrak routes than they do going it alone or opening up another bickering front with MNRR.
 
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

winstonoboogie said:
Fred Salvucci gave a quick answer on that a few years ago:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2011/12/01/commuter-rail-in-house/
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Ok, but that's a political reason. Fine. But if that's it, then the T should be looking to get around it eventually.

The other part of my comment was about costs. The commuter rail, as a mode, serves far fewer passengers than bus or subway, while costing about the same or more annually. It's hard not to conclude that CR is basically gold-plated transit for rich (mostly white) commuters.

The T needs to rein those costs in.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
Ok, but that's a political reason. Fine. But if that's it, then the T should be looking to get around it eventually.

The other part of my comment was about costs. The commuter rail, as a mode, serves far fewer passengers than bus or subway, while costing about the same or more annually. It's hard not to conclude that CR is basically gold-plated transit for rich (mostly white) commuters.

The T needs to rein those costs in.
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Oh, I bet if MBCR makes good on its threat to sue everyone that the ensuing chaos the transition gets plunged into will get the state thinking long, hard, and soon about whether they have the stomach to go through this whole bid process again in 8 years. MBCR has done a bang-up job making this whole thing a referendum on their business practices. By going full-retard on those threats they could end up making the existence of ANY future commuter rail contract an everlasting referendum on MBCR's business practices.

If that's how MBCR chooses to spend its last months of existence, the state is going to be very highly motivated to never again put itself into the position of having a deeply-embedded contractor so scorned they have nothing left to lose but watch the world burn. Their present performance as contractor could force that change too, regardless of whether Keolis is the best thing since sliced bread.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
Ok, but that's a political reason. Fine. But if that's it, then the T should be looking to get around it eventually.

The other part of my comment was about costs. The commuter rail, as a mode, serves far fewer passengers than bus or subway, while costing about the same or more annually. It's hard not to conclude that CR is basically gold-plated transit for rich (mostly white) commuters.

The T needs to rein those costs in.
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Well the other unspoken issue is that MBTA employees doing the same or equal job as the contractor make more money and have better benefits. That was true when it was the B&M, when it was Amtrak, and now that it is MBCR. Anecdotally, I've known a whole lot of Amtrak or MBCR employees over the years who are envious of MBTA salaries and benefits, I don't think I have ever met an MBTA employee who was envious of the contractor's deals. I think there is an assumption that with arbitration, the MBTA would have to pay former contractor employees the same types of deals as present MBTA employees.

Federal labor requirements for transit: (section 5333b formerly section 13(c)
http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/special_warranty.htm
mean that any new contractor has to pay at least the same rate as the old contractor (that happened when Amtrak took over from the B&M, when MBCR took over from Amtrak, and will be the case with the new guys). It also means though that if the MBTA took over direct operation, then increased wages/benefits to match their rates, they would be locked into those amounts even if they decided later on to go back to contracting out the service.

My guess is people like Fred Salvucci have done the basic math over the years, and have calculated that even with a profit margin required for the contractor, total costs (of which labor is the big component) would still go up for direct operation. On the other hand, there is the old saying "you get what you pay for". Now I know Matthew will bring up the cost savings from one person operation, proof of payment, all high-platform operation, etc, but those labor contracts also have a lot of language in there about staffing levels too!
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
MBCR the joint venture has no other contracts. So the 3 partners--Veolia Transport, Bombardier, and Alternative Concepts--will almost certainly part ways and dissolve the company if they lose the contract. The company was created for the sole purpose of the T contract. They have no other constituency to chase as a joint venture.


Bombardier does have a contract for the 2 MARC Train routes that don't use the NEC, and several of GO Transit's commuter rail routes in Toronto. It's a tiny side business for them, since they're the #1 railcar manufacturer in North America. They have the least to lose.

Veolia has a huge portfolio of municipal bus contracts in the U.S., their main domestic bread-and-butter. Most of their rail holdings are abroad, but they have operator contracts for the New Orleans streetcar, Denver light rail, San Diego County's SPRINTER DMU line, and Austin Capital MetroRail's DMU line. However, the T would be their second crippling contract loss on a Top 10 ridership U.S. commuter rail district. They lost the L.A. Metrolink contract to Amtrak in the fallout from the infamous 2008 Chatsworth wreck we have to thank for the panic-pushed PTC law. Losing the T and Metrolink together in only 4 years pretty much relegates them to also-rans in the commuter rail market. Every other contracted-out system in North America combined is smaller revenue than what they had with the T + Metrolink. So while this is a small drop in the bucket compared to the massive scale of their international portfolio, it hurts their chances a lot on future U.S. rail contracts. They might need to refocus on domestic light rail contracts as a growth option because the commuter rail picture is slim pickings for the next decade on potential new business with few contracts--and few of any consequence--up for bid.

Alternative Concepts runs the Trem Urbano subway in San Juan and Valley Metro light rail in Phoenix. And are owners of locus bus company Paul Revere Transportation, which runs the LMA shuttles and a couple of the Logan Express routes. They're headquartered in Boston and brought all the local connections to the partnership. They have the most to lose having the smallest portfolio of the 3 and losing the bulk of their hometown pull. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Speaker, and the Gov.'s chief-of-staff aren't going to return anywhere near as many of their phone calls now.
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Paul Revere also runs the Winthrop bus service Routes 712/713, so any destablization in their company's finances could have a ripple effect on the local level.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

jdrinboston said:
Paul Revere also runs the Winthrop bus service Routes 712/713, so any destablization in their company's finances could have a ripple effect on the local level.
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Not necessarily. They're not so big they can shrug off and move on like a stubbed toe as Veolia and Bombardier can, but they have a diversified transit portfolio and every new small contract they pick up on an upstart rapid transit or xMU system matters to them more than it does the other partners. They have opportunities to widen their portfolio. Hell...if Metrolink and MBCR have damaged Veolia's U.S. commuter rail rep enough that they have to lay low and retrench on bus and LRT modes for awhile it might even open up some new opportunities for ACI to bid on small or upstart CR lines.

Where the loss hurts bad is that they're a local company that has for the last 11 years enjoyed *very* cushy political access to the state's power-brokers. They are in the partnership because they were so well-embedded. That access goes away when they lose this deal and are back to a motley local assortment of specialty bus routes. They don't get any hometown favors any longer, don't get to play golf with MassDOT top management, don't get the return on investment for donating big in the 2014 local elections. Political ties were their primary capital investment in the partnership.

It may force them to look out-of-state for their growth and de-invest to some degree in Boston. Those Massport shuttles and the Winthrop route are bid out individually; they're prey to very small-size low bidders on those contract re-ups if ACI/Paul Revere loses their most preferred vendor status. The LMA shuttles are a pretty nice deal for them, but also one where they'll be in a crowd of competitive bidders every time a contract is open. It wouldn't increase their chances of losing those deals because they have proven to be a good operator worthy of the incumbent's advantage, but it could dampen their own corporate enthusiasm for how far they want to go to fend off a low bid or up their investment in the shuttles. If their highest-value properties and opportunities are all 2000+ miles away...it doesn't give them much incentive to stick around or pour more resources into the corporate home office. You'll certainly never hear another peep out of them on jobs expansion such as that Roxbury HQ that MBCR was dangling in the press last week.
 
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