Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?
Chieppo’s report notes that the T’s budgetary baseline is a $170M shortfall this year.
He then projects the following annual budget impacts from his recommendations:
1. Customer service - annual revenue boost assumed, but not projected
2. Fare increase - $60M increase in revenues
3. Stop expansion - annual budget impact not projected
4. Reform the ride - ($82M) annual cost reduction
5. Bus maintenance contracting - ($50M) annual cost reduction
6. End binding arbitration - annual cost reduction assumed, not projected
7. Shift pension fund - annual cost reduction assumed, not projected
In his intro, he notes that the T is spending $552M on state of good repair work for Sept 14 – Aug 15, but would need to spend $765M to actually get on path to burn off the $7.3B backlog over 25 years (a really minimalist goal). So we’d need to boost SGR spending by $213M per year to start working down the backlog at a snail’s pace.
So he has enumerated $60M in increased revenue and $132M in reduced costs (reform the Ride and bus maintenance), for a net improvement to the annual bottom line of $192M. But if we increase SGR spending by the $213M per year necessary to achieve the pathetically lame goal of working down the backlog over 25 years, we’ve now reached a $21M per year reduction in the T’s bottom line.
OK, his proposed “laser-like focus on customer service” (that phrase makes me puke in ANY context) will boost revenues as the hordes come flocking in to pay more fares, but he didn’t have the guts to project how much increased revenue there’d be. It’s hard to say what stopping expansion means to annual budgets without him saying what exactly will be cancelled (he implies the GLX is an obligation). However, I certainly feel that stopping all expansion such as Red/Blue connection puts very hard caps on increased ridership – I am on the Park Street Green Line platforms at rush hour each day and that transfer situation is slammed up against its limits right now. Laser-like focus on customer service plus higher fares will not make the Park Station platforms bigger or the crush of jostling humanity smoother. The arbitration and pension proposals would save some money, but he also didn’t have the guts to project how much. But if we’re generous, maybe all those increases get him a bit more than the $21 shortfall we were at upon the end of the prior paragraph.
This whole report, at the most favorable reading using all his assumptions, and giving him some $ credit on the places he didn’t project savings, amounts to shuffling things around to end up in about the same place, with a very modestly improved annual bottom line (maybe), and an incredibly slow pace of reduction on SGR backlog. This is not “Innovation”, this is tinkering. Or you could call it treading water, but with a different pattern of arm and leg motions.
Except for the customer service thing, which is a combination of “duh” level common sense mixed with empty blather (and is also pretty harmless despite how it makes me want to puke on first read), I don’t have any strong criticisms of his specific recommendations. I could live with most of them, or with variants thereof. They’d move annual ops in a better financial direction. The part about shielding low income riders from the impact of fare increases would have to have the very highest priority for me to support the rest of it.
However, he completely punts on all the swirling issues within that SGR backlog, and the replacement of rolling stock, and the complexities of how long-life capital projects can (and should) be differently funded than operations, and the potentially grave impacts to MA economic growth potentials if T expansion fails to meet growing needs, etc. Those are all the big kahuna issues for the T.
If this report were submitted by a bright student from Outer Nowhere Liberal Arts College as a junior honors thesis, I’d give it an A with lots of feedback about how to expand on it for a senior honors thesis. From the Harvard Kennedy School I expect a lot more. By Kennedy School standards, this is a lame ass skimpy 1/8 pound burger, on a stale Wonder bread bun, slathered in weak sauce.