General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[bigpicture7]

Automate....automate.....automate.......

The solution is to get rid of most of these jobs and their bloated pensions and regain human progress.

Sure, there's a place for more automation. I look forward to a society that smartly and ethically leverages automation to expand, improve, and make service more efficient in the areas where it is well-suited.

But your comment masks the fact that poor employee performance is always a leadership issue. As a manager, if I tried to blame individual employees for my department's poor performance, I would be viewed as incompetent.

What we need is great leadership in front of our key services (such as transit).

 

[shmessy]

Sure, there's a place for more automation. I look forward to a society that smartly and ethically leverages automation to expand, improve, and make service more efficient in the areas where it is well-suited.

But your comment masks the fact that poor employee performance is always a leadership issue. As a manager, if I tried to blame individual employees for my department's poor performance, I would be viewed as incompetent.

What we need is great leadership in front of our key services (such as transit).

"As a manager, if I tried to blame individual employees for my department's poor performance, I would be viewed as incompetent."

Did you read the article? The employees didn't show up for work.
Management can only go as far as the unions allow.

You don't see this type of thing recurring at Apple or Microsoft. And those folks don't rely on their pensions, they rely more on themselves with their 401(k)'s and stock options. You know why? Because Apple and Microsoft REPLACED all the human beings who did jobs robots can do.

By your definition of management "leadership", the solution is to "lead" by replacing the barnicles with automation.

 

[bigpicture7]

^ Umm, did YOU read the article?

Thompson also wrote Keolis is hiring conductors and “adding line managers who [are] responsible for the improvement of performance on each commuter rail line.”

Leadership = taking responsibility for performance.
Keolis knows they need to do better here, union environment or not, and ADMIT they need to hire better managers.

high-quality line management results in people more motivated to do their job/show up
(this is just as true in non-union as in union environments - and I have managed in both).

1) Why are you so quick to let our leaders - at all levels - off the hook?
* At Gov Baker's level
* At the state transportation level
* At Keolis leadership level
* At line manager level
...ALL these folks have RESPONSIBILITY by means of BEING IN HIGHLY PAID LEADERSHIP ROLES to figure out how to get the trains to run on time, and to OWN the issue.

2) if there is a lousy union contract and a lousy union relationship, that is, in part, a leadership issue too! Not everyone is equally bad at negotiating with unions - believe me.

3) Apple, are you kidding me? You are ostensibly comparing white collar creative knowledge work with non-exempt labor, first off, in your discussion on low tolerance for poor performance. But, if you consider the bigger picture, Apply is one of the largest users of manual labor in the world...and its all outsourced to China...do you honestly know how Apple works in this regard? How FoxConn manages people over there? I don't think so...and even if they fire people left and right, it is a very different political/cultural/job market/economic environment (apples -to- oranges, no pun intended).

4) YES, we can agree that great leadership puts effective systems in place...including deciding to use automation, if appropriate.

>>>>It is a simple concept: Leadership takes responsibility, by whatever means necessary (within moral limits), of making the damn trains work on time. Why are you letting elected officials and (comparatively) highly paid managers off the hook so easily? Don't you see that "its because humans inevitably suck" is a total cop-out answer?

As users of this godforsaken transit system, we need to start holding our leaders accountable (and if their answer is more robots, then so be it), but leaders' accountability is the bedrock of everything that follows.

 

[shmessy]

^ Umm, did YOU read the article?



Leadership = taking responsibility for performance.
Keolis knows they need to do better here, union environment or not, and ADMIT they need to hire better managers.

high-quality line management results in people more motivated to do their job/show up
(this is just as true in non-union as in union environments - and I have managed in both).

1) Why are you so quick to let our leaders - at all levels - off the hook?
* At Gov Baker's level
* At the state transportation level
* At Keolis leadership level
* At line manager level
...ALL these folks have RESPONSIBILITY by means of BEING IN HIGHLY PAID LEADERSHIP ROLES to figure out how to get the trains to run on time, and to OWN the issue.

2) if there is a lousy union contract and a lousy union relationship, that is, in part, a leadership issue too! Not everyone is equally bad at negotiating with unions - believe me.

3) Apple, are you kidding me? You are ostensibly comparing white collar creative knowledge work with non-exempt labor, first off, in your discussion on low tolerance for poor performance. But, if you consider the bigger picture, Apply is one of the largest users of manual labor in the world...and its all outsourced to China...do you honestly know how Apple works in this regard? How FoxConn manages people over there? I don't think so...and even if they fire people left and right, it is a very different political/cultural/job market/economic environment (apples -to- oranges, no pun intended).

4) YES, we can agree that great leadership puts effective systems in place...including deciding to use automation, if appropriate.

>>>>It is a simple concept: Leadership takes responsibility, by whatever means necessary (within moral limits), of making the damn trains work on time. Why are you letting elected officials and (comparatively) highly paid managers off the hook so easily? Don't you see that "its because humans inevitably suck" is a total cop-out answer?

As users of this godforsaken transit system, we need to start holding our leaders accountable (and if their answer is more robots, then so be it), but leaders' accountability is the bedrock of everything that follows.

Repeat after me: It's....the.....public sector unions.......

Massachusetts has the best schools, the best hospitals and the best tech in the world.

The one thing that holds it back is the muck of these public sector unions. I'm not even a Republican. I'm a liberal who wants to see humanity explore the universe, build bigger and more efficient cities and eradicate disease.....i.e. progress.

No management or "leadership" can do anything with the T, the State Police or the firefighters which are the biggest fiscal drains (and going to get worse as those people live longer retirements on their bloated pensions) until they can get from under the regressive dictatorship of public sector unions in Massachusetts.

It's not subjective. It's objective. As obvious as arithmetic or basic physics. Someday, hopefully, Keolis will be allowed to run these trains by automation and not rely on union-enabled employees to simply not show up for work.

You can rail all you want subjectively about "leadership".

Regarding your Apple argument - - do you know WHY they outsource their manual labor to China? Thank you.

 

[fattony]

Repeat after me: It's....the.....unions.......

Massachusetts has the best schools, the best hospitals and the best tech in the world.

The one thing that holds it back is the muck of the unions.

No management or "leadership" can do anything with the T, the State Police or the firefighters which are the biggest fiscal drains (and going to get worse as those people live longer retirements on their bloated pensions) until they can get from under the dictatorship of the unions.

It's not subjective. It's objective.

You can rail all you want subjectively about "leadership".

I'm going to butt in briefly just to say there is an important distinction between "unions" and "public unions." Typically unions are for laborers to be able to stand up to management. Public unions are a perversion of that concept where the laborers get to vote for the manager that they negotiate with. Public unions are a massive problem, not all unions.

 

[shmessy]

I'm going to butt in briefly just to say there is an important distinction between "unions" and "public unions." Typically unions are for laborers to be able to stand up to management. Public unions are a perversion of that concept where the laborers get to vote for the manager that they negotiate with. Public unions are a massive problem, not all unions.

Excellent point, Tony. I actually edited my post before I saw yours, but I fully agree.

 

[bigpicture7]

shmessy and fattony,
I appreciate the public/private clarification (and, indeed, my experience with unions is entirely private sector)...

But, seriously (and I am not trying to be an ass), how is this ultimately not a leadership issue at the state level:

...until they can get from under the regressive dictatorship of public sector unions in Massachusetts.

Why would I not want my elected officials working on this? Just because it's hard? (I didn't realize we were only expecting the governor/transportation dept. to work on the easy things).

(...by they way, if you really believed your own quotes above, then you wouldn't be pushing for automation because you would accept the inevitability that automation could never happen in the present public sector union environment).

 

[bigpicture7]

Let me sum it up even more simply:

The accountability rests somewhere.

"the robots are going to save us" is bullshit. That doesn't get at the root of the problem.

 

[bigpicture7]

Also:

Are Keolis train crews even public sector employees??

If not, then c'mon, guys: Keolis' own diagnosis in the Globe article is that they need enhanced line management internal to their company.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Also:

Are Keolis train crews even public sector employees??

If not, then c'mon, guys: Keolis' own diagnosis in the Globe article is that they need enhanced line management internal to their company.

Railroad union for train crews (on phone...forget which of the 3 main RR unions that is).

It's nationalized labor. Every for-profit freight carrier--even the ones with the most Randian management--in the land hires from the same rank-and-file as everyone else. CSX, Amtrak, T/Keolis, the Cape Cod Dinner Train operators...they all hire from the same unionized crew pool. It's not a Carmen's Union analogue; the local chapters don't have much power or culture because the FRA rail network is so heavily federally regulated.


Public sector union membership is insufficient to explain why some RR's--public AND private--run such vastly tighter or sloppier ships relative to one another. The unions are a universal constant, not a differentiator.




(^^Just in case anyone still cares if this is a transpo-relevant topic or something completely else. . .)

 

[bigpicture7]

...
Public sector union membership is insufficient to explain why some RR's--public AND private--run such vastly tighter or sloppier ships relative to one another. The unions are a universal constant, not a differentiator.

^ This.

People, please, do not let highly paid managers, and elected and appointed officials off the hook as easily as you are above.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

^ This.

People, please, do not let highly paid managers, and elected and appointed officials off the hook as easily as you are above.

Which is not to say that labor politics AREN'T part of the equation. They are, like numerous other factors. Just make sure you're solving for the right variables. Too many threads like this have gone to shittsville equating CR ops with Carmen's Local and that particular bundle of public sector union debate points. RR-land labor is in a completely alien universe because of the system nationalization. Individual RR's do have labor issues, but they are very convient apples-apples comparisons RR vs. RR. If labor is a culprit, SOMETHING specific has to be inducing the labor problem at one RR vs. every other RR that's not having the same problem.


If you can't solve for that very specific comparing variable that fingers one RR's union relationship...then it's probably something else entirely.

 

[bigpicture7]

Which is not to say that labor politics AREN'T part of the equation...

Totally agree: they could certainly be part of the situation...

The thing that irked me above is that it was being framed as THE sole problem. The reason such a mentality is dangerous is that it lets everyone else off the hook, as if there's nothing they could be doing better.

I am confident this latter effect has actually sheltered some in leadership positions from being held more accountable for making things better, that's why I am advocating for people not to simplify things so much.

 

[Riverside]

Reading that article, I see nothing that indicates that the workers themselves were “late to show up for work”— looking at the schedule, I see that 8803 heads south from PVD at 5:49– I bet 804’s crew usually deadheads from the Pawtucket yard on that train, but if there was a problem on that train, they may have decided to just pick up the crew on their way north and start service at S Attleboro.

Obviously I don’t know but I’m just saying that we don’t know that it was the crew’s fault for the delayed arrival and it seems unnecessary to jump to that conclusion.

Plus, if your system is so fragile that it can be disrupted by the absence of one crew member (are we really supposed to think that the *entire* crew overslept their alarm that day?), then you need to do a better job as a manager. Even setting aside the “overslept alarm scenario”, things beyond an employee’s control can cause delays (a crash on the highway, etc) and you can’t just say, “Oh, if they only showed up on time, the problem would be solved.” No. The role of management is to ensure that there are sufficient contingencies in the organization to handle unexpected disruption.

Also, I for one do not want to spend an hour on a train carrying over 1500 people with only a single crew member (addressing the automation question). At least, not with our current crowding levels.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Reading that article, I see nothing that indicates that the workers themselves were “late to show up for work”— looking at the schedule, I see that 8803 heads south from PVD at 5:49– I bet 804’s crew usually deadheads from the Pawtucket yard on that train, but if there was a problem on that train, they may have decided to just pick up the crew on their way north and start service at S Attleboro.

Obviously I don’t know but I’m just saying that we don’t know that it was the crew’s fault for the delayed arrival and it seems unnecessary to jump to that conclusion.

Plus, if your system is so fragile that it can be disrupted by the absence of one crew member (are we really supposed to think that the *entire* crew overslept their alarm that day?), then you need to do a better job as a manager. Even setting aside the “overslept alarm scenario”, things beyond an employee’s control can cause delays (a crash on the highway, etc) and you can’t just say, “Oh, if they only showed up on time, the problem would be solved.” No. The role of management is to ensure that there are sufficient contingencies in the organization to handle unexpected disruption.

Also, I for one do not want to spend an hour on a train carrying over 1500 people with only a single crew member (addressing the automation question). At least, not with our current crowding levels.

This is why you have to ask "Who is it exactly who's watching employees clock in and out?"

• If this were a freight railroad there'd probably be a yardmaster (union position) promoted up from the ranks overseeing the staff assignments. On a RR with absolute-shit labor relations and piss-poor retention rate for good employees like, say, Pan Am up on the northside, they run habitually late and end up delaying all kinds of passenger traffic for blowing their slots through T and Downeaster territory. A lot of the blame for that goes to their yardmasters, who don't give a shit. Their yardmasters don't give a shit because it's a thankless job, overachievers are singled-out for derision in that organization because "managably" low morale = low salaries (their billionaire Rando owner has some...uh...'unique' viewpoints on labor-as-capital), and anybody good at their job gets quickly hired away by competitors (including the T). So, yeah...a "labor" problem insofar as it's union positions, but one that's induced by the freeeeeeeeeee market of hostile ownership colliding head-on with a competitive hiring market.

The T doesn't have yardmasters. It's centralized administration of northside and southside under an outsource manager. So who again is behind the office door watching who's clocked in and out at both Boston Engine Terminal and South Station?

• NJ Transit is the consensus pick for worst raging dumpster fire of a public commuter rail agency at this point in time. They have rampant schedule cancellations from understaffing...every single day, on multiple lines. It is commuter hellworld. Well...why do they have a "labor" problem? Could it be that so many layers of management have unfilled vacancies that the low-level manager (who may or may not have started out from a union position) who used to be in charge of the schedule board at Morrisville Yard is bogged down doing his boss' job now. And because his boss'-boss position has been vacant for nearly 2 years there's nobody with hiring authority within 3 staff levels of the schedule board to authorize new hires...much less watch who's showing up or checking to see if somebody's duly reported requested day off was properly updated onto the schedule board. Chaos reigns...and both everyone and no one in particular are to blame for it all. Yeah, it's a "labor" problem and the union rank-and-file are swept up into that vortex. But it was the agency's refusal to pay the going rate for managerial hires that left everything up to sub-V.P. level vacant for years, and a Governor whose tactical game of spatting with his own bureaucrats and Legislature led him to literally refuse to submit nominations for vacant V.P.-and-up positions at NJT for most of his last term. Point-of-origin was extremely top-down (read up on some of the in-depth NY Times, Newark Star-Ledger, et al. coverage of NJT's big fall from grace for the surgical details).

The existence of a middleman in Keolis (and predecessors) muddies up the waters at Purple Line HQ on where the responsibilities lie. Is the person in charge of assigning the schedule board in the same building as the employees who clock in...or a desk jockey at Keolis' private offices on 470 Atlantic? Does someone with union foreman-level seniority at crew base with person-to-person contact with incoming/outgoing crews have direct and/or delegated control of that schedule board? Or are they just updating change requests onto an in-house Oracle database on their tablet and hoping the desk jockey at 470 Atlantic actually approves every swapped shift, then messages another manager to call someone in for a swing shift to plug the gap...multiple links in a chain, no one link having full oversight over whether each other link has done its job. And all the foreman can do is pop Tums tablets and pray the message gets cleanly across every dashed-line reporting relationship, because he/she isn't aren't in a full yardmaster position where the buck unequivocally stops with them.


We don't know, because that whole org chart--and every dashed-line reporting relationship in it--is proprietary Keolis property not subject to a FOIA public records request. If a screwup was happening in the handoffs inside that private abstraction layer, we wouldn't be able to pinpoint where the "labor" problem is originating unless Keolis or top-level MBTA management with full security-clearance access to goings-on within the Keolis contract self-disclosed it for us. With all the ensuing proof to back up their story and make sure whatever spin they put on it holds up to scrutiny. Some transit outsource deals do keep functional transparency there, so the idea of outsourcing isn't nearly as flawed as the individualized execution. Massachusetts, unfortunately, has had a multi-decade history of opaqueness-in-reporting with its various Purple Line subcontractors setting the precedent well before Keolis walked in...and old habits die hard.


How easy a call is it to determine where this "labor" problem is festering from if the layers are opaque? Not easy at all. Hell, even if it were all public-record info the NJT example is only instructive for showing the overall macro- level drag of all the absent management positions from the top down. Despite that overall direction each individual level has accumulated tons of slop and rot in the process, such that NJT's front-line train crews themselves DEFINITELY got the book specifically thrown at them for rampant safety lapses. Such is the nature of organizational rot...every branch to the smallest twig starts developing its own localized blight in addition to all that's weakening the whole system. If there's any element of that happening (and there very well could be since MBCR passed a pretty battered baton before Keolis ever laid fingers on it) then the ever-so-satisfying game of assigning blame becomes a chore in itself: another "both everyone and no one in particular" parsing job that isn't all that useful for delivering answers out of all that apportioned fault.






In short: if this is going to be a debate about "labor", take the blindfold off and look closely at how the constituent parts of the donkey fit together before trying to pin the tail somewhere on that jackass.

 

[Riverside]

Anyone know what the deal was with the signal delays between Readville and Canton Jct. today? Seemed to go on for a while.

 

[stefal]

"MBTA theft estimate goes from $80,000 to $450,000"

Edit: this post is not intended to answer your question, Riverside.

 

[tangent]

Seems to fly in the face of the purpose of public transit, and I can't think of any system world wide that covers itself on fares alone with no subsidies. Also, that would very much hurt the lower class if they have to pay the upfront costs and wait until the end of the year to get it back via tax refund.

I wasn't suggesting relying on tax breaks for lower income people. I was suggesting people get direct subsidies instead of the indirect public subsidies they get now through the subsidies to the transit system from general taxes. Direct subsidies to people that they pass on to the T could make the the transit system more responsive to customers than to politicians. The power of the purse can be very persuasive.

 

[jass]

Seems to fly in the face of the purpose of public transit, and I can't think of any system world wide that covers itself on fares alone with no subsidies. Also, that would very much hurt the lower class if they have to pay the upfront costs and wait until the end of the year to get it back via tax refund.

Las Vegas Monorail does, but it costs like $7 a ride and relies on tourists

 

[Subdivisions]

I know its old news that the T doesn't update its maps. But come on, you took the time to put on a sticker to show the new Silver Line service to Chelsea. You couldn't have just made a larger sticker to show that one of your main interchange stations (Gov't Cntr) is indeed open for business? That Assembly is up and running? Pure laziness