I try to avoid being negative when possible, but I admit that the messaging on this closure has really rubbed me the wrong way.
"We’ve listened to our riders, and we hear them loud and clear – bold action needs to happen in order to improve the MBTA at the pace that riders deserve," Poftak said -- as if riders somehow were asking for a 30-day shutdown of a key subway line? "
Poftak called today's announcement part of 'a momentous day' for Orange Line riders," and Baker touted all of the improvements his administration claims to have made since 2015.
This should be a
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa moment for Baker and T leadership. This shutdown was not inevitable, this was not an Act of God, and while it may no longer be avoidable, Poftak and certainly Baker have been in leadership long enough that they are clearly responsible for not averting this disaster sooner. This is not a time to insist that this is a good thing, this is a time for solemn responsibility and acknowledging the enormous impact this will have on upwards of a million people.
(Yes, a million people: the T's daily ridership as of April was 671,000. The Orange Line is integral to the entire system, and even if your journey does not require it, your journey will be impacted by additionally catering to displaced riders on alternate routes. Moreover, this will impact non-riders as well, with increased traffic, reduced foot traffic into barely-recovering retail, reduced in-office availability of colleagues, and overall economic impact felt across the region.)
And it's worth remembering: not once but
twice in the last two weeks, passengers on the MBTA concluded that the best course of action was to
get off a stopped train between stops and walk on live railroad tracks. The public sector has an obligation to maintain the trust of the public it serves, not merely because the public pays its salary, but because when that trust is lost, people have no choice but to take matters into their own hands, and that is
incredibly dangerous -- not just to the individuals themselves, but to everyone around them, and our community as a whole.
I am hopeful that municipal leaders will be able to quickly erect bus lanes to speed both shuttle buses and Orange Line-related bus routes, and I hope that those bus lanes and other speed improvements remain in place even after the Orange Line re-opens. There may well be good that comes out of this.
But the cavalier tone of Baker and Poftak is wholly inappropriate. If they will not be held accountable by the legislature or regulatory authorities, the very least they could do is try to appear contrite and responsible.