General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

ZenZen said:
It's not about vision when it comes to public transit. It's about lobbying - lobbying at both the Federal and state level in order to secure funds for maintenance and operations.

If 50+% of the dollars going into public transit are lost to inefficiency, laziness, bloated union contracts, and low-bid procurement contracts that save 5% on purchase costs but result in 50% more maintenance costs, then obviously the dollar amount doesn't matter really. With the T's yearly budget, they could quite easily run the system much more reliably, efficiently, and intelligently, while transferring to a pay-as-you-go system and COMPLETELY eliminating the ridiculous system of debt service they and every other government agency has established. When you build an extension, you pay for it out of fare revenues and that year's capital budget. If you cannot pay for it this year, you put that money into investments or savings until you've built up enough money to pay for the improvements outright. Why do so many government institutions find this concept so hard?

What we need is someone with an iron fist to run this agency, personally I think we should get some Wal-Mart executives in there.
 
I agree that there needs to be some drastic changes, but remember, public transportation is a public service, not a for-profit business. If your Wal-Mart type executives were brought in to run the operation, then you'd see fare increase dramatically.
 
ZenZen said:
I agree that there needs to be some drastic changes, but remember, public transportation is a public service, not a for-profit business. If your Wal-Mart type executives were brought in to run the operation, then you'd see fare increase dramatically.

Yeah, just like you see Wal-Mart prices dramatically increasing all the time.
 
"The MBTA apologizes for the slow response-time users experienced on our new website. We are currently doing everything we can to improve performance, and the new site will be re-released soon. In order to give customers the content needed, we are offering our former site while we work out the problems. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."
 
Site's back up and it's the first I've seen of it. I have to say it is REALLY nice. Wow.
 
It is well done, but there are some glitches. In using the trip planner, I plotted out a route from my home in Roxbury to my parents house in Burlington for Noon tomorrow. The planner gives me two options, to take the Orange Line to State Street and board the 352 bus at 3:20 PM and walk the 3/4 mile from the intersection of Winn Street and Cambridge St to my parents house (though it does say that it takes 29 minutes to do this trek) or to take the Orange to the Red and take the 1:30 PM 350 bus to the same place and walk.

The problem with that is that the 352 does not run on weekends. Though the planner did correctly display the right departure time for the 350.

I checked both schedules and found that the non pdf schedules only list the weekday departures, even if the dropdown menu is changed for weekends and the "redisplay time" button is clicked.
 
The Globe said:
Mattapan trolleys get cool update
MBTA installing air conditioning

April 26, 2007

The trolleys on the MBTA's Mattapan line, among the oldest working transit vehicles in the nation, are getting cool.

MBTA General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas announced yesterday that the T would spend up to $1.1 million to outfit the 1940-era vehicles with something they've never had before: air conditioning.

The trolleys are the only cars in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's 2,340 vehicle fleet without air conditioning.

The small fleet, which runs between Mattapan and Ashmont stations on a separate spur of the Red Line, is currently being refurbished. There has been no service on the line since last June.

All 10 trolleys are scheduled to go back to work in November.

The air conditioning will probably be installed over the winter and will debut in the summer of 2008.

The trolleys make 300 trips a day on the 2.55-mile line, carrying about 7,000 riders per day.

"We don't want to lose the charm of the old [trolleys], and we'll maintain that,," Grabauskas said in an interview.

"But clearly on a hot summer day, air conditioning becomes something that our customers expect."

MAC DANIEL
Link
 
The Metro said:
MBTA takes on graffiti

BOSTON. Graffiti artists looking for a clean MBTA train to showcase their masterpieces may soon be out of luck.
The MBTA has already begun using a specialty paint that resists graffiti on
Red and Orange Line trains. When a person sprays paint on the side of the car ? rather than adhering ? the paint beads up like ?water on a freshly waxed car,? said MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas. In addition, the graffiti comes off easier with this solutionas a base, making cleanup for T employees much quicker.
The industrial paint, produced by a Canadian company EnduraManufacturing Co., is already used by many marine and aviation companies, Grabauskas said, and doesn?t cost any more than the regular paint the T has been purchasing for years.
?If they try to spray graffiti on this surface it makes it run, and it doesn?t look good. It is our hope they will go somewhere else to express their ?art,?? he said. The new paint will likely save the authority thousands of dollars because employees currently spend a lot of time cleaning cars and repainting trains that have been defaced.
?I am a proponent of the broken windows theory. If you let one window remain broken you are going to see several windows broken next time,? Grabauskas said.
If officials are satisfied with the paint on the Orange and Red line trains the T will begin using it on platforms, inside subway cars and on station walls.
Link
 
The Globe said:
En route, cooling fans for T stations
Passengers glad, but say trains need help, too

By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff | June 1, 2007

The MBTA will finally offer some relief for commuters sweltering in subway and bus stations during the summer.

Starting this month, special cooling fans will be installed in most downtown underground stations to lower the air temperature, in some cases by 15 to 25 degrees, and to reduce humidity.

At open-air bus stations, including Dudley Square and Sullivan Square, the T plans to put in misting fans, like those on the sidelines at football games. In other stations, such as State, Park Street, Harvard, and Hynes, evaporative coolers will be used.

The fans will not make stations feel like air-conditioned shopping malls, said Daniel A. Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

"There's no way we're going to make the stations chilly on an oppressively hot day," he said. "But when you get off the bus or the subway, it will certainly be more comfortable."

The fans are part of the T's push to improve customer service, he said. Many passengers complained during the heat wave last August when station temperatures reached 100 degrees. Crowded conditions and waste heat from T trains made the problem worse.

Passengers interviewed last evening at the JFK/UMass station welcomed the new equipment, but said they want the trains to be cooler, too.

"When it gets really hot, it starts to stink and get musty," said Veronica Andrade, 15, of Quincy, who takes the Red and Green lines. "The trains are worse, but cooling the stations would help."

Alex Sprung, 22, of Boston takes the Green Line to the New England Conservatory of Music. "There are some stations that are particularly hot, like Government Center," he said. "That's good in the winter, but not when it's really hot outside."

"The train station is not really a place where you spend a lot of time," he added. "I would rather have a nice temperature in the train than in the station."

The station cooling program is part of a push to place reliable air conditioning throughout the T system.

All buses bought in the last few years have been air conditioned. The Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, which runs commuter rail for the T, is refurbishing air-conditioning units in coaches. Even the old coaches on the Mattapan high-speed line are being retrofitted with air conditioning.

The effort is also good for the T's trains. Subway-air conditioning units struggle in such conditions, and coaches lose valuable cool air when their doors open at overheated stations.

Cooling T stations is tricky, especially for the nation's oldest subway, where circulation fans were the most high-tech equipment available. In extreme heat, those fans do little but move superheated air around.

All of the new equipment is being tested.

The evaporative coolers are showing promising results, said T officials, who tested a unit on the Winter Street concourse connecting Park Street with Downtown Crossing yesterday.

More of those coolers will be placed at Winter Street and at the Chauncy Street concourse by June 7. Stations getting the units include Chinatown, Downtown Crossing, State, North, Government Center, Bowdoin, Haymarket, Park, Boylston, Hynes, Alewife, Central, South, and Harvard.

While vent fans worked well at South Station on the Silver Line and at Broadway and Andrew stations on the Red Line, they did little to cool temperatures at Downtown Crossing or South Station on the Red Line, said a T document.

T officials had considered using misting fans for subway stations, but worried that the moisture would make platforms slippery and damage electrical equipment.

They also considered cooling tents, like those used at Fenway Park on particularly hot days, but decided they posed a security and safety risk. "Lighting, fire hazards, egress impacts, security/safety and available stations lobby/platform space are limiting (or possibly prohibiting) factors," says a T overview of the cooling project.

The T will use emergency ventilation fan systems during heat emergencies, but they can cause problems, including noise and flying trash.

Globe correspondent Elizabeth Ratto contributed to this report. Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.
Link
 
The Herald said:
T?s passengers Charlie-scarred: Extreme rudeness tops list of complaints
By Marie Szaniszlo
Friday, June 1, 2007 - Updated: 12:35 AM EST

Rider complaints to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority have nearly doubled over the past five years, a Herald review shows, with employee rudeness topping the list of passenger beefs.
From 2002 to 2006, the number of complaints soared more than 80 percent, to 26,825 from 14,857, T figures show, with gripes about rude treatment from bus drivers, fare collectors and other T workers accounting for almost half the total, or more than 13,000 complaints. After churlish employees, late service and bus and subway fares rankled riders the most last year, according to T statistics.
?It just verifies what we hear in the community,? said Lee H. Matsueda, a community organizer with the T Riders Union. ?It really needs to be dealt with because some people are so frustrated, they just feel like boycotting the T.?
T officials freely acknowledge the scourge of employee rudeness, a broad category that includes harassing passengers, closing doors on riders, bypassing stops and smoking.
A typical complaint: a passenger asked an employee for help with a Charlie Card - the new automated fare collection system - only to be told, ?I really can?t. I just did my nails.?
To address obnoxious employee behavior, spokesman Joe Pesaturo said, the T has replaced its so-called ?Positive Performance Counseling Program? with an actual discipline policy that punishes offending workers with a progression of unpaid one-, three- and five-day suspensions, with a final warning on the third and, afterward, firing.
Pesaturo could not, however, specify how many employees had been disciplined for rudeness, saying only that the number was in the ?dozens.?
T officials attribute a spike in complaints this year to higher fares instituted Jan. 1, and the introduction of the glitch-ridden Charlie Card system.
Just ask Alan Mercado.
?People at the booths get very aggravated when (passengers) don?t know how to work the machines,? said the 29-year-old Lynn resident, who takes the Blue, Green and Red lines to his job in South Boston.
Mercado contrasted his experience on the T with a recent trip to Montreal, where he asked a transit worker for directions to a mall.
?The gentleman at the booth came out, brought us over to a map, told us what train to take and what stop to get off at, and then, to make sure we understood, asked us to recite the directions back to him,? he said. ?That makes you feel valued as one of their riders.?
Pesaturo points out that the T encourages riders to vent in numerous ways. This year, for example, the agency created a customer-relations center, with four supervisors and 24 operators now taking rider complaints. Previously, only five operators, four of them part time, performed that task.
They have had their hands full.
From January through April of this year, the number of complaints rose to 13,489 from 8,160 for the same period last year. That?s almost as many as the total the T received in all of 2002.
But Pesaturo downplayed the recent increase, saying the numbers are trending downward each month, reflecting the fact that riders are getting used to higher fares and the Charlie Cards.
?The number of complaints, compared to the number of rides each day - more than 1 million - is tiny,? Pesaturo said.
But the T continues to get an earful about customer gripes besides rudness.
?The price is too high, and some buses don?t come on time,? Carol Freeman, 37, of Roxbury said recently as she waited to board at Dudley Station in Roxbury.
?The 44 (bus) is one of the slowest buses in the city,? said Mary Rowell, 72, of Dorchester. ?It?s supposed to run every 15 to 20 minutes, but sometimes you can wait a half-hour or more.?
A rider phoned the T last year, complaining that a bus driver was reading the newspaper as he drove, according to the agency?s ?Customer Relations Report.?
?I am very concerned for my safety!? the passenger said.
Link
 
Generally, MBTA employees are a disgrace. Probably because they're overpaid.
 
ablarc said:
Generally, MBTA employees are a disgrace. Probably because they're overpaid.

I feel the same way about the employees at the Ritz... :roll:

The pay scale isn't the problem. Generally speaking, higher pay attracts better employees which = better service.
It the ability of management to discipline. The workers have no fear of losing thier 60,000+/yr job because it is so hard to fire or even suspend them.
I say pay them as much as they want, but the minute they screw up, they're out.
Unfortunately, this will lead to a few unfair or maybe even discriminatory firings, but I think things have gotten to the point where it is necessary.

But hey! New air conditioners in the stations. Cool. 8)
 
the pay scale is part of the problem. it results in unnecessarily arrogant workers. in theory, higher pay attracts better employees. but when the market rate for a job is $25,000, you pay $35,000 to attract better employees, and you then hold them to a high standard. You don't pay $60,000 and coddle them.
 
Survey: 75% of bus riders disappointed with MBTA

BOSTON. A survey conducted by a commuter advocacy group of hundreds of MBTA bus riders has found they are frustrated with service since the fare increase and are still struggling with the CharlieCard system.

The survey, conducted by the T Riders Union and set to be released publicly today, showed that 75 percent of riders do not believe there has been an upgrade in service since the fare increase and 49 percent would give the CharlieCard program either an F or D grade.

More than 750 riders were surveyed regarding bus service, and 487 were asked to give the CharlieCard a grade.

?From what we see, folks are extremely frustrated, not just with quality of service, but the automated fare system. There?s a lot the T needs to do,? said Lee Matsueda, a member of the T Rider?s Union.

The group surveyed commuters from January to June primarily in the inner-city, including Dudley Square, Maverick, Haymarket and Ashmont stations.

?Service is not running on time and, in my area, there?s inadequate service. They don?t tell you when buses aren?t coming,? said Peggy Jarrett, a bus rider from Dorchester. ?Many times I?ve been late for work. Sometimes the bus don?t show up.?


Matsueda said the group is hoping T officials will reconsider investing more money into the bus system instead of pouring millions into the commuter rail lines.

?We need to make sure the voice of bus riders are being heard? he said.

The group is set to release the findings during a press conference today.

MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas said the T is investing millions to upgrade the bus system and funding for buses has outpaced investments in commuter rail coaches by 4-1 recently.

?We are working hard to improve MBTA bus services on all routes, investing more than $800 million in the purchase of hundreds of new buses and the maintenance facilities and equipment necessary to keep the new fleet operating at optimum levels,? Grabauskas said.

According to the T, the CharlieCard system has dropped boarding times and the new LinkPass has reduced the cost for subway and bus commuters from the old Combo Pass.

More than 70 percent of the riders said they were so exasperated with service they would consider boycotting the T for a day to prove a point.

Christina Wallace
E-mail the editor
Editor: Saul Williams
? Copyright 2007 Metro International
 
ablarc said:
Generally, MBTA employees are a disgrace. Probably because they're overpaid.

They're not overpaid; they're under-fired.
 

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