General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Where is that "T under D" crowd when you need them?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

vanshnookenraggen said:
Where is that "T under D" crowd when you need them?
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Do you think this could initiate dialog about T under D?

If that bus was further ahead, I think the truck would have taken out the SL bus entirely. He was flying!! The footage is almost surreal.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

The T won't do anything unless this is like a DAILY occurrence. And even then they will go with a cheaper option like adding RR crossing arms. This is just another example of trying to save money on an out of control project that ends up being short sighted in the long run (that is NOT tunneling the Silver Line under D St). With that building there it makes it MUCH more expensive than if they had just built it as a tunnel from the get go.
 
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

News regarding the MBTA's plan to raise fares and cut service.

The service cuts are ridiculous. No E line or Mattapan weekend service! No CR weekend service or service after 10pm! All ferries, gone!

http://mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About...ion - Fare and Service Proposals Overview.pdf


Option 1

FARE INCREASE:
• 43% overall
• 45% bus
• 42% rapid transit
• 43% commuter rail
•28% parking

RIDE:
Price at 2x base CharlieTicket, $4.50.
Introduce premium territory price $12

SERVICE ELIMINATIONS/REDUCTIONS:
• Bus: 23 weekday routes, 19 Saturday
routes, 18 Sunday routes
• Bus: 2 private carrier routes and all
Suburban Bus Program routes
• Ferry: All routes
• Light Rail: No weekend service on
Mattapan and Green Line E Branch
• Commuter Rail: No service after 10pm
and no weekend service

Option 2

FARE INCREASE
• 35% overall
• 27% bus
• 38% rapid transit
• 35% commuter rail
•20% parking

RIDE:
Price at 2x base CharlieCard, $3.00.
Introduce premium territory at $5


SERVICE ELIMINATIONS/REDUCTIONS:

• Bus: 101 weekday routes, 69 Saturday routes, 50
Sunday routes
• Bus: Reduce length of 11 routes
• Bus: All private carrier routes and Suburban Bus
Program routes
• Ferry: All routes
• Light Rail: No weekend service on Mattapan and
Green Line E Branch
• Commuter Rail: No service after 10pm and no
weekend service

I can't believe this is serious... raise the f*kin gas tax and the f**kn tolls!
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ridiculous. I'm sure half of this is not serious so when people complain they can scale it back and still get what they want.

No weekend service on the E or Mattapan? That's a joke.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Isn't ridership system-wide at an all-time high and climbing? How can they justify such drastic service cuts?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'd rather see the MBTA default on its debt obligations instead of cutting service this way. Let the 1%, not the 99%, pay for this.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

datadyne007 said:
Isn't ridership system-wide at an all-time high and climbing? How can they justify such drastic service cuts?
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Data -- given the current financial structure that's not a positive

On one hand they (T) herald the growth in ridership -- But just as in the old business joke -- you lose on every sale and hope to make it up with volume

the T spends a lot more delivering its service to its customers than it collects as fares from its customers -- about a factor of 3 -- the rest comes from:
a) other operational revenues (e.g. ads)
b) various revenue sharing (1% of the 5% sales tax)
c) occasional sales and on-going lease of assets (mostly land)
d) the rest comes from borrowing

The proposals so far are just trial balloons to see who squeals the loudest -- my guess is the T hope that the Legislature will bail them out -- through the gas tax

However -- by far the best option for us as taxpayers would be for the T through the legislature to trash all of the union contracts and rehire the people that they need on reasonable terms for wages and benefits with no unions -- the current union deals are virtual extortion of the taxpayers
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I think it's a shock-and-bait tactic to finally get the Legislature to hold some substantive hearings on the debt. Davey's been pushing for that ever since he became GM, and now he's in a somewhat better position to do that. Beacon Hill has shown zero, nada interest in taking a serious look at it because of an iron rule of politics: you don't have to care if it's not a terror threat on your own turf (i.e. reelection and donors). Angry constituents with fire and pitchforks screaming over service cuts provokes slightly more urgency to do something other than a dog or pony show or have Tim Murray insert foot in mouth again. It's not nearly the terror threat that campaign $$$ are, but it's a better chance of seeing some action if Hingham is ready to go to war over its ferries.

The scope of the debt is a political issue above all. Forward funding is patently flawed, depending on unrealistic assumptions of how tax revenues will perform. The Big Dig highway debt adds $100M to each debt service payment, and is totally unnecessary to be stuck on the MBTA's ledger with all the transportation agencies now razed and grouped under the EOT roof. The labor costs are utterly dysfunctional. The management of subcontractors is totally corrupt and needs to be reined in. Starting with MBCR...we are the only one of the 6 CR agencies in the country with >100K weekly ridership to not be run in-house, and have 3x the ridership and 1-1/2 times the number of lines and stations than the next-largest privately contracted system, L.A. Metrolink. And there is absolutely no planning balance between state of repair and system expansion, in large part because the layers of private contractors have insulated them for too long on having to care in actual proportion.

It's an achievable goal to rein in the finances to the point where it's manageably burdensome and not fucked, fucked, fucked forever. But it'll take changes to the charter and a whole lot of bedrock contracts that the agency alone can't do. State gov't has to start giving a shit and use its power to reform the fiscal structure. It's responsible in part for bad fiscal structure to begin with. I think the shock to the system will do some good and, yes, it's a bargaining tool not an ironclad list...some of the more shocking service cuts are total nonstarters in the face of community opposition. But I have little faith that we're going to get more than a dog and pony show because the pols simply don't have as much to fear from angry transit riders as they do angry donors. And angry donors are not driving the outrage. That's broken politics in 2012, local all the way to national. We're a few more OWS's and a whole ton of other outrage before the current generation of pols gets expunged for people with little less (or retro- less) one-sided interests. And we will get there. It just may take a lost decade to get there. With transit being one of many issues that suffers in the interim.

Some good can be done in the meantime simply collecting all this dysfunction into one focused debate that gets maximum media attention. It's a little hard to picture all the interrelations when each story is about this problem or that, but rarely about how it all feeds on itself. I really, really hope the pols get held to the fire enough to at least hold a serious set of hearings and not some 2-day PR formality to pat themselves on the back before rubber-stamping MBCR's contract renewal and tuning back out. Even if the ultimate outcome is nothing but empty promises and status quo, the full scope of the problem needs to be laid bare right in the public's face. It'll make it more self-evident who's failing whom to what degree by not giving a shit.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
I think it's a shock-and-bait tactic to finally get the Legislature to hold some substantive hearings on the debt.
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I had the same thought. Based on what I've seen of Davey in the news since he started as GM and now as Secretary it doesn't seem like something he would really be behind but instead a way to get everything out there and into the conversation.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

The MBTA needs to get with the real world and do what solvent businesses (and transit operators outside the US) did long, long ago:
-stop allowing new workers to join the unions and get rid of as many unionized employees as possible
-automate as many tasks (from ticket vendors to back-office employees to drivers) as possible -- replacing drivers with automated trains would also dramatically improve efficiency, capacity, and trip times
-dramatically cut back on the sinecures and padded salaries from top to bottom, with paychecks, vacation time and retirement age (and other ways to get paid while not working) coming back down to earth

The MBTA's future can go in one of two directions:
1) it can keep shoveling most of its funds toward giving staffers ridiculously generous sinecures, the likes of which don't exist in the real world, while simultaneously cutting service and indefinitely postponing infrastructure and equipment upgrades -- essentially being a retirement and employment plan that also happens to occasionally provide public transportation; or
2) it can cut back on staff numbers and perquisites and invest its funds in upgrading its infrastructure and equipment, primarily focused on automating positions both at the customer-facing level (drivers, attendants) and in the MBTA's offices.

It's the same crisis that public services across the country face. Unfortunately, in the MBTA's case, it will also need additional revenue for at least the near- to medium-term no matter what it does, which will take the form of fare increases as well as (hopefully) new cash-generating opportunities like more innovative advertising (e.g., ads inside subway tunnels and on transit, selling station naming rights, TVs on buses -- which could also provide information to riders about the next stop, ETA, temperature outside, etc.).

There's no way the MBTA can please everyone now, but personally I'd rather see the fat cut from staffing and benefits rather than the bones broken on service and infrastructure.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Itch -- a lot of good points -- But you must remember that the T is still to a significant extent Mr. Bulger's Transit Agency -- it was and to some extent remains an employment agency and increasingly a retirement sinecure for the favored members of Southey

This will not change until the full incorporation of the T into the DOT with its focus more on roads and Commuter Rail -- suburbs versus the urbs is completed -- probably after about another governors term is complete

The best that can happen in the meantime is restructuring the debt and clearing up as much as possible the pension and health care sinecures

The automation idea would be nice -- but it is unlikely without another major capital infusion to upgrade the rolling stock, wiring and controls

This kind of additional major capital investment is not likely in the near term -- but it is much more likely than any "pipe dream" extensions beyond the Sommerville Green Line and possibly some Silver Line in the SPiD
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I love how, if you look at the service changes document on the MBTA website, it is 74 pages long, credits one person to cover design and another to "graphics", and mostly reaffirms the same points throughout. Perhaps some of their problems are bureaucratic?

I think that a few of the suggestions make sense, such as no longer accepting tokens and extremely old passes. This would bring down some administrative costs. I recognize that some of these ideas are peanuts compared to the cost savings of service cuts, but overall streamlining of the organization is necessary.

Some service cuts weren't too eye-opening to me. They want to end of the commuter boat subsidy, which gets $3 million per year to serve just over 4,000 passengers. Certain bus routes were to be cut, which is justified, depending on which routes we're talking about. One appalling aspect of the plan is to eliminate ALL weekend commuter rail service! Could they not cut it down to one or two trips in each direction per day on weekends?

It is also notable that there wasn't a hint of suggestion that the MBTA ditch MBCR. MBCR (Mass Bay Commuter Rail) is the terrible quasi-private corporation that, for almost a decade, has been providing some of the worst train service in the country while receiving fat contracts as the EXCLUSIVE OPERATOR of the commuter rail. I would argue that the MBTA could probably do a better job for a fraction of the price if they operated the commuter rail in house.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Also, the MBTA has taken on a lot of its existing debt through expensive projects aimed at improving service. Whenever the MBTA tries to start a new project, it is so bound in red tape that it ends up costing far more than it should. I read somewhere that the new high speed rail going through the Swiss Alps is going to cost around $10 billion. That is including TWO 35 mile long tunnels each 30 feet wide and bored under mountains with tunnel boring equipment, as well as 24 miles of support and access tunnels. With that figure, I simply can't comprehend how much it costs for the MBTA to lay a few miles of track through Somerville, let alone to build tunnels.

This is why the state should form a new organization, funded by the state, to take on capital projects needed by the MBTA. This way, the MBTA itself wouldn't have to take on debt that it reduces through eliminations of service, even though it attained the debt in an effort to improve service. Double standard anyone?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

The Brutmobile shit the bed over the weekend and is currently in the shop. After one day back on the T, I'm ready to crack. How do people put up with this?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

b-line200 said:
One appalling aspect of the plan is to eliminate ALL weekend commuter rail service! Could they not cut it down to one or two trips in each direction per day on weekends?
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If you're going to reduce service to two round-trips per weekend day, you may as well eliminate all service. Weekend commuter rail service is sparse as it is: two round-trips per day would make it useless to most riders.

Scenario 2 listed here -- http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/A.../Potential MBTA Fare 2012 Impact Analysis.pdf -- would cut pretty much all express buses --

Of the 128,948,230 existing annual bus trips: 31,000,371 (24%) are on eliminated routes 97,947,859 (76%) are not on eliminated routes
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That's a huge service cut.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

b-line200 said:
This is why the state should form a new organization, funded by the state, to take on capital projects needed by the MBTA. This way, the MBTA itself wouldn't have to take on debt that it reduces through eliminations of service, even though it attained the debt in an effort to improve service. Double standard anyone?
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I agree that capital projects should be separated from daily service but there is still going to have to be some connection between agencies.

It's always going to come down to labor. The reason it costs so much to build and operate these systems here is because there is a labor union somewhere with their hand out. I'm not against labor unions but the institutions that persist in Boston are the classically corrupt cartoons you'd think had died out with the Soviet Union.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
I think it's a shock-and-bait tactic to finally get the Legislature to hold some substantive hearings on the debt. Davey's been pushing for that ever since he became GM, and now he's in a somewhat better position to do that. Beacon Hill has shown zero, nada interest in taking a serious look at it because of an iron rule of politics: you don't have to care if it's not a terror threat on your own turf (i.e. reelection and donors). Angry constituents with fire and pitchforks screaming over service cuts provokes slightly more urgency to do something other than a dog or pony show or have Tim Murray insert foot in mouth again. It's not nearly the terror threat that campaign $$$ are, but it's a better chance of seeing some action if Hingham is ready to go to war over its ferries.
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Yeah, go ask the MTA how their doomsday scenario worked out.

Heres a hint: After being presented with doomsday service cuts, Albany went ahead and reduced funding even more.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

vanshnookenraggen said:
It's always going to come down to labor. The reason it costs so much to build and operate these systems here is because there is a labor union somewhere with their hand out. I'm not against labor unions but the institutions that persist in Boston are the classically corrupt cartoons you'd think had died out with the Soviet Union.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the MBTA's debt problems go beyond a pension and benefit agency for select management. A combination of poor management by hacks and the legislature dumping the Big Dig debt onto the agency added the majority of the debt service which is now sinking the system into a cesspool of doom. While the unions need to be reigned in or eliminated, and the cronyism of various positions stamped out, the major issue is moving the majority of the debt back onto the state ledger. The state dumped most of the current debt on the MBTA or at least created an environment to exponentially explode it with cronyism, therefore the state should be required to clean up the mess it made.
 
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