General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

underground said:
I'd love to be paid to work on the cutting edge study, "Does reducing stop time have a positive impact on travel time?" The fact that this is a question says so much about the MBTA, MassDOT, and BTD.
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Of course it does. That's rather obviously not the study objective.

Getting hard data to quantify the improvement in travel time, how well their implementation of it works, what impacts to other traffic flow are, etc are necessary to start using it widely. Hence, a study.
 
Interesting article about the T's procurement practices and how they are trying to update them in Commonwealth Magazine today: http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/tackling-the-time-warp-at-the-t/

Apparently they are trying to import procurement practices from the MTA in NYC. Also talk of cooperating with the MTA on purchases.

Some interesting tidbits:

He says there has been resistance to his more standardized approach, but he thinks people are coming to see the benefits. His office worked with the T’s human resources department to hire a private company to administer leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act, an area the transit authority was having difficulty controlling. He says the request for proposals for a new administrator would have taken five months if human resources had done the procurement on its own. But, working through his office, Polcari says it took only a month. “They realized, holy smokes, this really works,” he says.
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and

Polcari got a meeting with the Italian vendor, Ansaldo STS, and asked if the company would be willing to give the T what amounted to a zero-interest, $47 million bridge loan so the project could start quickly. By the time the Ansaldo loan comes due, Polcari expects to secure enough federal funding to pay off the Ansaldo debt and finance the rest of the project. He says the approach put Ansaldo to work immediately, saved the T $4 million in interest, and demonstrated to his stunned negotiating team that creativity can pay big dividends.
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“Procurement is procurement,” he says. “The key is how you work the process. You want to buy the right thing at the right time for the right price. You could be buying a house, trains, planes, automobiles. It doesn’t matter. You just have to know how to buy. You also have to know how to negotiate and logistically deliver things. I love to negotiate.”
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I like this guy. He's on the money.

Maybe things will turn around. I hope he's working on GLX as well.
 
The above-ground information boards are spreading:

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Globe: MBTA to propose revamping debt, ending costly ‘swaps’

Shortsleeve is due to present a plan to the fiscal control board to basically refinance some of the T's debt and save up to $235 million over the next decade. Apparently the T has $437 million worth of debt financed through interest rate swaps with UBS and Deutsche Bank. These were taken out years ago as a hedge against rising interest rates, but rates have been hovering pretty close to zero for about 8 years now and don't show any signs of coming back up any time soon. As a result, the T is paying up to 5% annually on some of these deals when they could be paying much less by simply selling bonds. The T will have to pay up to $78 million to break the contracts, but should make it up in reduced interest payments. The Globe article, unsurprisingly, doesn't get as far into the weeds on the terms of these swaps as I would like, but this definitely sounds like a good, prudent move by Shortsleeve.

The T is also planning to put some of their debt out for competitive bids for the first time in "at least a dozen years". Why they haven't been doing that all along, I don't know...

This article, coupled with the profile of Shortsleeve the Globe is currently running, certainly paints the guy as the grownup in the room fixing the mismanagement of the previous leaders. If it's true that in his first nine months he "cut the T’s operating deficit by $138 million, or 43 percent" through "reduced spending on overtime pay, materials, and services, and increased revenue from advertising and real estate", that's pretty impressive.

Obviously, this "grownup in the room" narrative is exactly what the Governor is pushing, but from what I've seen there is truth to it. I don't doubt for one second that past managers of the T haven't been on the ball on issues like finance, payroll management, and procurement, and the T has been wasting tens of millions every year as a result.
 
JumboBuc said:
Globe: MBTA to propose revamping debt, ending costly ‘swaps’

Shortsleeve is due to present a plan to the fiscal control board to basically refinance some of the T's debt and save up to $235 million over the next decade. Apparently the T has $437 million worth of debt financed through interest rate swaps with UBS and Deutsche Bank. These were taken out years ago as a hedge against rising interest rates, but rates have been hovering pretty close to zero for about 8 years now and don't show any signs of coming back up any time soon. As a result, the T is paying up to 5% annually on some of these deals when they could be paying much less by simply selling bonds. The T will have to pay up to $78 million to break the contracts, but should make it up in reduced interest payments. The Globe article, unsurprisingly, doesn't get as far into the weeds on the terms of these swaps as I would like, but this definitely sounds like a good, prudent move by Shortsleeve.

The T is also planning to put some of their debt out for competitive bids for the first time in "at least a dozen years". Why they haven't been doing that all along, I don't know...

This article, coupled with the profile of Shortsleeve the Globe is currently running, certainly paints the guy as the grownup in the room fixing the mismanagement of the previous leaders. If it's true that in his first nine months he "cut the T’s operating deficit by $138 million, or 43 percent" through "reduced spending on overtime pay, materials, and services, and increased revenue from advertising and real estate", that's pretty impressive.

Obviously, this "grownup in the room" narrative is exactly what the Governor is pushing, but from what I've seen there is truth to it. I don't doubt for one second that past managers of the T haven't been on the ball on issues like finance, payroll management, and procurement, and the T has been wasting tens of millions every year as a result.
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JumboBuc -- All true -- But the "proverbial elephant in the room [no-longer the Ringling Bros. circus room however] " is the highly suspect Pension System

An article today in the Herald today seems to indicate its still the "ticking time bomb" in the midst of the improvements to the T's Fiscal situation

MBTA pension punch 
could hit taxpayers
Erin Smith Monday, May 02, 2016

CONTROLLING ITS COSTS’: As more than a thousand MBTA workers are eligible for retirement this year, transit chief Brian Shortsleeve says the T is looking to reduce operating costs while offering ‘great service.’

More than 1,100 MBTA workers — nearly 17 percent of the transit agency’s workforce — are eligible to retire this year, according to a Herald review that found about 10 percent of potential retirees are under the age of 50.

It’s a potential pension-fund punch that comes as taxpayers are already bracing for T payments to the MBTA retirement board to top $90 million in the coming fiscal year. If all 1,105 potential retirees left work at the MBTA this year, it could result in more people on the pension rolls than on the payroll. There are 6,518 current T workers and 5,265 retirees collecting MBTA pensions as of last year, according to transit records.

More than half of the transit agency workers who can retire by the end of 2016 are under the age of 60, T records show. There are 428 workers in their 60s eligible to retire, while only 41 transit employees will be 70 or older this year, according to T data.

State lawmakers passed new rules in 2009 that required T workers to be at least 55 years old with 25 years of service to collect a pension.

But 80 percent of current MBTA workers are already grandfathered in under the old rules, which allow T employees to collect pensions at any age after just 23 years of work, according to MBTA Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve.
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Downburst said:
T looking to consolidate BU West/St. Paul and Babcock/Pleasant on B: http://www.metro.us/boston/mbta-looking-to-eliminate-some-green-line-t-stops/zsJpec---nZaHuqsxMKwFI/

I know this has been in the works for a while but this seems different from previous plans, if I remember correctly.
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Downbusrt -- Surely you must have clicked on the Link connected to the story
http://www.metro.us/boston/mbta-pol...sking-twitter-for-help/zsJpdg---4WBKiHw77eis/

Why did the Internet want to name this MBTA Police dog 'Mr. Spaghetti?'
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Time for some Schadenfreude at the expense of the Washington DC Metro

from today's Herald with my highlights in bold
Feds: Poor maintenance led to fatal DC subway fire
Associated Press Tuesday, May 03, 2016


WASHINGTON — A fire that caused a Washington subway train to fill with smoke inside a downtown tunnel last year, killing one passenger and sickening dozens, can be traced to poor maintenance and ineffective inspection practices by the city's beleaguered transit authority, federal investigators said Tuesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued its final report on the January 2015 fire at a meeting on Tuesday, placing the blame on the Metro transit authority for failing to properly install and maintain third-rail power cables, causing them to become damaged by water and other contaminants.

The NTSB also faulted Metro for a lack of smoke detectors in its tunnels, for ventilation fans that didn't work properly and for not training its employees on how to use the fans. It also blamed the District of Columbia's fire department and its 911 call center for delays in responding to the fire. Passengers waited on the smoke-filled train for more than 30 minutes before the first emergency responders arrived.

NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said Metro did not make meaningful safety improvements between a deadly collision in 2009 and the 2015 fire, and investigators said some of the system's safety problems date back to its first fatal accident in 1982.

The 2009 crash between two trains was the worst in Metro's history, killing nine people. The board made several recommendations to Metro after that crash, but Hart said its warnings were not heeded.

"Little or no progress has been made toward building a meaningful safety culture," Hart said, later adding: "When the NTSB finds itself issuing a continuous stream of accident reports to address the basic safety management of a single transit rail system, something is fundamentally flawed. Here, that something is safety oversight."

Most of the facts surrounding the 2015 accident had already been made public by the NTSB. One disturbing detail that emerged at Tuesday's meeting, however, was that Metro lacked any way to pinpoint the location of smoke or fire in the system's tunnels and that trains full of passengers were routinely sent into tunnels to figure out where smoke was coming from.
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Well so much for holding up Metro as a shining example of a well-run transit system -- and by the way a system with much newer equipment and infrastructure
 
Matthew said:
How so? There's not much detail, but what is stated is consistent with previous plans.
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I was under the impression that the T was looking at eliminating 4 stops from the B branch outright- that said, I may have had my wires crossed.
 
You probably read an article that said that they would consolidate 4 stations into 2, and perhaps that was the source of the confusion.
 
I still don't understand how this prevents someone with a Zone 1 pass from traveling to Zone 8. Can someone explain their system?
 
bigeman312 said:
I still don't understand how this prevents someone with a Zone 1 pass from traveling to Zone 8. Can someone explain their system?
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No clue about the thought process or execution, but I reckon that this is to address fake tickets and the .gif Mticket stuff.
 
Semass said:
the .gif Mticket stuff.
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I've always wondered if the CR staff actually knows (are trained in) the anti-fraud features of mTicket, like that the colors are supposed to be changing in sync with all other devices at that time and the clock ticking.
 
Semass said:
No clue about the thought process or execution, but I reckon that this is to address fake tickets and the .gif Mticket stuff.
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Well mTicket built their app to prevent people from using .gif's. Below is directly from their site.

After being activated, the mTicket pulses with animated colour signatures that change over time to prevent fraud. Inspectors can verify the colours contextually or using a reference application on their own handset.
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They also have bar codes but the conductors don't inspect the mTickets well enough.
 
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