General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Highwayguy]

I don't know the answer to this, though it's worth noting that the CR is under a different regulatory regime than the RT system (FRA versus FTA).

If the FTA standards are unnecessarily more stringent than FRA (l assumed it was the other way around), then @KingVibe may be onto something… Then again, Im not aware of any other RT systems (legacy or otherwise) that has ever normalized sub 10 MPH operation.

 

[Brattle Loop]

If the FTA standards are more stringent than FRA (l assumed it was the other way around), then @KingVibe may be onto something… Then again, Im not aware of any other RT systems (legacy or otherwise) that has ever normalized sub 10 MPH operation.

I don't know if FTA standards are necessarily more stringent, so much as the FRA's least-stringent track classification has a 10 mph max speed restriction but also forbids passenger trains of any kind (for a while I think the Grand Junction fell into that dubious category at least in parts, dunno if that's still the case). So, I'd say plenty of Pan Am and ex-Pan Am trackage is probably actually cruddier than the MBTA's RT (or CR) track, but since there's no pax service it doesn't really matter. (Moreover, I know Amtrak's geometry car gets borrowed to go over the CR lines a couple times a year, so I wouldn't entirely be surprised if the FRA-overseen side had done better at the upkeep and paperwork, so it might not even be the standards so much as the compliance with them.)

 

[Riverside]

The Ts major safety issues haven’t even been track related for the most part, they’ve been rolling stock, signal, and operator related.

Yeah, I appreciate the rebuttal you're offering here, and I can definitely get on board with the notion that the track slow zones are "safety theater". It seems like at least some of the concern about the tracks stems from concern with the quality of inspections or repairs -- meaning that it's not really a concern about the presence of a problem but rather is concern about the absence of confidence.

So, to clarify then, I could definitely support the shifting of oversight and scrutiny from one area of the T to another. But to me that is extremely different from reducing the overall level of oversight and scrutiny.

And I guess to better articulate my concerns: I am not necessarily that worried about the physical state of the T. It seems clear that it has been allowed to deteriorate to an unacceptable degree, and it's concerning how much appears to be unknown about the extent of the T's state of good repair.

But what really worries me is the organizational and operational state. Like you said, there have been a remarkable number of human errors. And in the case of mechanical problems (e.g. the Back Bay escalator incident), the root cause also appears to be human error, in the form of overlooked inspection or deferred maintenance. And I don't know where the regulatory oversight for the T should ultimately fall on the continuum from lax to strict, nor do I know which industry it should be compared to. (The FDA comes to mind, thinking about food recalls, for example.) But I do know that something is deeply wrong with either the processes or people or both at the T, and I think there needs to be both additional oversight as well as investigation.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Yeah, I appreciate the rebuttal you're offering here, and I can definitely get on board with the notion that the track slow zones are "safety theater". It seems like at least some of the concern about the tracks stems from concern with the quality of inspections or repairs -- meaning that it's not really a concern about the presence of a problem but rather is concern about the absence of confidence.

So, to clarify then, I could definitely support the shifting of oversight and scrutiny from one area of the T to another. But to me that is extremely different from reducing the overall level of oversight and scrutiny.

And I guess to better articulate my concerns: I am not necessarily that worried about the physical state of the T. It seems clear that it has been allowed to deteriorate to an unacceptable degree, and it's concerning how much appears to be unknown about the extent of the T's state of good repair.

But what really worries me is the organizational and operational state. Like you said, there have been a remarkable number of human errors. And in the case of mechanical problems (e.g. the Back Bay escalator incident), the root cause also appears to be human error, in the form of overlooked inspection or deferred maintenance. And I don't know where the regulatory oversight for the T should ultimately fall on the continuum from lax to strict, nor do I know which industry it should be compared to. (The FDA comes to mind, thinking about food recalls, for example.) But I do know that something is deeply wrong with either the processes or people or both at the T, and I think there needs to be both additional oversight as well as investigation.

Interesting question raised here.

You cannot force quality into an organization or systems through oversight. You have to build the organization or system for quality operation. Catching errors after the fact doesn't stop the errors. You have to design from the bottom up to not allow errors.

What I am suggesting is the only way to fix the T's mess it to basically rebuild (organizationally) from scratch. And that probably means a takeover by the Feds or something similarly extreme.

 

[Riverside]

Interesting question raised here.

You cannot force quality into an organization or systems through oversight. You have to build the organization or system for quality operation. Catching errors after the fact doesn't stop the errors. You have to design from the bottom up to not allow errors.

What I am suggesting is the only way to fix the T's mess it to basically rebuild (organizationally) from scratch. And that probably means a takeover by the Feds or something similarly extreme.

Yeah, I agree with you, and this is a big reason why I am so concerned about this situation, both in the short term and long term.

It's funny, it was just a couple of months ago that I lightly argued against a Fed takeover: whether it's the T or the Fed running the show, many of the problems will remain. I'm still not particularly clear what a takeover would actually change, but I suppose it is true that my confidence in the T's ability to solve these difficult problems is lower than it once was.

That all being said: I will push back a little bit on the point about "catching errors after the fact". Good oversight includes overseeing processes that are designed to prevent errors, and one of the big problems right now is that it looks like the T often does not follow process (or does not have process in place). Yes, I am sure oversight will continue to catch errors all the same, but process adherence & management can at least stop the bleeding.

My mind goes back to my trip on GLX back in December (detailed here). I didn't emphasize it in my post, but there's no other way to describe a lot of what I saw: sloppiness. An abandoned sandwich board from the September closure (which ended 3 months prior), a bizarrely signed and inexplicably blocked staircase at Union. Maps that aren't merely out of date, but actually have been (technically) graffitied. Inconsistent, poorly explained, confusing use of "Stop Requested."

That last one bears some elaboration. I opted not to mention it in my blog post, but it feels more relevant now: I asked multiple T employees working on the Green Line about the "Stop Requested" policy... and got multiple highly confident and totally contradictory answers.

I lay a lot of the T's problems at the feet of politicians who seek to underfund or defund public infrastructure. Some of the T's problems absolutely come from a lack of funding.

But the "Stop Requested" stuff -- that's basic team management stuff. That's Organizational Communications 101 stuff. And for a failure like that to not only occur but be allowed to continue points to a lack of structure and process that I cannot imagine being anything other than widespread. That seems like a problem that could be solved with better oversight, without needing a full rebuild.

 

[Brattle Loop]

That last one bears some elaboration. I opted not to mention it in my blog post, but it feels more relevant now: I asked multiple T employees working on the Green Line about the "Stop Requested" policy... and got multiple highly confident and totally contradictory answers.

I lay a lot of the T's problems at the feet of politicians who seek to underfund or defund public infrastructure. Some of the T's problems absolutely come from a lack of funding.

But the "Stop Requested" stuff -- that's basic team management stuff. That's Organizational Communications 101 stuff. And for a failure like that to not only occur but be allowed to continue points to a lack of structure and process that I cannot imagine being anything other than widespread. That seems like a problem that could be solved with better oversight, without needing a full rebuild.

I think part of the issue is in presenting things as if oversight and internal culture are independent of each other. I would agree to an extent with JeffDowntown that you can't really force quality through external oversight. I think that's overstating things a bit, because competent quality oversight with high standards and defined benchmarks would make clear what is required and when those requirements aren't being met. It's still possible to comply with stringent oversight while having cruddy internal culture (metaphorically like passing a test through rote memorization without proper learning/understanding of the concepts), just harder to maintain (because of your screw-ups getting caught and called out).

That said, the T clearly had insufficient external oversight, which removed a potential safeguard against the kind of internal rot that has clearly infected much of the agency. There's plenty of expressions of that rot that can be fixed by external oversight: it's easy to mandate, say, that signs be updated properly. Some of the practices of internal rot can also be fixed through oversight: say, for example, the Stop Requested policy, it's not that hard for an overseer to come up with a metric (say, poll X number of GL employees in various roles on what the policy is) which can be used to measure if that specific policy is being properly communicated. Repeat ad nauseum and get an answer as to whether they're basically chickens walking around with their heads cut off or not. And being a.) forced to gather that data and b.) shamed by the answers it comes up with are motivations towards building better internal practices that don't necessarily require proactive leadership within the organization. Of course, ideally you'd have competent oversight (to catch issues that get missed) as well as internal management dedicated to and empowered to end the rot. I don't think that requires an organizational rebuild so much as a reset: better management with the power to discipline and clean out those within the agency who can't shape up.

 

[Stlin]

In the vein of governance, there is news out of the state house - they've recently announced new members of the Governing Board.
Chair Betsy Taylor, Mary Beth Mello, Scott Darling are out, Butler, Koch, and Smart are still in. (They kept the the union, advisory board and EJ reps.)

The new Chair is Thomas Glynn, the MBTA GM from 1989 to 1991 and more recently the Massport CEO from 2012-2018, and the Partners Healthcare COO prior to that. The other new members are Thomas McGee, former mayor of Lynn and state senator, and Eric Goodwine, a banker out of the Worcester area. The latest board has been notably passive and not exactly as good as pushing the MBTA as the prior FMCB - hopefully the new blood helps.

Governor Healey Appoints New Members to the MBTA Board of Directors

Former MBTA GM and Massport CEO Tom Glynn to serve as Board Chair

www.mass.gov

 

[JeffDowntown]

So remote work for your top managers, so they never have to encounter the shit show we call transit. Nice

A distant crisis: Top MBTA managers live hundreds — or thousands — of miles from the troubled system they’re trying to fix - The Boston Globe

Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Florida are among the places T executives call home.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[Delvin4519]

I've been taking a break from following the news of our dysfunctional transportation system in Boston recently.

In the meantine, I did a analysis of public transit in a relatively large area in Europe, so I could have a frame of reference of what a functional transportation looks like, compared to the map of MBTA services I made a while ago of Boston.

I opted to analyze the public transit system in the area around Amsterdam, in Europe. This city has a size of about 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, compared to about 2.5 million residents who live inside Route 128/I-95 in the Boston area.

The analysis had to cover multiple transit agencies extending out to Rotterdam and Utrecht. This is due to the size of the MBTA service district, which extends out to Bedford, Beverly, Hingham, and Walpole, MA.

This is a pretty silly analysis I did, but I decided to do another analysis, analyzing all transit routes that operate until at least 11:00 p.m. daily, in the MBTA in Boston, versus the 4 largest cities' transit agencies in the Netherlands with combination of local bus and local rail routes. (The analysis is a quite a bit messy, and I had to chop outliers)

On average, the MBTA is starting transit service over an hour earlier compared to its counterparts in the Netherlands. While the MBTA's trains and buses are already chugging along the tracks and the roads at 5:22 a.m., those in the Netherlands don't start until 6:06 a.m. or later. On weekends, it is much worse, with the T ending overnight maintance very early in the morning, to start service at 6 a.m. or earlier. Meanwhile, those in the Netherlands don't start until 8:00 a.m. or even a bit later than that!

Transit agencies in the Netherlands average about 1 hour to 1.8 hours of longer overnight windows for track maintanace compared to that of the MBTA. There's also the fact the MBTA holds trains downtown for over half an hour around 1:00 a.m. every night, to guarantee last connections here; due to a lack of clockface scheduling (transit agencies in the Netherlands use it to guarantee transfers there). This means that the MBTA has an even shorter overnight window for daily track maintenance, then what is shown in the table below.

WMATA in Washington DC doesn't even start their MetroRail system until 7:00 a.m., weekends, identical to the Netherlands. This allows longer overnight track maintainace windows. Boston doesn't have quad/express trackage found in NYC or the like, nor are there regularly scheduled bus routes to replace downtown rail service, in order to extend transit service for longer operational hours in Boston.

Average transit service span (Hours of operation)	Weekday start	Saturday start	Sunday start	Weekday end	Saturday end	Sunday end
MBTA (Boston, MA, U.S.)****	5:22 a.m.	5:35 a.m.	6:32 a.m.	12:55 a.m.	12:54 a.m.	12:52 a.m.
GVB (Amsterdam, NL)	6:09 a.m.	6:45 a.m.	7:39 a.m.	12:20 a.m.**	12:20 a.m.*	12:19 a.m.*
HTM (Den Haag, NL)	6:09 a.m.	7:06 a.m.	8:08 a.m.	12:23 a.m.	12:24 a.m.*	12:22 a.m.*
RET (Rotterdam, NL)***	6:06 a.m.	7:08 a.m.	8:37 a.m.	12:21 a.m.	12:31 a.m.	12:19 a.m.
UOV (Utrecht, NL)	6:13 a.m.	7:06 a.m.	8:07 a.m.	12:38 a.m.	12:39 a.m.	12:39 a.m.

* = These locations run overnight bus service citywide the night 20 hours prior (i.e. before that day's daytime service began)
** = This location runs a few overnight buses on a few select routes all week long.
*** = Overnight bus service suspended due to COVID-19 (has yet to resume as of April 2023).
**** = The Netherlands still runs more public transit service than the MBTA in Boston and other RTAs in Massachusetts, overall, refer to the map.
(I won't be adding Washington DC's WMATA to the table, just use the hours listed for their MetroRail on their website. Same for other cities, I won't add it here).

I wonder if it's possible for the MBTA to do a "late opening" of service on weekends for extended overnight track maintainance. So if the MBTA closes service at 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning and 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, supposedly, they could delay opening of a subway line until 7:45 a.m. Saturday or 9:00 a.m. Sunday, without a full scale weekend shutdown of the tracks. I suppose they could still do full weekend closures of a subway line, or shut down one of the rail lines at 7:00 p.m. Sunday evening. It's literally any way to add more time for track maintainance at the T.

---

Seeing public transit run from 7:30 a.m. - 12:30 a.m. in the Netherlands seems more aligned to staying up later at night and sleeping in longer in the morning on the weekends.

Is there anything unique about Boston that requires the subway system to open at 5:30 - 6:00 a.m., even on weekends and Sundays? This is compared to Washington DC’s WMATA, as well as the Dutch, not starting their weekend transit service until 7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

What about Boston makes it unique that MBTA transit service here essentially runs on an "early to rise, early bird" schedule, compared to other cities? (For comparsion solar noon in the Netherlands doesn't occur until 1:40 p.m., while in Boston it's around 11:35 a.m.).
My area in Boston has MBTA bus routes with span of service running from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., first T bus around 5:00 a.m., last MBTA bus at 9:00 p.m. or so, even on Saturday, so it's basically just an "early bird MBTA schedule" in my area in Boston.

 

[Brattle Loop]

Is there anything unique about Boston that requires the subway system to open at 5:30 - 6:00 a.m., even on weekends and Sundays? This is compared to Washington DC’s WMATA, as well as the Dutch, not starting their weekend transit service until 7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

I doubt it's particularly unique. Chicago's CTA starts service quite early, even on weekends, as does MARTA in Atlanta and BART in San Francisco (at least on Saturdays, and at least on some lines).

Metrorail in Washington has always had an element of being a hybrid commuter rail/rapid transit system, so it's entirely possible that it's unusually-dependent on (or unusually-schedule-oriented towards) suburban commuters whose transit needs are low on the weekends.

Some of it is potentially just standard practice for obscure or outdated reasons (the MBTA is not generally considered a well-run transit agency, after all), but it probably also reflects demand patterns. There's plenty of people in Boston and its environs who need to get to work even on weekends, and plenty for whom a car is not a viable option. Add to that the insufficiency of quality bike infrastructure combined with a weather pattern that can make biking a non-option for months if there's too much snow (DC doesn't know what that's like), and you're talking about a situation where you'd be hampering your city's transit patterns with late starts. (To be honest, part of me wonders if Metro gets away with it because that system was built from the ground up rather than inheriting old railroad/streetcar service patterns and associated commuting patterns.)

(Or, maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it's just that the Dutch - and the white collar federal bureaucrats - just don't work as much, especially on weekends, and simply don't need the service.)

 

[Stlin]

This is a pretty silly analysis I did, but I decided to do another analysis, analyzing all transit routes that operate until at least 11:00 p.m. daily, in the MBTA in Boston, versus the 4 largest cities' transit agencies in the Netherlands with combination of local bus and local rail routes. (The analysis is a quite a bit messy, and I had to chop outliers)

On average, the MBTA is starting transit service over an hour earlier compared to its counterparts in the Netherlands. While the MBTA's trains and buses are already chugging along the tracks and the roads at 5:22 a.m., those in the Netherlands don't start until 6:06 a.m. or later. On weekends, it is much worse, with the T ending overnight maintance very early in the morning, to start service at 6 a.m. or earlier. Meanwhile, those in the Netherlands don't start until 8:00 a.m. or even a bit later than that!

Transit agencies in the Netherlands average about 1 hour to 1.8 hours of longer overnight windows for track maintanace compared to that of the MBTA. There's also the fact the MBTA holds trains downtown for over half an hour around 1:00 a.m. every night, to guarantee last connections here; due to a lack of clockface scheduling (transit agencies in the Netherlands use it to guarantee transfers there). This means that the MBTA has an even shorter overnight window for daily track maintenance, then what is shown in the table below.

WMATA in Washington DC doesn't even start their MetroRail system until 7:00 a.m., weekends, identical to the Netherlands. This allows longer overnight track maintainace windows. Boston doesn't have quad/express trackage found in NYC or the like, nor are there regularly scheduled bus routes to replace downtown rail service, in order to extend transit service for longer operational hours in Boston.

Average daily transit service span (Hours of operation)	Weekday service start	Saturday service start	Sunday service start	Weekday service end	Saturday service end	Sunday service end
MBTA (Boston, MA, U.S.)****	5:22 a.m.	5:35 a.m.	6:32 a.m.	12:55 a.m.	12:54 a.m.	12:52 a.m.
GVB (Amsterdam, NL)	6:09 a.m.	6:45 a.m.	7:39 a.m.	12:20 a.m.**	12:20 a.m.*	12:19 a.m.*
HTM (Den Haag, NL)	6:09 a.m.	7:06 a.m.	8:08 a.m.	12:23 a.m.	12:24 a.m.*	12:22 a.m.*
RET (Rotterdam, NL)***	6:06 a.m.	7:08 a.m.	8:37 a.m.	12:21 a.m.	12:31 a.m.	12:19 a.m.
UOV (Utrecht, NL)	6:13 a.m.	7:06 a.m.	8:07 a.m.	12:38 a.m.	12:39 a.m.	12:39 a.m.

* = These locations run overnight bus service citywide the night 20 hours prior (i.e. before that day's daytime service began)
** = This location runs a few overnight buses on a few select routes all week long.
*** = Overnight bus service suspended due to COVID-19 (has yet to resume as of April 2023).
**** = The Netherlands still runs more public transit service than the MBTA in Boston and other RTAs in Massachusetts, overall, refer to the map.
(I won't be adding Washington DC's WMATA to the table, just use the hours listed for their MetroRail on their website. Same for other cities, I won't add it here).

I wonder if it's possible for the MBTA to do a "late opening" of service on weekends for extended overnight track maintainance. So if the MBTA closes service at 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning and 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, supposedly, they could delay opening of a subway line until 7:45 a.m. Saturday or 9:00 a.m. Sunday, without a full scale weekend shutdown of the tracks. I suppose they could still do full weekend closures of a subway line, or shut down one of the rail lines at 7:00 p.m. Sunday evening. It's literally any way to add more time for track maintainance at the T.

---

Seeing public transit run from 7:30 a.m. - 12:30 a.m. in the Netherlands seems more aligned to staying up later at night and sleeping in longer in the morning on the weekends.

Is there anything unique about Boston that requires the subway system to open at 5:30 - 6:00 a.m., even on weekends and Sundays? This is compared to the Dutch not starting their weekend transit service until 7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

What about Boston makes it unique that MBTA transit service here essentially runs on an "early to rise, early bird" schedule, compared to other cities? (For comparsion solar noon in the Netherlands doesn't occur until 1:40 p.m., while in Boston it's around 11:35 a.m.).
My area in Boston has MBTA bus routes with span of service running from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., first T bus around 5:00 a.m., last MBTA bus at 9:00 p.m. or so, even on Saturday, so it's basically just an "early bird MBTA schedule" in my area in Boston.

You beat me to this - I was doing a similar analysis but of Asia and a couple of US cities. Notably, most lines in Asia close relatively early, with their last trains often around 10 or 11 pm, thereby allowing a larger daily evening work window, especially the biggest Chinese ones that are often used as a point of comparison. Of the sample I took, only SF Bart Red beat that with the last weekday train out of Millbrae at only 8pm. (and yes, for the sake of consistency I went with the Red Lines at the US agencies.)

 

[Aprehensive_Words]

So remote work for your top managers, so they never have to encounter the shit show we call transit. Nice

A distant crisis: Top MBTA managers live hundreds — or thousands — of miles from the troubled system they’re trying to fix - The Boston Globe

Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Florida are among the places T executives call home.

www.bostonglobe.com

Some of this is pretty transparent score-settling before the new boss fully takes charge. Look at who's saying the nasty things in the Globe story. It's nameless "coworkers" of these people. And the story focuses a lot on the capital delivery team, who we know (from stories on its ex-leader's firing a few weeks back) had shaken up a lot of ways the T had done business, in a good way -- that's bound to upset the hacks.

It's not a great look, and it's definitely galling as a rider who gets stuck in the T on the daily, but the Globe did not present enough evidence there that would justify generalizing to the rest of the agency.

And I think there's room for debate whether or not it's actually not terrible for someone in the capital delivery team to be splitting their time between Boston and someplace else if it means we get to keep their talent working for us, the taxpayers. How many Fortune 500 companies let their senior executives manage the company (and seemingly manage it effectively) from Aspen or the other stupid places rich people go to hide from us poors?

Edit: And and not to engage in too much whataboutism, but why should we get mad at these people and not at the reps and senators who think the T is beneath their dignity to ride, and who both took zero interest in the T's deterioration under Poftak/Baker and in the agency's slow spiral into the current SOGR black hole over the lat 20 years?

 

[KentXie]

So remote work for your top managers, so they never have to encounter the shit show we call transit. Nice

A distant crisis: Top MBTA managers live hundreds — or thousands — of miles from the troubled system they’re trying to fix - The Boston Globe

Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Florida are among the places T executives call home.

www.bostonglobe.com

This entire thing lacks context. Which manager is working remote? If you're a senior manager on the finance team, this isn't a big deal. If you're a senior manager on the IT team, this isn't a big deal. As you all know, I am no fan of the MBTA, but the lack of nuance in this reporting makes this really disingenuous

 

[bigpicture7]

This entire thing lacks context. Which manager is working remote? If you're a senior manager on the finance team, this isn't a big deal. If you're a senior manager on the IT team, this isn't a big deal. As you all know, I am no fan of the MBTA, but the lack of nuance in this reporting makes this really disingenuous

I enjoy working remote a couple days a week. For the days when I need to tell my bosses they are wrong about something, our unit is off track about something, strategically misaligned about something, etc, I do it in-person whenever possible. Usually over coffee or another beverage. These are painful conversations; sometimes I wait to hold them until people are on site. Peoples' expressions tell me everything; they tell me when its OK to push harder on difficult news/things they don't want to hear, or when to let up and try again another time. I very much agree with you that some types of work can be just fine, even optimal, remote. But core leadership roles faced with righting the ship in a failing public transit organization, I genuinely believe, would necessarily involve more than the 'typical' amount of difficult conversations. These might in fact be in IT and finance. And when things are back to smooth operation, those IT and finance people can disband and be more remote-operating thereafter. But I do not agree remote/on-site is as simple as "what discipline are you in"? In the case of how eff'd up the T became, all of these people should have had their butts in Boston most of the time.

I have worked remote and distributed-team for large chunks of my career. The most effective fix-it projects have involved enacting a tiger team, having a substantial on-site kickoff and setting up "war room" type environment for several weeks (even months) to get the project launched. Then once risks have settled into the reasonable realm, we've primarily operated from our home bases. The T ought to be a whole collection of tiger teams in it's present context.

 

[Delvin4519]

I doubt it's particularly unique. Chicago's CTA starts service quite early, even on weekends, as does MARTA in Atlanta and BART in San Francisco (at least on Saturdays, and at least on some lines).

Metrorail in Washington has always had an element of being a hybrid commuter rail/rapid transit system, so it's entirely possible that it's unusually-dependent on (or unusually-schedule-oriented towards) suburban commuters whose transit needs are low on the weekends.

Some of it is potentially just standard practice for obscure or outdated reasons (the MBTA is not generally considered a well-run transit agency, after all), but it probably also reflects demand patterns. There's plenty of people in Boston and its environs who need to get to work even on weekends, and plenty for whom a car is not a viable option. Add to that the insufficiency of quality bike infrastructure combined with a weather pattern that can make biking a non-option for months if there's too much snow (DC doesn't know what that's like), and you're talking about a situation where you'd be hampering your city's transit patterns with late starts. (To be honest, part of me wonders if Metro gets away with it because that system was built from the ground up rather than inheriting old railroad/streetcar service patterns and associated commuting patterns.)

(Or, maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it's just that the Dutch - and the white collar federal bureaucrats - just don't work as much, especially on weekends, and simply don't need the service.)

I posted about this on the Not Just Bikes subreddit, and the first response to that post was asking "do Bostonians simply have to be at work or school before 7:00 a.m.?"

I guess... yeah, it is. Boston's exam schools and high schools start class at 7:15 a.m. Young high school teenagers need to be at the MBTA bus stop by around 6:00 a.m. for class at school. The Longwood Medica Area, with a large healthcare and educational sector, draws a lot of commuters who need to arrive to work before 6:00 a.m., as well as Logan Airport in East Boston for early arrivals.

Maybe the Dutch don't start their workday until 9:00 a.m., and those that work Sundays don't bother until 9:30 a.m. or 10:00 a.m.? I really have no idea. The Dutch still run transit service until 12:30 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.. So do the Dutch have the luxury of sleeping in until 8:00 a.m. Saturday and Sunday morning every weekend? Meanwhile, Bostonians need to get up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, even on Sunday morning too, every weekend; public transit is already running already.

I also posted about the MBTA's specific operation of holding last trains downtown for connections, and holding the last bus of the night for these final trains of the evening. There's a topic to discuss whether does, or could; public transit in Dutch cities; have such a process for guarenteeing final connections between the last bus/tram/metro of the evening at 12:30 a.m., like that of the MBTA.

---

You beat me to this - I was doing a similar analysis but of Asia and a couple of US cities. Notably, most lines in Asia close relatively early, with their last trains often around 10 or 11 pm, thereby allowing a larger daily evening work window, especially the biggest Chinese ones that are often used as a point of comparison. Of the sample I took, only SF Bart Red beat that with the last weekday train out of Millbrae at only 8pm. (and yes, for the sake of consistency I went with the Red Lines at the US agencies.)
View attachment 36899

I wonder if the San Francisco BART's Red Line is an outlier. The other commenter I mentioned said that BART only runs early morning and late evening service on some lines, not all lines. So I would be highly suspect that San Francisco is shutting down for the night at 8:00 p.m.; it doesn't seem plausible. What seems more likely is that this particular BART line is a commuter line or a daytime route.

I generally tried to focus my data search on high frequency routes in the cities I looked at, and use every day-all day-high frequency routes, to identify operating hours for span of service. There's also the factor if a line must operate as roundtrips from one terminal, or operates in single trips out from both terminals. It could mean a route's runtime is very long or very short, or that there are short turns on the route. The route could be starting even earlier, or ending much later, in the opposing direction; if it's operating as roundtrips from one terminal.

Looking at Saturday and Sunday service, in addition to weekday service, gives a really good indicator of how much morning service gets chopped off on the weekends. It's fascinating how weekend transit service (out of those I looked at), only chop off weekend transit service from the morning, and leave evening hours mostly untouched on the weekends.

East Asian subway systems like those in Japan or Korea shutting down at 10:45 p.m. - 11:30 p.m. instead of 12:45 a.m. seems plausiable, so I'd imagine they still start service at 4:45 a.m. - 5:15 a.m. even on weekends and Sundays. Sunrise in these locations occurs before 5:00 a.m. for 4 - 5 months of the year, and sunset is never after 7:00 p.m., since they don't use DST.

 

[JeffDowntown]

This entire thing lacks context. Which manager is working remote? If you're a senior manager on the finance team, this isn't a big deal. If you're a senior manager on the IT team, this isn't a big deal. As you all know, I am no fan of the MBTA, but the lack of nuance in this reporting makes this really disingenuous

From the second paragraph of the article:
" The T’s chief safety officer owns a house near Chicago, where his wife works — and employees say he spends much of his time there. His deputy lives mainly with his family in Los Angeles. The T’s chief of capital projects rarely came to Boston before he was fired last month, instead attending meetings remotely from his homes in Wisconsin, Delaware, and Hawaii. Meanwhile, last year his chief of staff bought a house in Florida, where she lives with her husband. "

Safety and Capital Projects are not exactly great choices for remote work and oversight.

 

[Riverside]

Some of this is pretty transparent score-settling before the new boss fully takes charge. Look at who's saying the nasty things in the Globe story. It's nameless "coworkers" of these people. And the story focuses a lot on the capital delivery team, who we know (from stories on its ex-leader's firing a few weeks back) had shaken up a lot of ways the T had done business, in a good way -- that's bound to upset the hacks.

It's not a great look, and it's definitely galling as a rider who gets stuck in the T on the daily, but the Globe did not present enough evidence there that would justify generalizing to the rest of the agency.

And I think there's room for debate whether or not it's actually not terrible for someone in the capital delivery team to be splitting their time between Boston and someplace else if it means we get to keep their talent working for us, the taxpayers. How many Fortune 500 companies let their senior executives manage the company (and seemingly manage it effectively) from Aspen or the other stupid places rich people go to hide from us poors?

Edit: And and not to engage in too much whataboutism, but why should we get mad at these people and not at the reps and senators who think the T is beneath their dignity to ride, and who both took zero interest in the T's deterioration under Poftak/Baker and in the agency's slow spiral into the current SOGR black hole over the lat 20 years?

I think some of this is reasonable and yeah I think it’s a fair point about, for example, the Capital Delivery team and the need to retain talent through remote/hybrid work.

But I think the Chief Safety Officer and the Deputy Chief Safety Officer being partially remote just isn’t acceptable. And especially remote in Los Angeles — the 3-hour difference significantly reduces the amount of collaboration time available during the working day.

It’s been clear since that safety report came out a few years ago that there are serious issues at the T. Maybe the CSO spends literally all day in meetings, and therefore felt he could do it just as well from Chicago. But that in and of itself seems concerning as well — to be too insulated from the field.

 

[ant8904]

One of the big talking points people keep saying is how everyone involved needs to ride the T. This situation not just riding the T but being even near the T at all. One can say these are different people advocating different things, but one thing I'll definitely say on this - if the MBTA was functional and this came out, I would say this is not a big deal at all. But the MBTA is not.

Some of this is pretty transparent score-settling before the new boss fully takes charge. Look at who's saying the nasty things in the Globe story. It's nameless "coworkers" of these people. And the story focuses a lot on the capital delivery team, who we know (from stories on its ex-leader's firing a few weeks back) had shaken up a lot of ways the T had done business, in a good way -- that's bound to upset the hacks.

I guess some of us have to ask is if top management working remotely is a truly a factor to the state of the MBTA or not. Is it actually affecting the quality of work and morale of the rank-and-file? Is it possible that this is just "score-settling"? Where does this stand compared to the state reps and senators who had refused to fund the MBTA and has their own powers that does affect the MBTA?

Your lines above seem to implicate that the actual good guys trying to reform the T are actually the ones getting ax'ed. I don't know and I really hope that's not the case. We already got enough problems without these developments is actually seeing the 'hacks' purging out what people who are trying to do good. There's only much room left for the MBTA for slide further. It's one thing to be 8 years ago where at least headways like ~4 minutes and slow zones were few. Now it's massive and headways are approaching 20 minutes in some cases. At some point, unless it can somehow decline to 5 mph everywhere and hourly headways first then the only thing left no trains arriving at all.

---

The above said, it one of the things also mention in the article is the Safety Officer positions. Isn't that the positions that Ron Nickle was in? The guy who filed a complaint he got fired because he tried to highlight hazards but Baker says the MBTA is in the right to fire him? I don't remember how we collectively reacted to that news, but right now he seems pretty vindicated. Meanwhile if this is the same position and this is his replacement - well did Ron Nickle work remotely?

I don't like to slam remote work. I used to be a techie myself (currently not). But this has to rank as one the hardest context to defend the practice.

 

[FK4]

Interesting question raised here.

You cannot force quality into an organization or systems through oversight. You have to build the organization or system for quality operation. Catching errors after the fact doesn't stop the errors. You have to design from the bottom up to not allow errors.

What I am suggesting is the only way to fix the T's mess it to basically rebuild (organizationally) from scratch. And that probably means a takeover by the Feds or something similarly extreme.

This is the problem. It’s a cesspool of failed bureaucracy to a degree that is unfixable. I commented on the fact that at North Station, right at the GL outbound platform, the maps at the platform still showed the GL ending at North Station… in January. This is not some little thing, and it’s not about the map per se. This is beyond inexcusable because it speaks to the fact that an area traversed by T employees every day was ignored, that it was considered acceptable, not a big deal, an ignoreable issue. This is the very essence of every problem at the T: screamingly obvious problems from large to minuscule are completely ignored because nobody in the organizational structure ever feels any urgency to fix them. I honestly don’t see this changing unless they blow up the whole organization, fire everyone, and make everyone apply back for their jobs on the basis of new contract terms. Sadly this is impossible, with a government agency. But the problems are just so entrenched and despite the apologists who plead otherwise, it’s wrong to pin the woes on a few bad apples when it’s so abundantly clear that the problems at the T are deeply ingrained on a cultural level there.

 

[Jahvon09]

Another person in charge was added to the MBTA by Gov Healey.

Healey appoints new transportation safety czar

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. MAURA HEALEY on Monday appointed veteran transit official Patrick Lavin, who worked on a 2019 independent report

commonwealthmagazine.org