I’m coming late to the party on GLX contract cancellation. I’m going to skip the tangent on additional and/or different revenue sources for either GLX or T in general and go back to the spending side. I’m all in favor of a conversation on revenues, mind you, but I share the desire to get spending under control as a first priority.
As this GLX upheaval has unfolded, I’ve found grounds for cautious optimism. But I need to separate out what’s happening to GLX specifically, from what needs to happen to the T more generally.
On the GLX specifically, we were clearly getting ripped off by unscrupulous firms. More broadly, the MBTA’s planning, budgeting, and contract admin processes were deeply culpable by way of weakness and incompetence. If it was this bad on the GLX, it may very well have been bad on other projects – though I realize they got pressed into using a different process on GLX so maybe that’s not completely fair.
I support the cancellation of GLX contracts as a way to hit the re-set button on GLX specifically. From the tone of the reports and meetings, it seems that if the T even just rebid the remaining work out on the exact same plans, but with better bid procedures, they should obtain substantial savings. And if there are additional savings to be had from some re-designs, fine, let’s do that too, if it can be done without crippling the end results for users.
For the longer term, I think the angst we’re all experiencing as T advocates is a necessary thing, IF Baker and the Legislature are committed to more than just whacking this one project (more on that below). Anyone besides me ever started up a workout regime after getting out of shape? One feels even shittier before eventually feeling better. Reforming a dysfunctional organization is similar: there are inevitably some really bad moments at the start.
So we have a Republican Governor hacking his way through the T looking for all the low-hanging fruit he can find. (Speaking as a Democrat, I would really like to hear from the Rich Davey / Deval Patrick / Dem-controlled Legislature why the hell they didn’t do this.) The question for me: is Baker / the Legislature looking to kill off the GLX, count the $xBillion saved as the “eliminated waste”, declare victory, and call it a day? That would piss me off bitterly, and I agree with F-Line it could cause grave risks to Baker’s (and others') re-election chances. Or is Baker looking at killing off the rotten procedures so as to get the T on a footing to be able to rebid the GLX at an acceptable price and then also do a better job on all future cap/ex projects? If yes, that would please me immensely; hell, I’d cross lines and vote for him if the Dems once again puke forth someone as weak as Coakley. With someone like Pollack as his Transportation Secretary and someone like Aiello on his T control board, along with the various signaling and hinting that’s come out during this GLX contract cancellation, I’ve seen some cautious grounds for believing Baker wants to go the latter route. If not, he might not be around long.
A really big indicator for me for the long run will be if we see some evidence that the T is staffing up in the department(s) responsible for planning, budgeting, bid/contract admin, and construction admin. I am strongly convinced that the T over time has been severely penny wise / dollar foolish in this regard, cutting back staff so badly that each year they “save” a million or two on payroll to end up with a staff so weak they lose (really lose, not “lose”) tens-to-hundreds of millions each year (and billions each decade) getting ripped off by private companies that are not at all stupid enough to cut their counterpart staff who put together corrupt bids. This would be another place where the new workout regime would hurt before it felt better. Baker / Pollack would have to have the guts to say, “we need to spend $xxx more per year in the short term to rebuild this internal capacity, in order to save $xxx multiplied by yy order of magnitude each year going forward.” I haven’t seen that happening yet, but I’ve seen comments from Pollack and Aiello to indicate they understand this very well. And I think Baker understands that sort of concept very well. That’s what I’m looking for more generally.
On GLX, if they start rebidding out the segments that really can’t be “value engineered” down, that’ll be a good sign from the project-specific perspective. I bet there are at least a few segments where it can be pretty quickly determined that there’s no “value engineering” to be done. (I put “VE” in scare quotes because in my line of work we call VE “neither of the above”.) Capuano’s comments from the Congressional perspective were also heartening.
So I see cancelling GLX contracts as a necessary painful first step, like that first day back to the gym after letting oneself go soft (and the even worse second day). The worst is felt among the lower-level people who lost their jobs without having been culpable for the worst sins (or any sins, in some cases). It sucks for them, I try to not lose sight of that as I sit here still employed. It still needed to be done.
