Re: Dr. Beverly Scott resigns
Aside from being plucky, was she any good? What concrete reforms did she introduce? Late night service? How do we know she was great or bound for greatness?
David Gunn is the last transit administrator that I could point to who'd be worth hiring/firing over his personal influence over the systems he ran. Everyone else seems to mostly be captive of their context....I didn't see Dr. Scott smashing paradigms. So I don't see celebrating or bemoaning her loss.
Meanwhile, CityLab is pretty clear in believing that she left a mess in Atlanta, and credits her successor there with what it titles
The Remarkable Turnaround of Atlanta Public Transit
I agree with you: personally, I don't know what things she actually did or didn't do as head of the T. Like many, I was entertained by her spirit at the press conference yesterday, but this means nothing as to her management skills. I confess - I know nothing of whether she was a good or a bad manager, but it seems that most of the people crying out their support for her on this board right now have their support based largely on a combination of vicarious outrage via her press conference and anti-Charlie Baker sentiment, rather than stating any concrete achievements she has done.
Let me share an anecdote: long before North Point got built, I rode my bike (back then, a mountain bike) through the property, and somehow got through the fence into that MBTA yard - you know, the big purple maintenance building. It was getting into the evening in summer, and outside the building were standing a group of about a dozen goonish men, literally cartoonishly union guys, the kind you see when they show the lunks beating up the anti-Vietnam hippies, etc... I was just a curious teenager about the train yards but when I tried to ask them what went on here they all started making mocking, rude remarks about my bike and laughing. Just a bunch of fat guys doing absolutely nothing, standing around and then insulting someone who came by. This is my perception of one important aspect of the back recesses of the MBTA.
Whighlander gets crucified for his (at times somewhat inflammatory) remarks about the T, but if you read the news and between the lines, and have lived in Boston and know the system (my dad - journalist x 40 yrs, mom - in city then state govt off and on for same duration), you have to acknowledge that the political graft and glut and is a severe, severe problem. No, it's not the whole problem, but it is an ENORMOUS one, and the T is just rife with these issues. They really do need to be fixed, and from the perspective of the taxpayer, it's not fair to demand more money to support a broken agency. I do believe this - and be assured, I am all for more tax dollars to fund transit expansion. But the systemic issues need to be fixed before you can argue for more money. Plain and simple. I dont see this as much on this forum, but in Mass., oftentimes merely raising this issue gets people flipping out and levying accusations of conservatism, reactionary, etc... as if you're not allowed to point this out. I'm holding my own opinion on Baker because I have yet to see what he will do, but against my personal inclination I loved how Romney took on Bulger and Amorello and the Turnpike Authority (before he started flying off to SC while still the gov'r to bash his own state) and am hopeful that Baker can be a financial technocrat regarding govt reform as well.
Regarding the T's debt, the other arm of the problem, there's no reason in my mind that this cannot be fixed in parallel with the waste and glut. It's stupid that the Big Did debt got put on the T, and righting this wrong is somewhat separate from actually giving truly "new" funds to the T.
Regarding Scott, I'm not happy she just resigned, because it certainly will allow her to just be the personification of a problem that is deeper than any one man. But I don't see her as a hero, either, mainly because I really know nothing about what she's done about the T. She could be a huge loss - maybe, maybe not. But supporting her or being glad she's gone, merely because you hate Deval or Charlie, isn't really very logical. And we need some serious logic in our state's politics.
