MBTA Winter 2015: Failure and Recovery

bigeman312 said:
Haha. I mean, for people in the know, does this amount to anything other than delayed routine maintenance?
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Well, I don't know if perfectly working switch heaters are necessarily going to change the outcome of 96 inches of snow dumped in a matter of weeks on a line that lacks adequate snowfighting equipment and has to persist for 5 more winters with an ancient car fleet that craps out when the traction motors inhale too much snow. There are far too many failure points failing for one single one to rise above the fray.

Fixing it makes some difference; working switch heaters are better than having far too many non-working switch heaters. So does sending the Red Line work locomotive that's been dead in the yard for years out for overhaul so it can be much less-dead. So do the next 37 most boring micro-items on the to-do list. That billions in state-of-repair backlog isn't all big-ticket items like new cars. Significant chunk of it is little itemizations like this x10,000, and having the available bodies to do the work.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
That billions in state-of-repair backlog isn't all big-ticket items like new cars. Significant chunk of it is little itemizations like this x10,000, and having the available bodies to do the work.
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Agreed and understood, I guess I was just hoping they were going to check off more than just this one small (but appreciated) item.
 
bigeman312 said:
Agreed and understood, I guess I was just hoping they were going to check off more than just this one small (but appreciated) item.
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I would put almost as much stock in the staffing levels as the actual work. The maint ranks are decimated by early retirements, and as high-skill labor they aren't easy to replace. Years of training required to promote from within, competitive job market that means paying the free market's going rate for hiring from outside. Watch that YouTube video that circulated about 2 years ago showing the rapid transit division's night work shift. Those are prestige jobs on the system. And they do a lot of stuff that can't be farmed out to outside contractors, because it requires such intimate daily knowledge of the system to do it correctly. So "private enterprise" is not some magic black box one can turn to for temporary surge labor on enough spread of jobs to get caught up. It's all of the above...a LOT more full-timers, a lot more outside hires paid the going rate, more aggressive building of the promote-from-within 'farm system', and lots more contractors at discrete jobs that contractors are best at.

It doesn't matter if you have a warehouse full of brand-new switch heaters if there's not enough staff to get them installed during warm months. Or when the staff you have is spread impossibly thin keeping old stuff duct-taped together to live another day that they have no time to make a proactive install replacing a piece of equipment that's working but worn and likely to fail by next winter. That's not surge-able labor when the bodies don't exist. This is a problem across rapid transit, bus, and commuter rail. Everywhere. Human resources procurement has fallen hopelessly behind on state-of-repair too.


How do they fix this? Well, for one all this politically satisfying finger-pointing about bloated employee compensation has to turn to resource allocation: which employees are creating the glut, and where is too much of a glut in one place creating too much of a cavity in another place? As long as Blue Ribbon panels keep looking for blunt instruments to address the problem like offering up another round of early-retirement volunteers to save on next year's payroll...it's going to get worse. The maint employees you least want to lose and are hardest to replace have the most to gain from early retirement by being the rarest well-compensated commodity. How does that help with surging your winter prep when retirements cut across-the-board but some retirees are way harder and more expensive to replace than others?

Until the "reform before funding" crowd is willing to drill a couple levels down to tackle the no-easy-answers issues like this, they're going to have trouble getting ahead of the system atrophy. And find out that opportunities for "surging" work are a lot more limited than they'd hoped an influx of contractors could solve. Skill isn't cheap; state-of-repair has its labor going rate just like it has its parts doing rate, and there's no ducking that bill when it comes due.
 
It looks like the MBTA is on the road to privatization.

http://wwlp.com/2015/07/16/baker-sees-mbta-privatization-as-prove-it-moment/

"The Baker administration has discussed plans to hire a private company to handle commuter rail fare collection, privatized track work to supplement the T’s in-house operation and a private company to run late-night service with smaller vehicles."

and

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...ts/hYNNipPVtGwoMkr0cbYYwO/story.html#comments

"The rare display of raw friction between Democrats and a key ally comes after party leaders ratified a state budget that included a major setback for organized labor, paving the way for wider privatization at the MBTA after a winter of slowed and canceled service — a measure organized labor fears will hand government work to nonunion workers."
 
Because outsourcing the commuter rail operations has worked out so well.
 
Is it really outsourced?

They have to hire the same workers that have been around for decades, the same machine shop, deal with the same state of repair, the same procurement team, the same bureaucracy entrenched at the T.

All that gets changed is the management and the name that riders curse.
 
Matthew said:
Is it really outsourced?

They have to hire the same workers that have been around for decades, the same machine shop, deal with the same state of repair, the same procurement team, the same bureaucracy entrenched at the T.

All that gets changed is the management and the name that riders curse.
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Mostly correct.

Front-line staff like train crews and maint personnel travel intact. But those are the highest-skill and hardest-to-find positions that you'd never want to disrupt. And there are two RR unions (each covering different-purpose employees) with contracts independently timed--from the operator contract and from each other--that travel intact. For front-line CR staff there isn't even a rough analogy with the Carmen's Union on the bus and rapid transit sides on how their work agreements are structured.

Keolis is middle- and upper-management, some imported ops people in more of a consultant role, and secondary job functions where system-specific knowledge isn't at a premium (payroll, HR, etc.) and a national/open hiring pool or remote pool gives them more options at finding talent. Basically, the non-unionites with more unrestricted at-will employment. A lot of whom would be local MBCR holdovers or even Amtrak-via-MBCR holdovers simply because they're already here, fully-trained and familar, and usually flat-out the best people for the job. But it's those who don't run/fix the trains directly and aren't under a union contract who have to hold breath with mild anxiety every time the contract changes.


Most of those same positions would exist with in-house ops. The problem with the setup on a system this large is more the additional layers of management and consulting obfuscating the overall transparency and setting up this way too convenient a mutual blame game to pass the buck back and forth. The T can be every bit the bad actor or even moreso in that setup, and that can be the driving reason for taking ops in-house and making the buck stop somewhere. It's not necessarily "Keolis bad! MBCR bad!" that's the reason for dumping the setup. Or "MBTA bad!" being the reason to keep the setup amid an agency-wide reform. Sometimes it's simply "They outgrew the setup, and it now encourages more bad actors on both sides than in-house."


Keolis, BTW, just got a 5-year extension this week on its contract to run Virginia Railway Express, because VRE was extremely happy with their performance and the growth seen under Keolis. But VRE is--depending on how independently you count ConnDOT/Shore Line East from ConnDOT/Metro North--the smallest and youngest ('92) of the northeastern commuter rail systems. So their scale and needs are totally alien to the T's and no-comparison from Keolis' own inside view.
 
kevtron2000 said:
It looks like the MBTA is on the road to privatization.

http://wwlp.com/2015/07/16/baker-sees-mbta-privatization-as-prove-it-moment/

"The Baker administration has discussed plans to hire a private company to handle commuter rail fare collection, privatized track work to supplement the T’s in-house operation and a private company to run late-night service with smaller vehicles."

and

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...ts/hYNNipPVtGwoMkr0cbYYwO/story.html#comments

"The rare display of raw friction between Democrats and a key ally comes after party leaders ratified a state budget that included a major setback for organized labor, paving the way for wider privatization at the MBTA after a winter of slowed and canceled service — a measure organized labor fears will hand government work to nonunion workers."
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Sounds like good measures At least they aren't scapesoucing (scapegoat-outsourcing) like the Keolis deal.
 
tangent said:
Sounds like good measures At least they aren't scapesoucing (scapegoat-outsourcing) like the Keolis deal.
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Are they?

https://cofarblog.wordpress.com/201...a-greater-percentage-than-in-house-bus-costs/


There are good arguments to be made here. But taking the Pioneer Institute's findings as gospel isn't one of them, and the Administration is leaning pretty hard on Pioneer's talking points in a vacuum. Their numbers are highly suspect, and have been cast in suspicion several times over. Some less-suspect second opinions informing this privatization talk would be much appreciated, but there isn't very much of that coming from Baker's staff right now. They're towing Pioneer's line pretty faithfully.

At it's most charitable you can say it's way premature for them to outwardly project that they've got the answers on what privatization does and does not do to control costs. They pretty clearly aren't drilling very deep here to map out that minefield.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Are they?

https://cofarblog.wordpress.com/201...a-greater-percentage-than-in-house-bus-costs/


There are good arguments to be made here. But taking the Pioneer Institute's findings as gospel isn't one of them, and the Administration is leaning pretty hard on Pioneer's talking points in a vacuum. Their numbers are highly suspect, and have been cast in suspicion several times over. Some less-suspect second opinions informing this privatization talk would be much appreciated, but there isn't very much of that coming from Baker's staff right now. They're towing Pioneer's line pretty faithfully.

At it's most charitable you can say it's way premature for them to outwardly project that they've got the answers on what privatization does and does not do to control costs. They pretty clearly aren't drilling very deep here to map out that minefield.
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F-Line we've been living the Big Gov't Agency / Big Union unholy alliance for years with the last winter as the nadir -- let's just see what introducing a bit of the private sector can do to loosen-up the "work"force and just perhaps coax a bit more productivity from our personal version of Greece
 
whighlander said:
F-Line we've been living the Big Gov't Agency / Big Union unholy alliance for years with the last winter as the nadir -- let's just see what introducing a bit of the private sector can do to loosen-up the "work"force and just perhaps coax a bit more productivity from our personal version of Greece
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Oh, gee...look who's trolling that union monolith canard again at the agency that has a completely heterogeneous work structure of union and non-union employees, completely different unions for commuter rail and non- commuter rail, and some union employees under a completely MA-specific union and some under completely national unions with no local chapters. Clearly each and every one of them is exactly as alike as the next, and the most simplistic of explanations totes explains all the issues involved.


Feel like giving any specific citations of which types of privatization lower costs, Professor, or are we feeling extra-special lazy this week and just motioning blindly in the general direction of WRKO's position on the AM dial?
 
Why don't they wash the CR and subway trains? The new CR engines, parked at North Station today, were filthy. They all had a black stripe up the nose. This muck must be corrosive. In the old days keeping the equipment clean was the first step in our (PMS) program. To me it also showes that the MBTA does not take pride in their responsibility.

End of rant.

P.S. The recent actions by Gov. and Leg. must be putting the fear of God in the troops because they have started to actually collect/check tickets. Something good seems to be happening. Now, how long will it last???????

Now, end of rant.
 
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There are severe delays on the Green Line right now! The suspected culprit is a power problem, and this is NOT old news. It is happening right now.
 
Jahvon09 said:
There are severe delays on the Green Line right now! The suspected culprit is a power problem, and this is NOT old news. It is happening right now.
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I just tried to take the green line from Hynes about an hour ago. Waited 15 minutes before hearing that service was severely delayed between haymarket and Arlington. (Thanks PA system) Then I checked Twitter, and the MBTA reported minor delays due to a power failure at Boylston starting at 11:00, which has since escalated to severe delays.
The worst part of all this is that you have to pay to enter, and the attendant is just standing there, not saying a word; then you hear that service is suspended between Arlington and haymarket, meaning you wasted $2.65 to listen to a PA system announce that the T is delayed (again).
(Ended up taking the orange line)

Turns out a power cable fell on a train, dented the ceiling of the train, sent sparks everywhere, and left the train dead in its tracks. They escorted the passengers out and last I checked, there is still 0 service in the city on the green line.
 
No one knows anything until the problem has been around for at least 2 hours or more, and it seems that the massive amount of problems that have occurred last winter, have only returned to wreck havoc and plague summer commuters AS THOUGH NOTHING WAS EVER DONE AT ALL!
 
Just heard on the news this morning that former MBTA chief Beverly Scott is likely to become head of the NTSB!
 
Jahvon09 said:
Just heard on the news this morning that former MBTA chief Beverly Scott is likely to become head of the NTSB!
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Experienced transportation executive and expert. If you don't have someone with decades of management experience in the industry who's able to understand transpo at a technical level, you get an NTSB that wildly overreacts or underreacts. And that's been a problem with some recent appointees...especially the overreaction part. Scott's career background is what you want in the position, not some patronage hack who's owed a political favor. I don't know who the competing candidates were, how many candidates there were, and how they compare...but her resume is a good match for the profile of what they were looking for.
 
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