MBTA Winter 2015: Failure and Recovery

Here's the first-ever vid of the first train set of Washington, DC's new WMATA rail cars put into revenue service!

I can only HOPE that the new rail cars for the MBTA's Red & Orange Lines might look something like these!!

Love that tapered shape of the upper halves of the new AND the old cars!! :cool:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktxabcRqXE
 
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They should have those installed on the new Red & Orange Line rail cars when they go into the design / production stage. :cool:
 
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Senate President Rosenberg gave some thoughts on potential MBTA reforms in a wide ranging conversation at a news forum. via WBUR.

The relevant comments:

Rosenberg said lawmakers remain open to working with Baker on a new structure to manage the MBTA, but echoed other legislators’ concerns about what powers it would have and the data behind a Baker-appointed task force’s report on the transit agency and the way it operates.

“You can create all the savings you can, with all of the tools that are available, you still will not have enough money to operate the T at the level that you would expect it to operate,” Rosenberg said.

“All kinds of revenue would be on the table,” he said. “A typical package is a blend of revenue from a variety of sources.”


“This phantom 2.2 billion dollars, what do you know about it?” Sahl asked, referring to the task force pointing to the MBTA underspending its capital budget by roughly $2 billion.

“It’s so phantom I know very little about it,” Rosenberg said. “And that is a big question on people’s minds. What is that 2.2 billion? Is it 2.2 billion sitting in the bank? They could’ve been spent and still can be spent? Or is it 2.2 billion dollars’ worth of bonding authorization which they were unable to use because they didn’t have a way of paying it back. Those are two very distinct situations. And we don’t yet know the answer.”

Rosenberg also defended the Pacheco law, named for his colleague Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat and the Senate president pro tem. The law restricts the government’s ability to privately contract for services and the task force recommended that it be lifted for the MBTA.

The law has “worked in the places where it’s been applied and followed exactly as it was written,” Rosenberg said.

You have to prove you can save “at least a penny” through privatizing a service, Rosenberg said. “Some people don’t want to go through that exercise proving that they can actually save money,” he added. “So for some people it’s an ideological tool to beat up on public employees.”

Baker has submitted legislation suspending the Pacheco law for the MBTA and the House budget also includes a temporary suspension.

Baker has also instructed state agencies to review rules and regulations that could be blocking business growth. Baker’s directive has drawn concern from left-leaning and environmental groups.

Rosenberg said sometimes the state needs to be “stricter than the federal government’s regulations, and we should use our own best judgment, what’s in our best interest, to protect ourselves and our public health, our air, water, etcetera, etcetera.”
 
One official called it a “rapid diagnostic” and said its data and conclusions would have to be examined more closely by the proposed MBTA fiscal and management control board, if it is approved by the Legislature.

Woohoo! We need a study for the study!
#YoureDoingItWrong

Btw, this article is really incredible. The amount of fail is astronomical.
 
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Public forum Tuesday on improving MBTA

BOSTON — Suffolk University is hosting a public forum this week to examine ideas for improving service and equipment failures at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority while increasing revenue for the struggling agency.

The forum will be held Tuesday morning at Suffolk's C. Walsh Theatre. It will examine possible solutions in light of major problems the MBTA experienced this winter and a critical report on T management issued by a task force assembled by Gov. Charlie Baker.

Panelists will include: Stephanie Pollack, Massachusetts Transportation Secretary; Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation; and Greg Sullivan, director of the Pioneer Institute.

The free event is the latest in the Building Boston 2030 series of public forums presented by the Suffolk University Center for Real Estate in collaboration with the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20150504/NEWS/150509964
 
Public forum Tuesday on improving MBTA

BOSTON — Suffolk University is hosting a public forum this week to examine ideas for improving service and equipment failures at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority while increasing revenue for the struggling agency.

The forum will be held Tuesday morning at Suffolk's C. Walsh Theatre. It will examine possible solutions in light of major problems the MBTA experienced this winter and a critical report on T management issued by a task force assembled by Gov. Charlie Baker.

Panelists will include: Stephanie Pollack, Massachusetts Transportation Secretary; Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation; and Greg Sullivan, director of the Pioneer Institute.

The free event is the latest in the Building Boston 2030 series of public forums presented by the Suffolk University Center for Real Estate in collaboration with the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20150504/NEWS/150509964
For some reason Jim Aloisi isn't billed, even though he's on the panel...
https://twitter.com/JimAloisi/status/595230222624157696
 
As an aside, I was pretty disappointed with Stephanie Pollack's dismissal of Commonwealth Magazine's reporting on inconsistencies and lack of citation in the report.

Yeah. It was an eminently political report, and I'm sure the Guv's office has told all agency heads to close ranks around it. So she probably does not actually have a ton of freedom to throw the study under the bus.
 
In her answer regarding the bad data, she focused a lot more on the bond capitalization issue than the labor issue, going into great detail about available unspent funds in the past few years without really defending the panel's argument about "missed work days" other than to say "if they have nothing to hide, then why do they oppose the control board?" I very much like Secretary Pollack but I thought that was pretty unfair--as the Commonwealth Magazine piece shows, the burden of proof is still on the panel to justify its assertion that the MBTA has an unusually bad absentee rate amongst public transit agencies...
 
Busses beat me to it, but I particularly enjoyed the following comment,

"I am not going to quibble about the choice of metrics and comparisons. Suffice to say, there are others that could just as reasonably have been selected that would not have painted as dire a picture. I will note that the lack of context and factual support for some numbers is problematic. I tell people all the time, PowerPoints? I need to see sentences, paragraphs, and data sets."

As an aside, I was pretty disappointed with Stephanie Pollack's dismissal of Commonwealth Magazine's reporting on inconsistencies and lack of citation in the report.

I definitely second Beverly Scott on that one. I find it frankly a little ridiculous that a report as important and prescriptive as this is not written out in a more complete and considered form than PowerPoint slides. It's also curious considering that previous comprehensive MBTA reviews like "Born Broke" and the D'Alessandro report were released as written documents.
 
I definitely second Beverly Scott on that one. I find it frankly a little ridiculous that a report as important and prescriptive as this is not written out in a more complete and considered form than PowerPoint slides. It's also curious considering that previous comprehensive MBTA reviews like "Born Broke" and the D'Alessandro report were released as written documents.

GDX -- This is the same Bev who was Absentee in Chief!!

Pingponging from conference to conference and pinballing from visit to visit without much thought about what was happening in Boston -- just make sure the hotel gets the drycleaning right

Note remember this report was based on all recent previous reports and studies -- this report was intended as emergency action guidance

Think of a WWII battlefield -- the plans for the next action have to be put on hold because the bad guys are over-running your unit head quarters and you need to respond instantly
 
This is May, right?

I just found out yesterday that there is still a huge pile of dirty snow somewhere in South Boston! :eek:
 
I rode by a snow farm with a big pile of dirty snow along Dry Dock Ave.
 
Maybe THAT is where it was shown on the news! :eek:
 
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The is also a snow farm across from Assembly on the Orange Line which was already discussed. Although at this point I think the piles are 51% debris / 49% snow.
 
The is also a snow farm across from Assembly on the Orange Line which was already discussed. Although at this point I think the piles are 51% debris / 49% snow.



I was telling the landlord back in February that some of this snow might still stick around by May or June. I was RIGHT! :eek:
 
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I was telling the landlord back in February that some of this snow might still stick around by May. I was RIGHT! :eek:

Jahvon -- I was down near Assembly yesterday -- there's a pile under the entrance & exit ramps and the deck of I-93 as you head North toward the Rt-16 exit

No way to gauge how much is there -- but it looks like total shade -- may -- this one might still be there on the 4th -- I'll second you
:eek:
 
Another opinion piece by Aloisi:

Time for action on MBTA
System needs strong leadership and funding, not distraction of control board

JAMES ALOISI May 6, 2015

A FOG OF CONFUSION threatens to obfuscate the hard, persistent facts that ought to dominate our thinking about how to restore and rejuvenate our public transportation system. That confusion comes naturally from the avalanche of opinions, debates, media reports and op-ed pieces that have been offered up in response to the report of the governor’s special commission on the MBTA, and to the filing of the administration’s transit legislation.

I’d like to focus on three points that, for me, represent the core issues that will influence whether we will build a forward-looking, equitable, and effective set of solutions to modernize and improve our public transportation system:

Governance – The governor, as he rightly should have, now has full control over MassDOT with the resignation of the entire MassDOT board. That board should be appointed and move forward without delay to support Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack’s performance management agenda. We do not need a new layer of bureaucracy or additional legislation to get the job done.

Funding – There is no current proposal to make net new revenue available to the MBTA. MBTA revenues are, in fact, being cut dramatically – to the tune of well over a half billion dollars between now and 2020. Worse still, actions that could enable significant investment in MBTA infrastructure without raising any new taxes, fares, or fees are not yet being taken.

Equity – The prospect of significant fare increases has been raised as a real one, flying in the face of modal equity and threatening to upend the egalitarian transit system that ought to be the centerpiece of an economically diverse and integrated society. State and local leaders should take fare increases off the table until such time as the T has demonstrated that it is on a clear turn-around course.

Let’s take a deeper dive into each point, as an aid to understanding more clearly the opportunity that still lies before us, and how to take advantage of it in a smart, equitable, and effective manner.

First, with respect to governance, it’s a good thing that the entire MassDOT board resigned, and that Gov. Baker now has full control over MassDOT. I called for this; so did the conservative Pioneer Institute. This is not a partisan issue: Any governor ought to have control over the government he or she leads. That is what elections are all about.

Despite this unfettered gubernatorial control, the administration continues to call for a new layer of bureaucracy to oversee the T – a so-called fiscal control board. Such a control board is an unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy destined to interfere in a material way with the historic reforms of 2009, which intended to create significant cost and operational efficiencies by adopting a “one MassDOT” structure and culture. A control board by definition disrupts and threatens that hard-fought reform. Boards, in my experience, rarely facilitate; more often they frustrate. Having two boards will inevitably become a drag on the ability of the governor and the transportation secretary to move with agility and decisiveness.

What MassDOT needs right now is leadership from a strong, capable secretary – and it has that in Secretary Pollack. Let her run with the ball without the constraints and politics that inevitably accompany more layers of gubernatorial appointees. The governor now has the unfettered ability to appoint a MassDOT board under his full control, and that new board can work with Secretary Pollack to take decisive action consistent with his agenda and priorities.

Second, with respect to funding, the MBTA must make significant investments in its infrastructure to address the many critical state-of-good-repair needs that go directly to the safety and reliability of the system. The administration’s own estimates are that these needs exceed $6 billion. Such a daunting but unavoidable challenge must be addressed with adequate new funding. Instead, partly as a consequence of the special commission’s faulty report, and partly because of the administration’s proposed legislation, we are about to reduce planned funding to the T. Lets look at the details.

The administration’s proposed legislation eliminates in full all of the additional state funding to the MBTA that was agreed to and enacted into law in 2013, as part of the overall deal to raise the gas tax and T fares. It also dedicates all of the T’s state contract assistance money to debt retirement, leaving a gaping hole in its operating budget. Together, the loss of anticipated revenue exceeds a half billion dollars.

The solution to the MBTA meltdown cannot be based upon such a significant reduction in MBTA funding. That simply makes no sense. Some say that the state general fund revenue that’s proposed for elimination in the bill was always subject to legislative appropriation, and therefore never absolutely certain – but that is true for almost any state funding. And once the obligation was enshrined in the law as an essential part of the overall deal, even if it is subject to appropriation, it becomes something close to a moral obligation that is subject to a different kind of scrutiny and review. Cutting this funding in its entirety sets the MBTA on an inexorable pathway to higher fares and reduced levels of service – exactly the kind of retrenchment and modal inequity that will keep the T locked in a downward spiral.

So we are left in a weirdly unreal place, where everyone clearly recognizes the massive investment needs of the T, but there is as of yet no plan to free up new revenue. Instead, we have a proposal for more than a half billion in cuts. It is, despite what the special commission proclaimed, another round of reform without revenue. One would have thought that we learned our lesson regarding this failed approach to transportation policy, but we appear to be living in a Through the Looking Glass world turned inside out.

At risk of repeating myself, there are at least two ways to free up significant new revenue to enable the MBTA to get moving this year with critical infrastructure repairs, without having to raise taxes, fares or fees. The first is to transfer a portion of highway funding to transit, a tactic that will defer some highway projects for a short time but will level the funding playing field and provide the T with an immediate injection of funding. This can be accomplished equitably by limiting those deferred highway projects to projects within the MBTA service district. The second approach is to transfer a large portion of MBTA debt to the Commonwealth. Together, these actions can free up as much as $300 million annually without asking anyone to pay more. This kind of money can go a long way toward getting the job done. It’s the least painful approach to getting substantial new revenue to the T quickly, and one that keeps the governor’s pledge not to raise taxes.

Third, with respect to equity, there has been a lot of talk and inference about the need for a large fare increase. The administration’s bill proposes to remove the fare cap that helped ensure an affordable, egalitarian transit system, a clear signal that a substantial fare increase is in the works. Officials have floated the idea of a sliding, means-tested fare structure as a way to manage the question of affordability for those of limited means. This is a well-intentioned idea that is likely to have serious unintended negative consequences.

On its face it sounds right to say that a sliding fare structure is fair and responsive to the realities of an economically diverse ridership. But this thinking is old thinking, and fails to recognize the emergence of private sector funded micro-transit options as credible private sector competition in the transit space. A private start-up called Bridj has made significant inroads offering a premium transit service within the urban core.

Bridj is a venture-capital funded business that is now taking its positive Boston/Cambridge experience and expanding it to other cities nationally. They have funding, an attractive and innovative product that responds to the mobility preferences of a more transit-oriented younger generation, and a smart, agile tech-oriented team that delivers a reliable, speedier service at a premium price. This trend is destined to proliferate. A recent article in The Atlantic noted that “better data on mobility patterns and wide smartphone access have made flexible, on-demand transit more possible than ever.”

It stands to reason: If you raise T fares to a point where the regular fare isn’t much different than the Bridj fare, people of means will choose to take the nicer alternative and will move to Bridj. Other competitors and private sector shuttles will follow. The T will soon become the transit mode of necessity, and not of choice. Once that happens the T is doomed, because its riders will never have the political clout to argue effectively for a proper level of investment and service quality and reliability.

We should not want, and cannot allow, the T to become the poster child for the tale of two cities. We have a public transportation system because having an egalitarian mobility platform reflects our values – values that do not allocate access to jobs, health care, and opportunity on the basis of personal wealth. The deck is already stacked in favor of those with means; something like an egalitarian public transportation system that is maintained to offer convenient and reliable service for all helps level the playing field.

One thing is certain: The competitive, choice-based micro-transit mobility paradigms of our times – Uber, Bridj and emerging alternatives – make it all the more urgent to ensure that people who can afford to take the T, those who take the T by choice, stay on the T. If they flee to emerging micro-transit options we will never get them back. Massachusetts, and especially cities like Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, need to engage this reality head-on, and that may require a radical rethink of how we manage and fund our public transportation system. We won’t be able to engage that process in a meaningful way until we first modernize and improve the existing system.

A final point on fares: There is a false premise that continues to hang out in the fog as a misleading beacon – namely that the T’s fare box recovery numbers are significantly below national equivalents, and therefore justify a fare increase. This allegation has been disproven in several reports, most recently by the Frontier Group, and in a 2011 report commissioned by A Better City and authored by the respected former New York transportation commissioner Astrid Glynn. Both reports make one salient point: Direct comparisons between transit authorities are virtually impossible to make given significant differences in service types, districts, and service areas. The Frontier Group has reported that when compared fairly and accurately, the MBTA “often falls in the middle of the pack among US transit agencies.” The T is even a leader in one area: The fare box recovery ratio for the Green Line light rail service is the highest in the nation. So the special commission was just plain wrong when it reported that the MBTA has a low fare box recovery ratio, and this cannot become a pretext for another fare increase.

I support the administration’s efforts to find effective solutions to improving the MBTA, including introducing more reforms to ensure a stronger level of management control over work rules. I am convinced that the governor and Secretary Pollack are well-intentioned in their desire to improve the T. But I remain at a loss to understand the wisdom of embarking on a policy of retrenchment and modal inequity, or of enacting a series of reforms based upon a special commission report that has been shown to be seriously flawed. MassINC Polling Group’s Steve Koczela has done careful analytical work that undermines the report’s findings on absenteeism; the Frontier Group has shown that the commission’s fare box recovery numbers are wrong and unreliable; the commission itself could not respond to questions posed at a recent legislative hearing regarding its finding of $2 billion in unspent capital money (it was really unspent bond cap, not cash, which was the clear inference that was leaked to the media). I know many of the commission members personally and have great respect for them, but that document has not proven to be a reliable platform for building an MBTA renewal program.

The MBTA needs meaningful action now. The tools are in place for that to happen. The lingering question is whether we will use this opportunity moment to develop a consensus-oriented approach to modernizing and improving our public transportation system, and introduce true modal equity to our transportation funding system.

Meet the Author
James Aloisi

James Aloisi is a former state transportation secretary and a principal in the Pemberton Square Group.

source:
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/time-for-action-on-mbta/
 
We've had so many monster snowstorms this past winter, that some of it is still not gone yet. I just hope & pray that next winter is nowhere near like the one that we just had!!
 

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