MBTA Service Updates

1. What is being done to reimburse people for passes they purchased that they can’t effectively use?

   I’ve been having to take cabs from Allston to Alewife and back due to unreliable buses and trains. The wait for the 66 bus has been 30 minutes in the morning, longer at night due to the crowding.

   I appreciate the historic nature of this event, but MBTA has completely lack of preparation, a failure to plan accordingly when the storm was imminent, and total incompetence when it came to communicating with the public about the problems.

   The people of Boston are owed something in return for the terrible inconvenience a service that we OVERPAY for has caused us.

   1. Not to point too fine a point on it, but where would that refund come from? The service is already 2/3 subsidized by the taxpayers.

      1. That’s something that the Governor and the State Legislature, and the MBTA Board of Directors will have to figure out.

         Maybe once they do figure it out, they’ll also figure out how to fund the T properly without cutting service to unusable levels or raising fares to higher than cities that provide a much higher level of service.

         This whole situation is indicative of the larger problem. The T has been poorly managed, underfunded, and completely neglected for as long as I’ve lived here (15+ years).

         Boston can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be taken seriously as a city worthy of events like the Olympics, or as a long-term home for emerging industries until it fixes the public transit system. The MBTA service covers too small an area, degrades too quickly during times of trouble or overload, and shuts down too early for Boston to be viable for such things.

         None of those problems can be addressed without the City and State being willing to devote the resources to it to make it work.

         1. We are basically on the same page. Representing a district that depends heavily on the busy routes of the Transit systems core, I am completely in favor of additional funding. But that doesn’t mean a majority of my colleagues or even a majority of the voters statewide agree. That’s the challenge we face.

2. Observed on #57 bus line yesterday: Gridlock near Kenmore meant
   getting off bus and walking was the
   only timely procedure.
   Huge crowds c. 9:30 PM meant that
   most people waiting to ride the #57 could not fit. I finally got onto the third bus that came. Success came to those who were aggressive, not those who had waited the longst or were the coldest.

   1. Same on the 73 to Belmont — tranmission failure on one bus on a narrow segment of Mt Auburn had traffic backed up both ways. I got off that bus and walked/jogged back to Belmont.

3. Read the Feb. 15 Sunday Globe article on the T’s management and financial problems going back 25 years. As one person put it, the current mess is a case of the “chickens coming home to roost”.

   Contributing factors include mismanagement within the T (of physical facilities, of money, of pension plans), chronic funding problems (underfunding, change of funding mechanisms, transfer of several billion dollars of Big Dig debt to the T’s books), choices to expand the system (Greenbush Line, proposed extension of Green Line to Medford, proposed rail service to New Bedford) even when there was/is insufficient money for operation of the existing system, inadequate and/or deferred maintenance, an aging fleet of vehicles and chronic underinvestment in new vehicles.

   There’s plenty of blame to go around and plenty of parties who deserve a share. It starts with the T’s management and personnel, but extends beyond that. When now-Governor Baker was Sec. of Admin. and Finance under Gov. Weld in the early 1990’s, he (Baker) had a role in transferring Big Dig debt to the T’s books. Members of the Mass. Legislature, who lacked the cojones to periodically vote to raise the gas tax to provide better T funding, and instead passed legislation to let it increase automatically, without a vote. Members of the general public, who were too damn cheap to allow such increases, who voted to repeal that automatic increase.

   For all of the hundreds of thousands near Boston who depend on the T daily, there are millions statewide who don’t; thus, support is far from universal. It makes sense that of Mass.’s 6 million people, the 3 million nearest Boston have an interest in it, but that the 3 million in central and western Mass. don’t. Drivers resent it that a portion of the gas tax goes toward mass transit funding, even their roads would be even more clogged without the T.

   Even among T users, there are splits. Commuter rail, primarily benefiting affluent suburban commuters, costs the most, has the lowest percentage of fare recovery by riders, and receives the greatest subsidy per vehicle mile and per passenger mile. Buses have the highest fare recovery from riders and the lowest subsidy per mile. Subways fall inbetween buses and commuter rail. Perhaps, as a matter of equity, commuter rail riders should pay more and bus riders pay less.

   Now, is there anyone who still thinks our rinky-dink, tinkertoy transit system is ready for an Olympic Games in 2024?

   For those who think 10 years will be enough time to make the necessary infrastructure improvements, I recently threw out a study that the T published in 1985 (that’s right, 1985, 30 years ago), identifying alternative routes for expanding the Green Line to Medford, and estimating the cost of each. For comparison, we got to the moon in less than 10 years, built the atomic bomb in less than 6 years during WW2, built Hoover Dam during the Depression in 3 years, and built the Empire State Building in less than 3 years.

   For a more relevant example, construction of the 1900-mile transcontinental railroad began in 1862, 40 years after it was first proposed and in the middle of the Civil War, and took 7 years to complete. We are currently headed toward celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first proposal for extending the Green Line an additional 4-5 miles.

   Aram Hollman

   1. 1) Sufficient and predictable annual funding of transit service worthy of the cities and towns at the heart of the beginning of the American Revolution, High-tech, Bio-tech, The Red Sox, or The Patriots;

      2) Robust for the effects of climate change; and

      3) Credible as a public policy to mitigate our share of the impetus of climate change: CO2.

      Would we demand, ‘transit to schedule!’

   2. Bravo! I especially like the transcontinental Railway.

      The people I have met driving buses, for example, do their best.

   3. Well said, Aram. Just one refinement: The buses are actually the most deeply subsidized component of the system, covering only about 25% of their costs compared to about 50% for the rail components, including commuter rail. Also, the challenge is not an engineering challenge, like going to the moon. It is a political challenge — harder.

4. I don’t understand why, where the Orange and Red lines can run at all, they can’t run every 4-5 minutes. Switching points to shift a train from one track to another takes a matter of seconds, as I understand it, and a six-car train doesn’t need much time to stop and reverse, particularly when empty.

   1. Not sure on this. More frequent trains do require more drivers though.

5. Hmm. long standing structural and management problems, disinvestment, underfunding, high debt service, pension funding problems, taxpayers not willing to pay higher taxes to fund the T. The MBTA now looks like a poster child for chapter 9 bankruptcy to keep going. We’ll see how well a bankruptcy judge runs the T in light of a court order to extend the system (well that was another court).

6. Once again, Will, you so effectively provide us with Important information.

   Mille Grazie, Anne

   By the way I wanted to congratulate on your recent award.

7. It would be interesting for someone to do a spatial analysis to find the correlations between length of T service outage and neighborhood-level poverty. That might explain why the B-, E-, and southern portion of the Red lines are taking so long.

   Thanks for keeping us updated.

   1. I think it’s just the amount of exposure on those lines — the B got buried in street snow.

8. Can you say Receivership? End the bloat and political corruption. Loose the board of directors who seem to be answerable to no one, not the governor nor the taxpayers. Of course the stock answer will be “We need more money!” As long as the system is run by hacks there will never be enough money. This is disgraceful.

   1. I hear your frustration, but at this point, the T really is not run by hacks. It wouldn’t solve the problem, but you’d feel better about the people if you met them.

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