Hey, there! Log in / Register
So you think you can run the T?
By adamg on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 2:44pm
The MBTA is holding a Be the MBTA General Manager for a Day contest. Spend the day with Rich Davey as he battles aged infrastructure and lack of funds. Tour the Everett repair shops and the High Street control center:
Tell us in less than 150 words why you want to be the MBTA GM for a day. All contestants must be at least 18 years of age.
Deadline is Jan. 31.
Via Justin Sabourin.
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Yawn
I didn't see an agenda item for telling the State House off, so it's going to be another completely useless day running the MBTA on shoestrings and bubblegum.
Unless the state takes back the Big Dig debt that it saddled the MBTA with, nothing new will occur and we'll float along, one rail fire and derailment to the next, until the entire system collapses in on itself.
Set the wayback machine...
Can anyone refresh my memory as to under which administration and whose speakership the big dig debt was shifted over to MBTA?
I don't think it is, except
I don't think it is, except for the transit projects which were required as Big Dig mitigation.
Finneran and Celucci
It was in 1999. The MBTA was taxed (literally) with covering the costs associated with keeping the Big Dig in alignment with the federal Clean Air regulations by compensating for the increased pollution from the greater car volume. I think it came to about $1.8 billion.
The MBTA now spends something like 30% of its budget on debt interest and it's only getting "forward funding" from the sales tax as part of the same 1999 legislation...at the time, it was idiotically projected to keep climbing like crazy. That would have given the MBTA more than enough to cover costs and the debt. This way, Celucci could claim to be anti-tax and fiscally smart...by lumping part of the Big Dig cost on the MBTA. In 2007, a report came out detailing all of this...the State House basically ignored it.
The only thing the MBTA GM should be tasked with doing is pushing the legislature to undo this insanity. THEN, maybe the GM could actually do something to fix the system with its budget instead of covering 10+ year old debt it never should have been saddled with in the first place.
It was the Dukaks
It was the Dukaks administration in 1990 that agreed to the MBTA mitigation projects for the Big Dig
Mass DEP # 310 CMR 7.36
Here is a link to the 2005 ammendments of the original 1990 agreement
http://www.mass.gov/dep/air/laws/cattsd.pdf
So?
The MBTA improvements weren't the problem. It was the funding. It was originally assumed to come from the Fed like most other transit improvements. But with the huge cost over-runs on the Dig, the State wanted a release valve for more funding. So, they put it on the MBTA's credit card and promised them they could pay it off as part of their ingenious ever-rising sales tax revenue plan.
I've toured the OCC
And it is AWESOME. My Urban Infrastructure class went on a field trip there last semester.
I propose
We let the UH autistic train kid go! He's absolutely love it!