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MBTA gets new general manager
By adamg on Tue, 12/11/2018 - 11:54am
Luis Ramirez is out as T general manager and Steve Poftak is in, WBZ reports. Unlike Ramirez, from Texas and Beverly Scott, from Atlanta, Poftak is local - he's currently executive director of Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute. He's also currently vice chairman of the Fiscal Management and Control Board that oversees the T.
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Comments
Trump-style appointment and result
Sure, Baker may be a “nice Republican” but he’s still a Republican which means he gets up every day to make he world a worse place. The Ramirez appointment is from the new Republican Trump playbook; put people in charge of public entities whose objectives and experience actually oppose the mission of the public entity. Then sit back, watch it fail, get less popular, easier to de-prioritize. Put money that should’ve improved transportation in rich people’s bank accounts. Same deal federally for the environment, education, healthcare, consumer protection...
Proof?
I'm no Baker fan when it comes to the T but do you have any reason to suggest Poftak is planning to gut the system? Given all the problems, maybe Baker is actually trying to put someone in charge who can actually manage and make some improvements.
Change Management
But how do you manage change that apparently can't be changed?
We've been through this before out here, but the state has literally drowned the system in money. But you need someone with a 10 year time horizon and much freer reign over the system to actually make the changes needed.
Seems now to be less about money and more about power struggles and years long lead times to get anything done.
Pollack makes bonehead moves. Do-nothing GM is fired for cover
One great nugget in the Globe reporting. Ramirez did nothing. Pollack did everything. Baker should fire Pollack, make Poftak the MassDOT Sec, and Gonneville the T GM.
Even if you'd never vote
Even if you'd never vote Republican because you disagree with their philosophy, does that means every last Republican from now to the end of time will be a bad person?
Well that didn't last long.
Well that didn't last long.
They should just make
They should just make Gonneville GM, he seems to be the only one there who knows what he is doing
Ari O
Give the job to Ari - he's already put more thought and effort into the MBTA than anyone who has been in charge of it in the past 10 years.
No
I like Ari as a person, but no. Just no.
Ari does better work on the OUTSIDE of the organization than on the inside. Be apart of the solution, not the problem. Moving inside would just put a damper on him.
I also think anyone who has any real practical experience will walk away and say "the T is beyond fucked". This was Bev Scott's standpoint and every day she becomes more and more right. The T needs more than a new face, it needs an enema.
Thanks, I guess?
My Twitter tagline is "better on the inside pissing out than the outside pissing in."
Of course some pointed out that the current situation is inside pissing in, so that's no good.
I think I'd last about 4 days anyway. But at 300k/year that's a pretty decent payout still! (More than I make in grad school.)
Also
You apparently can get a $44K bonus if you didn't qualify for a bonus.
But god forbid they put that money toward a new bus or something
Ari
We all know the T is broken. I just feel like anyone who gets into that position with high hopes would be very quickly disappointed at how limited what you can do. Its like the POTUS (minus Trump), great ambitions but once you get in and see how it really works, your lofty ambitions quickly die off.
The T's issue goes deeper than the GM. I think that's what I am saying. We've had far too many GMs in the past 20 years or so I have been riding, and very few have made an impact. Some were well qualified (Scott), some are not (Ramirez), and some were promoted from within (Mulherin), and others from "game changes" from other state departments (Dan G). Not a single one made the T any better. Lots of small changes, but some say we're worse off than we were 20 years ago.
I think you'd leave just out of frustration. After working for the T (yes I did), I could not get away from the organization fast enough because I saw how broken it is. The entire agency is broken. Like I said "the T doesn't need a new GM, it needs an enema"
I'll also state that you're already on the inside with your TM work. It gets noticed and attention and many of your plans are already in the works (your bus stuff). This a good thing. Something we've known for decades we needed to do. A GM didn't bring it to the T, you and TM did! Remember that.........
I dunno, there's been some
I dunno, there's been some pretty big improvements in the 15 odd years I've been riding... the GPS Bus tracking and open source broadcasting has been an unqualified success for us peons that live outside the core track system, and makes it a reasonable transit choice instead of the choice of last resort. Paying for the commuter rail on phone makes it an easier "once in a while" choice. Station elevators are taking forever but have come in, one by one. Assembly is smart infill. Station time predictions are often wrong but at least if you see 20+ minutes on the electronic screen you KNOW stuff is fucked, and can leave immediately, instead of standing around for 10-15 minutes wondering what's going on.
Like the core functionality blows but that's what you get by a system held hostage by a half dozen differing governing bodies, funding sources, and decades old dysfunction. But a lot of the good stuff that has happened have been the kind of limited, single-program innovations that a good GM can push for and help make happen.
nope, not GM enabled
Nope. The T just caught up. it was eventual anyways. other systems have been using GPS tracking for well over a decade before the T decided to do it. (See SF Bart and SF Muni)
The MBTA was sued by a disabled group due to lack of access to certain stations and elevators that are out of service. This is a direct result of that lawsuit.
Again, an industry standard thing that T finally did because they had to. The MTicket app was a brainchild when they stopped selling tickets on board and conductors stopped carrying cash.
this was an initiative by the City of Somerville and developers. THEY got funding to do this. THEY worked with community groups to get buy this. THEN they got the fed to pay. The T was already on board but needed it to be funded.
One little thing
Commuter rail conductors carry cash. I rode that part of the system on one of the weekend fare weekends. I paid a conductor $10, and his newish machine printed out a receipt that I used for the rest of the day.
That said, it can be noted that either the T or Keolis have rolled out a new way to collect fares. Perhaps a portend for AFC 2.0?
I get what you're saying but
I get what you're saying but none of those things are forces of nature, DESTINED to blow in on an east wind and into the MBTA. Somebody approved them. Somebody assigned people to copy them. Somebody put funding lines in place to buy equipment and run tests. And Somebody could have spent that same time and effort stonewalling and dismissing them as "well boston is different".
The MBTA was one of the first
The MBTA was one of the first U.S. agencies to have GPS bus tracking.
They were in the middle of the road overall for subway tracking, but on the early side for the country's pre-WWII systems.
medical point of clarity
I think a better analogy would be a lung transplant or something. An enema isn't a heavy duty cure for anything other than constipation.
So what's the fix? The state political leadership needs to create solutions and then deploy them from outside?
Kinda
But it does flush out the shit.. which is my point of the analogy.
The fix? My opinion would be very unpopular so I will keep it to myself (I know, amazing..)
Here’s the thing that gets me
Are the commenters here really sad or mad that Ramirez is out? Like you point out, he had zero qualifications to run the T when hired. I can’t say I can point to something bad he did, but then again, I can’t see how he did a great job.
The Commonwealth needs to ensure whoever runs the T has the resources to get things done.
Mad at the waste of time and money
This guy was hired without qualifications, apparently did a terrible job and is getting a nice payout instead of being fired for cause. It sucks and it's time and money wasted when we needed MBTA leadership to start improving the system.
I am supposed to be psyched about this?
MBTA leadership = Governor
MBTA leadership = Governor Baker. He needs to start accepting responsibility and taking public transportation seriously, not just a side project. Is a $750 million new fare collection system, 12 years after the last revamp, really a priority? It seems like Baker feels theres lots of money in the T budget when it can be funneled to private industry, but no money when the badly needed expansion projects (the T is way over capacity) are brought up. But he had 100 million+ to bring failing GE to Bostons hottest real estate area that needs no welfare, and is so transit starved it only housing should be built.
Would it have been better
If he stayed on for his entire contract?
Honestly asking
I'm curious to know what your position was for the T and how long you were on board for. I'm not sure what aspect of the operation you saw, though I think you've mentioned working in the IT sector now?
Bring back Dukakis!!
He's the only one who actually takes the T as far as I know....
Make all the politicians take the T
Cut their parking subsidy and hand them a T pass. They can still drive, but only get reimbursed for their travel distance to the nearest T station or Commuter Rail. Let them pay $25-30 a day (going rate on Beacon Hill) ... same deal all other state workers get.
The gm is the figurehead...
...that is designed to get cut off.
Lots of bad things happen recently so why not.
I highly doubt a capable insider would take the job unless they are close to retirement, or negotiate a really nice parachute...
(T)ITANTIC
I thought the Captain was supposed to go down with the ship not jump on the first lifeboat with a boatload of cash.