MBTA GM Beverly Scott in T control center this morning. Photo by MBTA.
It's shuttle buses instead of trains between Braintree and JFK and those buses are going nowhere fast because they're on the same roads everybody else is using. Of course, first you have to get on a shuttle - Riley Foster shows us the line at Wollaston around 7:45:
The Orange Line is running just one train on only one track between Oak Grove and Wellington. Thomas photographred the platform at Wellington around 7:30:
There's a switch problem on the Blue Line.
Green Line service is allegedly normal.
Commuter rail? Ice, other trains, the usual slowing things down.
A 7 bus died at E. 4 and N, blocking traffic and other buses.
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Comments
Bus lanes now!
By stuck MBTA Bus
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 9:56am
Cities need to exclude private vehicles from key bus routes and red line shuttle routes during this crisis.
I can think of few things
By anon
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:02am
I can think of few things more dangerous for cyclists than a dedicated bus lane next to a dedicated bike lane.
False
By Ari O
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 4:08pm
First of all, several cities have combined bus/bike lanes (Madison, Wisconsin, for one). The thinking is that even if the bus has to go behind a slow cyclist, it's still faster than the traffic next to it.
I mean, even Boston has this, sort of, with the queue jump lane south off the Harvard Bridge. More would be great.
But a bike lane next to a bus lane would be fantastic. The trick is to have the whole thing buffered, and have the bus lane towards the sidewalk from the bike lane. So the bus always stays in the bus lane, and doesn't have to pull across the cyclist's path to get to a bus stop. The cyclist always stays to the left of the buses. Most of the time, the cyclists would have more room, and it might take some getting used to with buses passing cyclists on the right, but there wouldn't be the constant crossover you currently have with buses having to pull across the bike lane to service passenger stops.
What of parking? Use it to buffer out the bus/bike lane to create a cycletrack (with a narrow curb there, too). Or get rid of it all together since bicycling and transit will be better served.
Most bus lanes allow biking
By jeffkinson
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 5:41pm
Most bus lanes allow biking. I know the bus lane outside South Station does. I think you're also allowed to bike in the Silver Line lanes on Washington St, but I can't confirm this. The BTD Complete Streets guide actually explicitly endorses them, saying:
No
By Harry
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:22am
Most major roads are down to one lane in one direction. You can say you want dedicated lanes all you want, but that's not possible.
The MBTA is the one thing
By tcf098
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:48pm
The MBTA is the one thing keeping Boston from truly being that shining gem of a first class city. And they want to bring the Olympics here?
I like Beverly Scott. She has no problem saying what needs to be said. Boston is such a forward thinking, technologically advanced and innovative city, with an antiquated, decrepit, crumbling transportation infrastructure.
It's obvious that politics have put the T in a situation where it may never be fixed, without stripping everything down to bare bones and rebuilding from the ground up (organizationally speaking).
How in the world does a city's transportation system become $9 BILLION in debt with a $3 BILLION maintenance backlog? That doesn't happen overnight. As she said, that takes decades of morons running it into the ground.
Two words: Michael Mulhern
By The blame game
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:07am
Two words:
Michael Mulhern
MBTA Pensions
By Whogirl
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:19am
Just curious: how significant to all this is the pension boondoggle? Still can't believe that desk jockeys with 23 years cashed in with lifetime pensions and health insurance. What, exactly, is the true cost of this?
The pension benefits now
By Odin
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:39am
The pension benefits now require that the "desk jockey" pay their share of health insurance premiums. The pension fund is a privately managed fund, and aside from the contribution that the MBTA makes to match the contribution from the employees it does not pay the pensions of retirees.
Pensions
By piscis
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:14am
In reality the pensions haven't been the main reason for the overruns, but all these things do add up. This nugget from the 2009 MBTA Review Report sums things up nicely...
The Finance Plan inexplicably projected no increases in health care
costs between FY01 and FY08.
• In reality, employee and retiree health benefits costs increased
73%, growing from $60.6M in FY01 to $104.9M in FY08.
(http://www.mbtareview.com/)
The debt service projections actually were too high and that's helped keep the MBTA from sinking deeper in the red. They were overestimated by over half a billion for FY01-08. So I'm sure that someone could argue that Charlie and the MTA actually helped the financial situation there.
The projections weren't too high
By Kaz
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:50am
The debt was refinanced. This allowed them to make the debt service lower to attend to other immediate problems like fuel and healthcare cost increases. If you then compare that to the projections, they appear lower. So the report said "well, it wasn't the debt payments that sank you". It's disingenuous. If they'd kept the debt payments at the projected levels and not refinanced then they wouldn't have been able to afford gas or healthcare, neither of which were mutable or able to be refinanced in the same way the debt was.
THEN, the 2009 report bashes them for not following the recommendation that the MBTA not refinance its debt as much as it did. Every complaint/analysis in that 2009 report is entirely skin deep. There's no "what if" such as "what if they'd not refinanced the debt and left the numbers at the projected levels? What year would the MBTA have run out of budget with all the other cost underpredictions like healthcare and gas?".
So, the 2009 report made some great hay by claiming the debt wasn't the problem but the report never says what the perfect path through the MBTA's troubled straits of 10 years being analyzed would have been given we can do the retrospective now. Don't restructure the debt, pay all the bills, how? It's one thing for that report to say "it wasn't the debt payments, those were low low low" and another to actually dig down and realize that if they weren't made that low by refinancing what would the MBTA have done those years?
right
By piscis
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:04pm
But the fact is that the debt was refinanced. So if want to say that the MBTA lucked out that they were able to refinance and save money, then great. Bureaucrats have every incentive to fudge projections and make them seem rosier, it helps them buy shiny new things.
This woman is A joke!!!
By tim
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:00am
This woman is A joke!!! Another finger pointer!! Listen put on your BIG GIRL PANTS and do your job!!
ARRRGGGG
By RhoninFire
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:40am
People like you saying that. What does that even mean? The causes of these problems is freezing switches, old trains, and motor technology not designed to handle 70+ inches or snow. SO WHAT DOES BIG GIRL PANTS DO TO FIX THAT?
Empty rhetoric. Extremely irritating rhetoric. The only thing I can figure from you mind is the causes of these problems is because she spent the past few weeks spinning around or something. If that what you think she is doing, then what's your thought about the fact that trains are 40 years old? Or the endless switches frozen in snow that the crews can keep up (and they should be heated and she can't magically heat them)? Or the fact the trains are using motors that apparently not designed to even handle a few inches of light snow much less than 70 inches of it? Are you people just ignoring all of that? Or do you have some kind of reasoning to ignore that? Honest and serious question who are taking that viewpoint.
What it means
By anon²
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 10:59am
The commentator pushes burgers somewhere and likes to throw stones in glass houses. It make life easier to bear.
*clap*clap*clap*
By cybah
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:46am
Thank you Rhonin.. I've grown very tired of this 'get rid her' and that'll fix all our T woes mentality. It's stupid and very short sighted.
I'll keep repeating what I've been saying for weeks.
What does removing her accomplish? Nothing.
How will service improve by removing her? It won't
And she will just join the long list of MBTA GM ScapeGoats that have preceeded her. Because..
How did removing her predecessor improve service after? It didn't.
Get it? Stop with this useless argument that has zero weight in actually fixing the problem.
A modest proposal
By erik g
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:49am
Hi, Adam. I'm a U-Hub regular who is 100% OK with you not approving the insane, incoherent, sexist ramblings of anonymous posters. Or, if you worry that you're going to be called out for "censorship" by people who have no idea what the word means, what if you were to just add an option server-side to put their quotes inside a speech bubble emanating from a giant rooster.
Artist's rendition
LOL
By cybah
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:53am
just LOL! (nice pic)
While we are on the same side
By RhoninFire
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:09pm
While we are on the same side that calling for her head is dumb. In no indication I seen so far that sexism (or racism, there's been posts throwing that too) has played in this either. Davey got the same crap treatment and plenty would have and had said things like "big boy pants" with the same level of derision whom I would have question them on their reasoning as I had above.
Don't make me get into manage two different arguments at the same time (or if Tim never responds, spend the rest of this thread completely diverting from the topic to talk about sexism).
Duly noted.
By erik g
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:48pm
I hereby withdraw my accusations of sexism, though I stand by my "insane and incoherent" statement.
I guess you missed...
By lbb
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:59pm
...the "cute black lady" comment.
Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.
And Abe says...
By whyaduck
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:59pm
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
attributed to Abraham Lincoln
A-park-alypse
By ErnieAdams
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:14am
Word is that there's nowhere at all to park downtown. So many people drove to avoid the T that if you got into the city after 9:30, you were out of luck. People circling for hours now and coming up empty.
I suppose one could drive to a parking garage ...
By jmeltzer
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:22am
and take the T in from there.
(Yes, I know, that doesn't help.)
Worked for me
By lbb
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:00pm
I drove to Alewife and took the Red Line to DTX. THAT part of the Red Line was working, but very very crowded.
That works until the Alewife
By anon
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:59pm
That works until the Alewife garage fills up.
(They *could* run just the underground parts of the subway even during the biggest blizzards, unless they need to park trains underground or something. But instead they chose to shut down all rail.)
That's not surprising. If
By anon
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:39pm
That's not surprising. If there were "enough places to park" then there wouldn't be any downtown left. It would all be bulldozed and paved over.
Like, you know, Oklahoma City, or Hartford.
That's why the T is so important. We can't replace it with driving. Not only are highways unable to handle the flow, but there's simply nowhere to park all those cars. It just don't work in a city like Boston.
One question
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:35am
When will the transit riot at the Statehouse be taking place?
.
This is olde school Sons of Liberty time to ask for redress from our government.
You have it backwards
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:23pm
Americans are supposed to stand up against government spending and taking our rights away, not to demand that the government do a better job providing a critical service.
Don't you listen to talk radio and watch them truth news networks?
I would love to be there.
By Lyndsay
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:01pm
I would love to be there myself, but I'm guessing everyone who is mad about transit and cares about this issue is, like me, playing crazy catchup on work they've missed this week due to these snow days and crazy commutes.
Plus, getting to the State House would actually entail getting on the T to get there in the first place, sooooo... we'd all be incredibly late. It's a catch 22.
Today's transportation
By Lyndsay
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 3:20pm
Today's transportation meeting was open for public comment. According to the Globe, the 20 or so people were mostly media people.
What new equipment or repairs
By anon
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:08pm
What new equipment or repairs would have prevented these problems?
The Blue Line trains are new. The Green Line Type 8s are reasonably new. But those lines had problems just like the others.
Red and orange. Do your
By Lyndsay
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 2:24pm
Red and orange. Do your research. It's been covered extensively in the Globe the last couple weeks.
Also, AC motors, which other cities converted to a long time ago. The age of the car doesn't necessarily matter when you're running it with a DC motor.
Switches.
By Cutriss
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 3:30pm
Switches.
All AC trains (instead of
By anon
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 3:49pm
All AC trains (instead of many on orange and red that are DC). This is why the blue line trains were working (though the switches are old and thats what gave out there). Chicago recently finished changing over to AC. Its not hard to find other systems in the world that get lots of snow and cold (more than us) but keep operating. And just to go ahead to the yearly summer delays, there are also systems that get the same or more heat than us, but keep operating. There are not, however, systems that run well with continued lack of investment. In the 80s we used to laugh at the USSRs infrastructure and how it was poorly built and falling apart due to lack of investment and quality. Now its the rest of the world laughing at the US.
God I would love to be a fly
By Lyndsay
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 12:56pm
God I would love to be a fly on the wall in Scott's office right now. or Baker's.
Commuter rail was a mess
By roadman
Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:45pm
7:30 from Reading (the only train from Reading on the "Winter Limited Service Schedule") didn't leave Reading until about 8:35. Green Line was suprisingly normal - not may people on the platform and a mostly empty E train arrived shortly after I got into North Station subway.
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