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New T management: No fare increases or service cuts on Jan. 1
By adamg on Fri, 08/07/2009 - 11:16am
One of the first steps of the new regime at the MBTA is to table proposed fare increases originally scheduled for Jan. 1, to give a new outside panel enough time for a "top to bottom" review of T finances, spokesman Colin Durrant said this morning.
However, the T is going ahead with public meetings on possible fare hikes and service cuts. The first is scheduled for this Monday, 4-7 p.m. in the Gardner Auditorium in the State House. T officials have portrayed the "workshops" as a way for the public to help decide between either a 19.4% average fare hike or massive service cuts to help make up anticipated deficits over the next three years.
In the past, Secretary of Transportation James Aloisi - who helped maneuver T General Manager Dan Grabauskas out of his job last night - has said he would chose fare increases over service cuts because T services, once cut, tend not to come back.
Gov. Patrick is expected to name a three-member commission to look into T operations either today or Monday.
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Comments
T Commission
Governor Patrick
Please do yourself a favor and do not name Phil Puccia (Kerasiotes hack) Jim McGrail (ditto) Steve Silveira of Mintz Levin (Weld-Kerasiotes hack and Puccia tag along) to the commission
Just a thought
But I hear we're paying for the first openly gay ex-political appointee (or whatever the press always likes to title Grabauskas when they talk about him) until May anyways. I hear he might have some experience with the data too.
Sexual status?
He's not Randy Price. Why do people keep bringing up his sexual preferences?
As for the buyout, hey, I thought our governor was some sort of high-priced lawyer in an earlier life. Surely he knows at least a little about contract law.
Commentary on the media
I don't know why they bring it up. I brought it up only as a commentary on the media's obsession with it (as you notice) as opposed to any kind of fixation on my part. Maybe that wasn't totally clear.
Phew, my faith in you is restored!
I must have blinder on because I keep missing teh ghey references, but maybe I'm just looking at the wrong media outlets. Or would that be the right media outlets? :-).
Or left?
Blue Mass Group blogger just today? For shame...
Here's a bunch of money now please leave
I think Deval got serious separation money from his corporate
(Ameriquest, Coke, Texaco) gigs. So I'm guessing he knows
that game from the receiving end rather than the giving end.
Clarify headline?
I read it as saying there will be service cuts on 1/1/10 instead of a fare increase -- but I don't think that's what the body of the article says.
Or what?
Hopefully the logical OR clarifies things :-).
Inept inept inept
Shouldn't there have been an investigation BEFORE you kicked out the guy holding it all together with duct tape and his teeth and fingernails?? Deval, what happens when you finally realize what everyone from the MBTA advisory board on down has been telling you: the debt combined with a faulty funding plan using the sales tax is crippling the T's ability to meet all of its obligations.
It's that stupid and simple. The fact that you're all like "we're going to get to the bottom of it now!" is so hindsight that you've come out your own ass just to shove your head back up it again.
Also, how stupid does Aloisi think we all are? The proposed cuts are things like "no weekend commuter trains" and "buses stop at noon" and crap like that. HUGE changes that would severely effect the availability of public transportation and be a HUGE scar on the face of this *supposedly* European-esque city. IF at some point the budget/debt were fixed, these aren't the sorts of things that would "tend not to come back"...you tool.
Man, this whole mismanagement of the MBTA is like the final straw for me with Deval it seems.
Kaz, agreed!
It's so insulting that they think we're so stupid. Guys, at least try to make it look like due diligence before you fire the guy on our dime!
Pop!
Out of all the people who have said what I was thinking way better than I could have, this is the best yet.
To me, one of the most insulting things in the
proposed service cuts is the suggestion that having Green Line and commuter rail trains continue to stop at certain surface stations that THEY WILL PASS THROUGH ANYWAY will be a waste of money for the T.
Come on now, it's not like these stops have large station buildings that are staffed with ticket agents or anything like that.
There are cleaning,
There are cleaning, lighting, and snow removal costs which could be low on a stop by stop basis, but do begin to add up collectivly
Good points, except I can't remember the last time I
saw a cleaning crew at a surface Green Line or commuter rail station.
And I think most reasonable people would find it extremely difficult to believe it really costs the T over $600,000 a year per stop to keep the platform lights on and shovel snow a few times a winter.
As the saying goes, this is a classic example of "penny wise - pound foolish" - especially for the commuter rail stations they want to close.
Service costs separate from the physical station?
Making a stop increases the trip times past that stop, so do they include costs as a result of that in their calculations?
Also, does making a stop and then accelerating increase wear/stress? Does it increase energy usage? Other costs?
Pressure on the pols
I think a lot of those stop cuts were meant to stir up anger with politicians and residents who use those stops. I'm sure those cost savings were highly inflated.
Good start, but...
This is good to hear. I'm not against a fare increase in theory--I'm opposed to fare increases while service gets increasingly worse.
But I hate how all the "public meetings" are scheduled on weekdays, with the latest starting at 6:00--and those are in the suburbs. I work until 5:30 and would have no way of making it to any of these, and I suspect many people are in the same position.
What we need in a new MBTA general manager
Long suffering Train Rider requests:
Deval needs this too
If Deval is going to save ANY face and pray for a second term, he absolutely has to make MBTA reform the key now. It's front and center and he's failed at the casinos and gas tax as the two big X's from the judges. He needs someone to come in and not only fight for customer service, but he needs someone who's going to shove a bag of malfunctioning switches up the State House's butts and turn on the power. He's not getting his way on Beacon Hill at all and so the next person into the job needs to pitbull the legislature since he's proved incapable of doing it regardless of the issue.
Bizarro T
What we need is an alternate universe. As long as the T GM is hemmed in by debt on one side, an apathetic union/patronage-fed workforce on another side, and a decrepit transit infrastructure on another side, he or she has very little room to maneuver, and as far as I can tell it's not enough room to actually change anything in a meaningful way.
Maybe we need a GM who is willing to come in, bull through a total dissolution and rebuild of the T, and then walk away not caring that he or she has spent every ounce of political capital and power. He or she would have a helluva legacy, and his or her successor would have the makings of a decent system.
I've seen the suggestion elsewhere: Dukakis?
Actually, what we need is a class-action lawsuit
oddjob, weird! For some reason your post reminded me of how the Boston Harbor Cleanup happened. Back in the 80s, a Quincy pol stepped in some poop at his local beach, prompting him to file a lawsuit. The lawsuit resulted in the Fed government forcing Mass. to fix the disintegrating, neglected, underfunded sewer infrastructure. With court oversight. Or else. Wonder if that could happen again? Instead of a Clean the Harbor Tea Party we could have a Fix the Friggin "T" party.
Exactly
You are absolutely right. These are the two options I've been predicting are out there for the MBTA at this point:
1) Everyone from the different transportation and advisory boards to Beacon Hill is going to have to bite the bullet on the 2000 MBTA Debt Experiment and apologize and put the burden back on the state's books (who knows, maybe we can bug Obama for a little help with it once it's there). Legislation putting a more intelligent funding plan in place while also reeling this quasi-public/private entity back into State control for its troubles needs to be enacted.
OR
2) To hell with trying to pull out of this flat spin we're in. Push the stick forward and point the nose of the plane into the ground. Ride the bomb, Slim Pickens, and blow it all up. Put the MBTA into bankruptcy, have the State purchase the assets off of the debtors who currently hold the MBTA's debts, thus putting it all back on the State's books anyways. And now that the whole system is back in State control and all bets are off, start over again from scratch and build a new ship since we were completely incapable of righting the last one we just sank into the harbor.
One way or another, the current model is NOT viable. I really hope the three-man investigatory committee takes this to heart. Personally, I don't think our elected officials, all of them, are intelligent enough, or capable enough to accomplish anything of value, for Option #1 to occur.
I hope nobody outbids the State at auction.
The decision should not be
The decision should not be whether to increase fares or to cut service. The decision should be between the options "increase fares" and "have the state take back the debt it unfairly burdened the MBTA with, figure out a better plan that funding the MBTA with sales tax revenue which is falling and will not be recovering anytime soon due to the economy, and then engage in the smart use of funds."
Questions for the governor
Gabrielle Gurley, who spent 4 1/2 hours at Grabauskas's wake yesterday, poses a series of questions, including:
I agree they shouldn't cancel the public
meetings about the fare increases/service cuts. However, instead of having a bunch of informal 'workshops' (to use the T's terminology) and only one actual public hearing, they should conduct every one of these meetings as a FORMAL PUBLIC HEARING, and have a recorder on hand at each meeting to enter any and all comments into the public record.
The T's proposal to hold only one formal public hearing on such an important issue, and the inevitable 'justification' that it would be cost prohibitive to conduct multiple formal hearings, is totally unacceptable.
To be sure, it's not fair
To be sure, it's not fair for the sate, and the taxpayers to take back debt from the MBTA with it's horrible record of waste, taxpayer abuse, and negligent management.
I agree that the state should fund it correctly, and should take over it's debt; but only after reform starts from the top down.
The cushy benefits and retirement at 55 needs to stop. Pensions need to be funneled into employer match 401K's, like the rest of the country. People with GED's should be getting paid $70K to operate a train or bus. Useless middle management needs to be filtered out.
Facts
Nearly all of the MBTA's debt load is due to obligations related to the Big Dig that the state placed on it while simultaneously giving it a revenue stream predicted to pay that debt from 20% of the state's sales tax income (the prediction was tremendously faulty to begin with AND then the economy collapsed). All of the "waste, abuse, negligence" you quote isn't a hill of beans compared to the Big Dig debt pushed upon the MBTA in 2000.
While it'd be nice to change pension rules, healthcare costs, overpaid nepotism, etc., none of that is going to be the direct cause for why the MBTA is currently about to crash.
The MBTA didn't go on a wild bender with their own credit card and then come crying to the State when they couldn't make the payments. The State charged the Big Dig on their credit card and then handed a portion of that to the MBTA because it was "involved" in the project (and it would speed up how fast the State could claim to have cleared the debt off its own books to appear healthy and smart).