It's true! Also, things aren't going quite as swimmingly at the MBTA as he might like.
And Globe photo caption writers need to bone up on Boston geography (see comments below).
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Dan Grabauskas
By adamg - 8/7/08 - 9:18 am
Train Rider muses:
I must say - the media loves MBTA GM Dan Grabauskas. I just don't get the love affair? Why are they so hard on other elected officials and public leaders, but they just give Dan softballs everytime?
As a recovering reporter, I think the answer's actually fairly simple: Grabauskas gives reporters and editors what they crave: Access - or, at least, the appearance of access. Imagine how the current "We're going to die!" fare-increase story would have played out if, oh, a Globe reporter had ferreted out the possibility of massive increases in some obscure document related to the Green Line expansion project (maybe in some appendix on financing the work). There'd be outrage, outrage! Instead, Grabauskas simply arranged a series of interviews with local media types and got in front of the story. It's good media management.
By adamg - 7/10/08 - 10:08 am
Do as Dan Grabauskas says, not as he does. Sure, you can't expect the general manager of a farflung system like the MBTA to rely on his own system to get to emergencies, but, honestly, an SUV (granted, a hybrid SUV)? Really, Dan: Unless you're personally jumping out of your SUV in a bog to rescue people, a Prius will get you to trolley collisions just as fast. Also, gotta love this:
The message of Dump the Pump, he added, is to encourage people with less demanding schedules to take the T.
When can we expect the PSAs on the T?
Hi, this is T General Manager Dan Grabauskas, and if I had a less demanding schedule, I'd be right there on the platform with you, so take the T and dump the pump!
By adamg - 7/9/08 - 9:40 am
The Outraged Liberal explains why, if you're going to get upset about raises at the T in times like these, you should direct your ire toward Dan Grabauskas and his incompetent managers, because they knew the union would likely be awarded a raise in arbitration and yet did nothing to try to budget for it:
... Yakking on about the concessions he has obtained as part of those talks can't hide the act that Grabauskas and his team failed basic accounting.
Did they really think the arbitrator would not award salary increases and make them retroactive to the start of negotiations?
And we're not talking about excessive compensation. We are talking about roughly 3 percent annually, which I would venture is probably par for the course in just about every business. ...
By adamg - 3/25/08 - 8:16 am
Suddenly, Dan Grabauskas is everywhere - and not just on PA systems 'neath the streets of Boston. Today, the daring T general manager vows to go after subway fare evaders. Sure, it's roughly two years after legitimate riders first started complaining about how easy the new fare system made evasion, but better late than never. Maybe next year, he'll even figure out that people evade fares on the trolleys, too.
By oddjob60 - 2/18/08 - 9:09 pm
It's become a most unpleasant part of my daily commute: the smell of commuter train brakes. When I get off the train, I flinch at the odor, which puts me in the mind of week-old diapers on fire.
I don't think it was this bad a year ago, and I notice I'm not the only one who's asking why. To a Wilmington commuter, The T's Dan Grabauskas suggested:
By adamg - 2/18/08 - 8:19 pm
Aaron Read is not one to blame Dan Grabauskas for everything that is wrong with the T - things were going wrong there long before Grabauskas moved over from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. But having said that, he blames Grabauskas for not using Schedulegate to push for better MBTA funding:
... Now he's got the worst of both worlds: the scandal is out and everyone above and below wants his head on a platter. The MBTA comes off looking even worse than usual (that's no mean feat, itself). And worst of all, there's no groundwork laid to leverage this scandal into embarrassing public officials into providing more funding that the T desperately needs...instead there will be just be demands that the T end the practice regardless of the impact on already-overtaxed resources.
By adamg - 2/16/08 - 9:47 am
You can't make this stuff up. The Herald reports:
Top MBTA officials acknowledge that for years the agency has been secretly cutting thousands of bus and train trips from published schedules to lower costs - a practice that has left legions of customers waiting for rides that arrived late or not at all.
By adamg - 2/14/08 - 10:37 am
Seems a fed-up Worcester Line rider e-mailed some increasingly choice words to MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas, eventually escalating to descriptions of what Grabauskas could do to himself, and now Grabauskas is demanding the Patrick administration do something about this violation of his civil rights. The alleged e-mailer works for the Department of Corrections and was suspended - with pay.
By adamg - 2/6/08 - 10:02 am
It's good the Globe has a transportation reporter again, maybe they'll stop getting scooped by BostonNow by a month. Compare today's Globe story on how Dan Grabauskas says the T is broke with BostonNow's Jan. 9 story on how Dan Grabauskas says the T is broke.
But speaking of our bankrupt transportation authority, the Outraged Liberal says it's time to stick a fork in Grabauskas. TJIC doesn't express much sympathy for him, either.
By adamg - 1/9/08 - 11:49 pm
One Fitchburg Line commuter was apparently too tired to write to the top so he or she wrote to the side of train 429. As Tom Wheaton's photo shows, the MBCR's response was to paint over just part of the message, so it wasn't quite so offensive. Now THAT's service.
Grabauskas explains how the T will increase ridership in a BostonNow interview. Making trains and buses run on time is a big part of it, he says, which will no doubt come as welcome news to Renee Walsh, who is fuming mad at continued commuter-rail suckage, such as her train being 45 minutes late today. Alas, for Renee, a bunch of new commuter-rail cars won't be delivered until 2011.
By adamg - 10/8/07 - 1:00 pm
Spatch is willing to accept that trains break down and fires break out. What he can't deal with is the way the MBTA wanted to force people to sit in overheated trains for more than an hour during Friday's Red Line meltdown:
By adamg - 5/30/07 - 1:09 pm
By most accounts, he did as good a job at the Registry as he isn't doing at the T. Josh Ourisman reports on how things have fallen apart since Grabauskas left the RMV:
By adamg - 1/31/07 - 1:12 pm
Long, long lines waiting for customer service. Wasn't fixing that at the Registry one of Dan Grabauskas's crowning achievements? Any chance he'll ever get around to replicating that on the T?
Also, Mr. G., as long as we have your attention, Lewis Forman has some issues, both in general and with the Blue Line in particular.
By adamg - 12/6/06 - 8:16 pm
David reports on the mood at his commuter-rail stop around 8:30 this morning - when some people had been there since before 8, thanks to a train that just never showed:
... Man (to a friend on the platform, as a commuter rail train blows by us): "Yeah, that's about the third train I've seen go by without stopping, so I'm not holding out much hope for the next one."
Second Man (to a friend on the platform): "Grabauskas, man. I want to find that guy and kill him." ...
By adamg - 10/12/06 - 10:50 pm
Read the transcript of Dan Grabauskas's chat on boston.com today. Then head over to BadTransit to see the 14 questions he didn't answer.
By adamg - 10/11/06 - 9:11 pm
T General Manager Dan Grabauskas will be doing a live online "chat" on boston.com starting at 1 p.m. tomorrow (i.e., Thursdy, Oct. 12).
Via Bad Transit, which has a whole series of pointed, yet eminently polite, questions you could pose to Dan, including:
... Do you use your own transit system to and from work and other important appointments? If not, why not? If so, do you excuse yourself often for being late again?
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