If the MBTA Had a Work Slowdown...How Would You Know?

Crap like this is why, generally speaking, I really dislike unions. It's why most of my friends dislike - or even outright hate - unions, too. We're not exactly a statistical sample, but the universality is remarkable. Apparently, the spawn of Satan Carmen's Union has decided that, even though the MBTA is fiscally on the verge of bankruptcy, they want their back wages and they want them right now. Never mind that they're already ridiculously overpaid and have the same benefits Wall Street CEO's usually get. So they're going to stage the usual work slowdowns and "calling in sick" (en masse) to make all the commuter's lives miserable in the process.

My question is this: the T already is so goddamn slow and unreliable, would anyone would notice the difference?

All joking aside, it would be quite delicious if the Carmen's Union pulled their little stunt, and hordes of angry commuters started attacking the union members doing the slowdowns. I wouldn't exactly call it a likely outcome, but I do feel reasonably confident that angry commuters are not going to transfer any of that anger towards T management - they're going to direct it squarely at the union members themselves.

I'd almost feel sorry for the bus drivers who came to work that day and tried the slowdown tactic. The odds of getting a spit shampoo would probably be pretty high. Boston commuters are a grumpy lot in the morning...

The Future of Crossing the Street...is not to Cross at all

I read this article about managing pedestrian street crossing in the Boston Globe today. It's a pretty good article. I like that people are finally starting to realize that it's a losing game to try and make a city be as efficient as possible for cars to the exclusion of pedestrians, buses, bikes, etc.

But there's a gigantic element missing from this article: namely, the elements. Can we stop living in denial that the weather in Boston just plain sucks? It always sucks. It always WILL suck. For at least four solid months of every year, there will be snow on the ground that you can measure in feet. For three months beyond that, you can count on frigid, hurricane-force winds...like as not with driving rain. And for good measure, don't forget July and August when it's typically hot as hell and humid to match.

So if you really want to improve the pedestrian experience in Boston, don't make people walk on the street at all. Make them walk above it, or below it. I'm talking about a system like the Minneapolis Skyway, the Montreal Underground City, or any one of a dozen other systems across the globe. A system of walkways and public areas that are in fully-enclosed spaces.

Boston already has a small version of this in the connecting walkways between the Prudential Mall, the Copley Mall, and the Westin Hotel. It's a very handy and pleasant way to walk about five or six blocks in total comfort. Similarly, the system of tunnels under MIT's campus, (PDF) while inherently limited to just serving the MIT area, is also very handy during the winter.

And it's also has the potential to be a prime driver of commerce. Not so much in a true "mall" sense, but you could easily have lots of little news-stand and Dunkin' Donuts kiosks (perfect for commuting times) and some CVS's sprinkled around. Maybe even some mini-supermarkets so you could shop for your dinner ingredients on your way home.

I don't deny this is would not be an inexpensive system to implement. But I would argue that it's probably less expensive than many would think. There's a tremendous amount of public interior space in many buildings that is poorly leveraged at the moment, but could be (relatively easily) connected via a skywalk. Or just renovate the miles of tunnels under Boston that are often just sitting abandoned at the moment.

These tunnels wouldn't even necessarily have to be open 24/7, either. Minneapolis's is not and it works fine. All they have to be is well-lit, well-ventilated (but not open-air) and reasonably clean, and people will use them in droves.

The Boston Globe needs to sharpen the fangs a little

Now I'm not saying we need the Boston Globe to become another Boston Herald. One tabloid rag is just right...no more, no less. But this week's Starts & Stops in the Globe could use a dash of bloodlust the tabloidish Herald is known for. I'll explain:

This week, Starts & Stops author Noah Bierman (with assistance from Sarah M. Gantz) writes:

Route 66 woes

Bruce Blake gets no kicks on Route 66.

The Allston man waited more than 25 minutes during rush hour Wednesday morning for a number 66 bus, which is supposed to arrive every 10 minutes.

For years, he has been taking the ride from Allston to Harvard, the T's sixth-busiest bus route, and says the huge rush-hour gaps in service are commonplace. "I know folks who have waited a good 45 minutes in a snowstorm," he said.

It is a lament among bus riders that goes back more than a decade.

"You're standing out there waiting for the bus and it ain't coming," Blake said.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the T added another bus to the route, which also goes through Roxbury and Brookline, last winter and believes there are now enough in service to accommodate the 11,100 daily passengers. He said the 66 goes through 40 traffic lights, making it especially tricky to keep buses from stacking behind one another, which can create gaps in service.

In response to complaints, the T recently reassigned supervisors to monitor the route and prevent these gaps. By the end of this week, the T will finish installing Global Positioning System equipment on Route 66 buses, another measure meant to help keep them better staggered.

Blake will wait for proof. He said other complaints have been fruitless: "It's maybe different for an hour or a day, but nothing changes."

Now I'll overlook the fact that printing any response from Joe Pesaturo...without aggressive followup and fact-checking...can only be described as "rip and read" journalism. Joe might be a nice guy in person (I don't know, I've never met him) but his statements as the T's public relations guy are almost laughable in their rah-rah "The T is Never Wrong" tone, no matter how glaring the evidence is to the contrary.

And in this case, it's pretty glaring.

In particular, I'm referring the damning admission that the T regularly cancels bus runs on various routes because they can't afford to do them. I've blogged about this before, too.

Note that I say "cancels", not "canceled"...as in, past tense. Supposedly MBTA GM Dan Grabauskas ended the practice quickly after becoming GM a few years ago, but continued the lie because he knew what the political fallout would be. I say that's bullcrap, and that the T is using a smidgen of truth to cover up the lie; that they're still routinely cancelling bus (and probably subway) runs all the time in a desperate attempt to cut costs.

Regardless, this is news that is directly relevant to the story in this week's Starts & Stops, and yet no mention whatsoever is made of it.

Why not?

Like we needed proof that the T sucked?

Returning to my Boston roots a bit...so there's proof of what many MBTA commuters have known for years: the T routinely and secretly cancels runs of various bus routes because they don't have the resources to actually make all the runs their schedule claims they do. What's worse, they've been doing it for years, no doubt many more than the two years that current MBTA GM Dan Grabauskas admits has been happening under his watch.

Remember kids, Dan was hired because supposedly he's a reformer. Under his administration, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles was admittedly changed quite a bit...my first experiences in 1998 were pretty miserable but by the early 2000's a trip to the Registry wasn't all that bad, especially if you managed to go during "off times". But Grabauskas did very little "reforming" as state transportation secretary, and has done even less as head of the MBTA.

Anyways, supposedly Grabauskas has been working to change this policy of secretly canceling runs...and often stranding riders in the notoriously awful Boston weather...since he arrived. Which to my way of thinking is a ridiculously thin excuse. I mean, granted, this kind of policy indicates corruption at every single level of operation (management and operators) of an organization that it begs the question of where to begin reforming? I can see why a new political appointee who knows damn well what a nest of vipers he's been dumped into is not about to rip a scab off a wound by publicly confirming that everyone at the T is a total slimeball and has been screwing the riders for years. That's a bad way to spend political capital, and a good way to be a very short-term administrator. Conversely, trying to reduce it gradually earns you more political capital you can spend on things that can't be fixed gradually.

But to my way of thinking, that's a logical approach to a situation where logic simply no longer applies. If Grabauskas accepted this job, he should have done so with the ironclad backing of those in power and done so with a mandate to clean up the mess. With that kind of mindset, a giant airing of the dirty laundry right at the beginning would've been more ideal...it's a perfect excuse to get rid of a lot of dead weight (of which the MBTA has tons of) while rolling off a lot of the inevitable public outrage on the previous GM's of the T. Sure, there'd be a LOT of anger from the rank-n-file at Grabauskas if he'd done that...hence why he'd need the ironclad political backing to make sure people didn't pull end runs with their state reps to get him fired. In the end it would be painful, ugly, and it might not have worked. But at least there was a chance.

Instead Boston has a painfully dysfunctional public transit system that is hemorrhaging money, horribly over-budget, is still losing riders, and is dragging down the local economy in the process.

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.

Place Your Bets, Gentleman! (Storrow Drive & the Esplanade)

Surprise, surprise...the Storrow Drive Tunnel Repair is going to be far more expensive and take far longer than originally envisioned. So the Patrick Administration is floating the idea of putting a temporary bypass road onto the Esplanade while the tunnel is completely rebuilt. This idea was floated, and shot down, several months ago when the project was first announced.

The bypass road will extend about 40ft into the Esplanade, and reduce construction time by six months, and save about $5 million. On a several hundred million dollar (and two year) plan, that doesn't seem like much, does it? However, it's a big deal because it means that Storrow Drive can continue handling close to the 100,000+ cars that drive on it every day...as opposed to trying to funnel those cars through Beacon Hill and Back Bay.

Yeah, think about that for a second: the already-traffic-choked Beacon Hill and Back Bay neighborhoods trying to cope with many tens of thousands of new cars every day for about two years. And that's assuming they finish on time. Just like how the Big Dig was supposed to be a few years, and instead took 15 and counting. Yikes.

Nevertheless, local Beacon Hill residents, and City Councilman Michael Ross, are screaming that this bypass road will destroy the Esplanade and they'll chain themselves to the trees before they'll allow it to be built.

I can see their point...the Esplanade is a real jewel in Boston's crown, and to have a major disruption on it for two (or three, or four or five) years really sucks. And there really is no guarantee that after the construction is done, the Esplanade will truly be returned to its current "impressively decent" state.

However, let's take a look at the alternative: those same residents screaming about "their" precious Esplanade will be the same residents screaming about the horrible traffic lasting until 2am every night if the bypass isn't built. Not to mention the incredible disruption to commuter traffic; since Storrow Drive is a major artery it will have a ripple effect across the entire region. That means lost worker productivity and an already-overburdened (and under-resourced) MBTA subway getting hammered even more. Not to mention the incredible environmental impact that millions of cars idling in traffic for an extra two or three hours per day will have.

The ultimate costs to business, the state and to ourselves could well run into the billions. I don't know what the exact number is, but the Patrick administration bettter figure that out quick because I'm willing to bet it's a helluva lot more than the entire construction project will cost.

And someone ought to remind those selfish SOB "Beautiful People" on Beacon Hill to think of the entire state a little more, instead of only themselves.

Mac Daniel's New Job: A Conflict of Interest?

I feel like I have a problem with this, but I'm not sure I really should.

The new communications director at the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is someone with experience dealing with the agency. Mac Daniel has covered the Turnpike for years as a reporter with the Boston Globe. His hiring comes about a week after legislation went into effect making Governor Patrick's transportation secretary the chairman of the Turnpike's governing board of directors.

See the full article at WPRI.com

I've talked with Mac personally a handful of times, he's a nice enough guy. And in the interests of disclosure I frequently do send in questions & tips to his email address: starts@globe.com

But he's been oft-critized by sites like BadTransit for being too "soft" on the MBTA and other transit agencies around Massachusetts. I don't really agree with that assessment, but I can see why...Mac rarely "went for blood" on his Starts & Stops column in the Globe. Granted, the Globe is not a "gotcha" news organization...they strive to be objective...but I do concede that our transit organizations here in Boston definitely need someone to smack them around on a regular basis, since the elected officials certainly won't (most Massachusetts transit agencies are havens for patronage jobs) and the public is routinely ignored by these organizations.

So you can see why I'm uneasy about Mr. Daniel leaving his job to report on the transit in Boston, to go work for one of the agencies he used to report on. It raises legitimate questions about the objectivity of his reporting.

For example, how long ago did he know he was a candidate for this job? During that entire time, his objectivity is completely in question. Now, carrying that train of thought to a logical (albeit extreme) conclusion...has Mr.Daniel always wanted a job like that? If so, then virtually everything he's ever written should be considered "invalid" because maybe he "took it easy" in his column to avoid annoying the people who are now his supervisors.

Again, for the record, I choose to believe that Mac Daniel has enough journalistic integrity that none of his writing should be questioned. But the problem (mostly for the Globe) is that there's no way anyone...even Mac...can prove that he did have that integrity. And as such, it looks bad.

As my journalist friends often remind me...when it comes to journalistic integrity, looking bad is the same thing as being bad. So that's why I feel uneasy about this.

But at the same time...it's not like he was writing columns for months or years while knowing he had this job in the wings. Charging Mr. Daniel with a conflict of interest feels a bit like a Catch 22; is he never allowed to ever have a job in a transit agency just because he covered transit while at the Globe? Maybe his column gives him valuable insight and experience for the job!

Argh. I don't need these moral dilemmas in the summer...it's too damn humid to think.

I gave the MBTA a Piece of my Mind

I like going to public meetings for the MBTA. I get to be the "reasonable" guy in the group. :-)

So on Tuesday I attended the T's PMT/Service Plan Workshop in Cambridge. It's one stop on the Red Line from my job, and it is rather fascinating to see what people, and the T management, have to say. Like most things in life, it's hard to hate the T when you see there's just regular people working there. People who, by and large, are pretty nice and are actually trying to do a decent job.

Anyways, when you're in Cambridge at a public meeting, you're guaranteed to get some passionate people there, sometimes unreasonably so. Tuesday was no exception...the meeting is supposed to be about the MBTA looking for ideas to guide the next 25 years of operation. When you're talking 25 years, that's a pretty "macro-level" discussion. You can't get mired in the nitty-gritty details.

Well, so much for that idea...the discussion of our 10-person group almost instantly devolved in a giant bitchfest about how lousy the MBTA service is. I give the discussion leader credit, she didn't stifle it, and did try her best to interpret the griping into long-range planning ideas. So it certainly wasn't a loss...far from it. I think some definite themes arose that can guide the plans for the next 25 years:

• Communication: Riders are annoyed at buses (and subways) that are late. But they're really annoyed that they have no idea how late until the bus finally shows up. Everyone feels there's no excuse to not to track buses and subways and do two things: put a countdown timer at the stops, and map the buses/subways in real-time on a website. After all, several metro systems in Europe and Asia do it...at least for the major routes
• An "Urban Ring" is desperately needed: Nobody working for or riding on the T denies that the "spoke" system of subways and trolleys is hideously inefficient, and that "rings" that connect all the lines at points outside the downtown area are needed. The problem is that most of those areas are densely inhabited and there are precious few right-of-ways already. Any subway built in a ring is going to have gigantic construction costs and disruptions. Regardless, people DON'T want the "Phase II" Urban Ring that is mostly bus lines; the buses are considered too unreliable (Boston traffic IS pretty bad). People would rather wait longer for the payoff and just skip the bus part, and spend the time and money on subway lines instead.
• The CharlieCard ain't so bad: Widely derided when it was installed six months ago, people have come around to the CharlieCard. At least the regular commuters have...I still argue that the CharlieCard system is more unfriendly to limited-use riders (tourists, especially) than the old token system, but these meetings are dominated by regular commuters so I hope that the MBTA planners are adjusting for that.
• Need more buses! People will ALWAYS suggest a subway over a bus, but when that's just not going to happen, there needs to be more buses. I can get behind this...many of the buses run extremely infrequently...scheduled for every 20 or 60 minutes during off peak times, and the exact times vary wildly due to traffic...so you could end up waiting (literally) hours for a bus on some lines. That's worse than useless.
• Need more customer service training: The rudeness of T employees was a surprisingly oft-quoted problem. I fear this is one of those things that will never change...not until the management gets more power to just fire employees that suck. Fat chance with the unions we got in this town. Not that I'm anti-union, but the Carmen's Union is outta control.

I had two suggestions myself that I thought were rather useful: the first would be to add a CharlieCard scanner at the rear doors of Green Line trolleys and at buses. That way regular commuters can enter quickly and easily, without having to wait behind cash-paying riders. I don't begrudge cash-paying riders, but the fare collection boxes on buses & trolleys forces you to enter the money VERY slowly. But, you say, who makes sure people who go in the rear door are actually paying? Well, how is it really any different than the "Show-n-Go" system now? And when you get a few cash-paying fares, the driver often waves everyone in because the bus/trolley is suddenly way behind schedule. Anyways, the MBTA managers there seemed to like this one. Probably because it's pretty simple, relatively cheap to implement and is a highly visible service improvement.

The other suggestion is a bit more wide-ranging; I've often felt that a major delay on the Green Line's B, C and E branches is that they have to wait for traffic lights at street intersections. So install a system that lets the trolley override the traffic light and immediately let the trolley through. Yeah, it buggers the car traffic up badly, but hey...more incentive to use public transit! Anyways, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that such a system is in trials right now on the Silver Line buses through the Washington Street corridor. Unfortunately, it breaks down a lot, so results have been inconclusive. To me, this says that something's been done wrong with the system...either poorly made, poorly installed, or poorly maintained...but regardless, it's good to know that this isn't a "sacred cow"; the MBTA is at least trying the idea.

If you have ideas you want to share with the MBTA for them to do over the next 25 years, there's still one public meeting left: Thursday June 21st at 5:30pm at the Newton City Hall. Technically this is for the western "spoke" of transit, but they'll listen to ideas about any area of the MBTA.

Metro & the Morning Commute

Like many fellow Boston subway riders, during my morning commute I read the Metro, our local freebie rag that is often compared to "mental twinkies". Meh, it's free and it passes the time. But today two things caught my attention.

First was this picture of Barry Bonds. (thanks to Metro and AP) I saw it and the first thought that came to mind was: "He's taken so many steroids even his tongue muscle has gotten freakishly huge!"

Yeah, I really don't like Barry Bonds. Not one bit. I don't really begrudge him the steroids so much as the blatant dishonesty about it. And the apparent greed in trashing Hank Aaron's great homer count for Barry's own personal glory.

I also really hate Barry for what he's doing to Giants' fans. Well, at least one Giants fan, anyways...one of my best friends...who's a San Francisco native living in Boston. And this season he can't just pop a brew and enjoy a damn Giants game because everything is about Barry Bonds. It's like the rest of the team doesn't exist. That's not fair to the fans, Barry. Screw you.

I suppose this touches on a long-held theory of mine that I believe players should be completely indebted to the fans. Because it's the fans that pay for outrageously overpriced tickets, concessions, playbooks and jerseys. Those sales ultimately pay for athletes' salaries, so don't give me "I'm not a role model" bullcrap. You can't sell part of your soul, folks, you gotta sell it all.

But I digress...

The other thing was "Ask the (insert government official here)" column with Dan Grabauskas, General Manager of the MBTA. Dan was appointed after creating a reputation as a "cleanup man" after his success at the Massachusettes Motor Vehicle Registry. If his goal was to "clean up" the MBTA, he's failed miserably...things are worse now than when Grabauskas started in 2005, and the recent reports of state transportation's fiscal health indicate it's gonna get a lot worse in the future.

One of the Q&A questions was about fare evasion on the Green Line...I'll quote the relevant part so you don't have to open the PDF...

QUESTION: What is being done about fare evasion on the Green Line? I’m sick of paying $60 a month for my pass, and watching kids and adults alike board the back doors, laughing how easy it is not to pay. What happened to “proof of payment,” and why is it never enforced?
(name omitted, 23, Brookline)

ANSWER: The Green Line fare collection system is working. While we do have some peak loading problems, we are addressing them with staffing or other measures.

(emphasis added by me)

Don't tell someone that that a pig is a swan when it's oinking and dripping mud on your carpet. The fare collection system on the Green Line is completely a farce and every regular rider knows it. After three fare hikes in six years, it's reasonable to expect that people who pay their fair share are gonna be mad when anyone does not.

Even if the system really worked, the perception is that it's a farce...and that's just as bad.

Thinking more broadly, this is why I don't really care for these kind of "Ask your elected official" columns. The Metro has had the "Ask the Mayor" column for a little while now with Boston Mayor Tom Menino and it's equally useless and arrogant-sounding. People are essentially writing in with a complaint and the Mayor's never going to be in a position where he can say "You know, you're right! We really f**ked that one up, and I'm going to fire the jerks responsible, and hire some actual real workers who aren't patronage appointments!" because no elected official can ever actually say that. Even if Menino could actually do that, he probably wouldn't say it.

Really all we'll ever get out of these columns is arrogant-sounding dismissals that there's not really a problem, but we're working hard to fix it (in vague, unspecified terms). That doesn't benefit the questioners, the readers or the elected officials. So why do these columns continue?!?!?

MBTA Google Map

One more quick MBTA note before the weekend - I found this handy Subway Map / Google Map mashup not all that long ago. It's quite convenient b/c it shows where the subway stops are in relation to a street map. Something few maps provided by the MBTA itself actually do.

God help the Green Line

So the much-ballyhooed MBTA "CharlieCard" is due for a head-on collision with us starting next Monday. This is the RFID-based "smartcard" for fare collection...the final stage of the process that killed off the not-quite-beloved "T Tokens".

I dig the idea of smartcards, but I gotta say the entire process has been a giant fiasco. Two glaring issues bubble up the top...one I dealt with this morning. The first is that the automated gates are way too easy to fool; you can squeeze three or four people through in one opening of the gate and the gate has no idea. Prevent fare-loss my ass.

Second is this morning's travails...my Green Line trolley had one of those new fareboxes that are complete crap because you have to carefully feed in the coins one at a time. No easy task when there's a queue of a dozen angry commuters behind you, and you're wearing winter gloves. The dollar bill accepter is very similar to a vending machines' and you all know how well those damn things work. It's basically saying "if you want to pay cash, go take a taxi and get the f**k off the subway".

Fortunately I possess a monthly pass which is a pretty quick swipe-n-go. But the poor bastard in front of me was still trying to put his coins in after he'd gotten on at the stop before mine! Finally the T driver shooed him away saying "Let's get a move on - it's Friday!" Prevent fare loss my ass, again!

Sigh I'd like to think the MBTA is at least trying to make things better. Between the fare increases and this crap, I somehow doubt that's the case. :-(