Five more MBTA bus inspectors fired in falsified inspections scheme

Their lack of work may have resulted in poor performance and service delays.

If they had been doing the work then it's conceivable that you would have had potentially lower fuel costs (well-inflated tires, good braking, etc.), less breakdown leading to service troubles, and more. Sure, we *fortunately* didn't have a major catastrophe like a bus running into a building (e.g. fire department maintenance problems), but the lack of work likely led to other less critical issues that ultimately cost the entire system in work, downtime, and money.

You can do the same with your own car. Jiffy Lube will tell you to bring it back in 3,000 miles for your next oil change. Will your car run on the same oil for 9,000 miles instead without "crashing all over the region"? Sure, but you weaken the car and potentially cost yourself in the long run due to hastening the time until you'll need a new car or a costly repair and downtime. Same difference.

It looked at safety issues, specifically in regards to the impact of deferred maintenance. Not the organization as a whole.

We need to know how it operates, who is operating it, what is being operated, how the work is being done, etc. Incidents like this are merely symptoms of a sick agency that has deeper underlying problems. Some in management have been forging inspection reports, some managers have been clocking in and going to work another job instead of supervising mission critical equipment, while maintenance staff have been watching DVDs instead of maintaining equipment. But thankfully for them, the culture allows for this. Not so great for the rest of us.

Do these people represent a majority of the MBTA's staff? I highly, highly doubt that. But a permissive work culture that allows for these things is present. We know that much. But we don't know the extent of the problems, how much money is being wasted and how it's really impacting service.

On a broader scale, we don't know why the Silver Line tunnel is crumbling away less than six years after it opened. Why did it pass inspection upon completion? Why wasn't the contractor brought in and forced to fix it? It's things like these that need to be examined very, very closely. It's not any one issue. It's not just the rank and file or the management. It's the whole of the MBTA.

I fully support the T, and I would love to see it get the financial help it needs to function properly and even expand service. But things need to change, and I doubt that any one person in charge could overcome the politics and cliquish issues that would stand in the way of true reform. We can keep firing GMs and bringing in new ones, but we don't really know what we're asking them to fix. And it makes it easier to put the blame on their shoulders, instead of our own.