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MBTA does its part to encourage walking for exercise

Major flustercluck on the Green Line this morning thanks to a "track problem" somewhere between Kenmore and Park that the T said meant only 15-minute delays, but which actual riders tweeted were more like an hour - when they could get on a packed train at all, which people actually on those packed trains emphasized might not be much of a blessing, given how the T seemed to have rolled out its fleet of trolleys without air conditioning this morning.

At 8:39, Katherine Bragg tweeted:

Have been waiting at Brookline Hills for more than 35 minutes. 4 trains, all completely full, have come.

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I spent 50 minutes sitting on an outbound D train to get from Park Street to Arlington! The announcement on the train only said "Delays due to heavy traffic ahead". A more fitting annoucement would have been "Green Line out of operation. Get out and walk.'. I got off at Arlington and took a Hubway bike the last few miles to Brookline. Another lovely 2-Hour commute. Thanks MBTA

Again I'm reminded why I usually bike to work.

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You spent 50 minutes avoiding a 10-15 minute walk?

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that he/she was going somewhere further out and got trapped between Park and Arlington.

Same thing happened to me once, I was en route to Boylston from out by Boston College, and my train took an 45 minutes to get from Kenmore to Copley. I was ridiculously late to work and it was a huge problem because I couldn't call from underground.

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I think that it's clear that the person was going from Park St. to Brookline. That's not a 15 minute walk.

I also presume that the person was also being held captive on a Green Line train somewhere between stations - otherwise, his/her hubway option would have been exercised sooner.

This highlights a major reason why the "Green Line Exception" to real-time status information must be ended immediately. Thousands of people are needlessy detained by the Green Line everyday whereas if they had real time data, they could take the decision to walk/cab or bike beforehand. When aggregaged, the lost productivity of detaining that many people is staggering, and this is the way that the argument must be made to the T and the Legislature to allocate the money required to fix the problem.

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....but I was stuck underground on a broken train. My final destination was Brookline Village, but I fled the train at Arlington to pursue another mode of transport for the remainder of my trip.

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Has the T gone two days in a row without a massive failure somewhere in the system?

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I love all the tweets to mbtaGM that go like, "Fare hike and still crappy service."

As if the fare hike would magically cure all of the T's ills.

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It's the service cuts instead. By running fewer trains, any failure (however minor) has a far greater effect on the system.

And as long as management's idea of "driven by customer service" is to provide the public with relatively useless baubles and trinkets instead of getting serious and addressing the core problems that are causing the failures and disruptions, the situation isn't going to get any better in a hurry.

Sadly, the local MSM still doesn't get it and remains content to swallow MBTA press releases whole without even a wince.

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In a thread a couple of weeks ago someone said that the T's bonds were actually obligations of the state. However, there was an article recently that the T's bond rating was being downgraded or at least considered for downgrading due to their reliance on sales tax as a revenue stream and other factors. That points to the fact that the T is a completely separate financial entity as the state's bond rating was not even mentioned in the article and as a matter of fact I think they just got a bump in rating fairly recently.

Brilliant move by the state - pawn all the Big Dig debt off on the T, let it languish in a giant sinkhole - let it go under and restructure the debt and the pension system to bring it back to solvency. Unfortunately in the meantime it means zippo for the capital repairs so desperately needed so we all have to swelter and freeze on stalled trains. I'm more convinced than ever that this whole dog and pony show is ultimately a way to absolve the state of billions in debt and retirement obligations. Very creative and very legal - although it shouldn't be. Sounds like one of those famous "off balance sheet transactions" that we've heard so much about in the past decade.

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How does this figure with the situation at MassDOT where we've already bonded out a buttload for the Accelerated Bridge Repair Program but are continually falling behind with some of the oldest bridge infrastructure in the nation (see the story on chunks of the obsolete Tobin Bridge flaking off)? We're paying the guys who cut the grass on the median strips on Mass Highways with bond money. Outside of the MBTA, most other aspects of our transportation system (with the exception of MassPort) are heading for a similar calamity as the MBTA and it will affect the State's bond rating when MassDOT has to go into hock up to its eyeballs to keep bridges from dropping and regional transit agencies even half meeting the needs of their riders.

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I believe is fully a branch of the state government - not a separate agency - bankruptcy is not an option. There are no provisions or even a blueprint for a state bankruptcy - the best guess is that if a state went bankrupt the rest of the country would have to kick in to bail them out -but it's never been tested - CA unfortunately is a likely candidate and I think they are the largest state economy - could be really ugly if it ever comes to that. Illinois, WV and several others are also high on the list due largely to enormous unfunded pension obligations.

I believe the T, Massport and MWRA are all state agencies that issue their own bonds and have separate obligations and ratings - but others feel free to chime in or add to that list.

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At least Massport and the MWRA are state authorities, and therein lies the difference (their enabling acts make it clear that the full faith and credit of the Commonwealth is not pledged - although, some would argue it is implicit, but I personally do not believe that to be the case - and neither do prudent institutional investors). This used to be the case at the T, but things might have changed a little bit in the relationship between the T and the Commonwealth in the last few years - the T's enabling act has been amended. The part about separate obligations and ratings is correct.

The larger question is being brought into focus here - for all the talk about the "unaccountable" public authorities, look who is not in trouble - that's right, Massport, MWRA, MDFA (MassDevelopment), etc - the true independent authorities. The idea behind the public authorities is for the people (through the legislature) to give them policy directives, allow them to have their own revenue streams (through user fees), and let them pursue the policy goals as a private business would pursue its goals. Massport conducted a successful multi-billion dollar reconstruction of Logan and the Port of Boston over the past 15 years. MWRA conducted a sucessful multi-billion dollar reconstruction of the water supply and sewer treatment systems over the past 15 years. (Incidentally, you can say whatever you want about Logan compared to other airports, but given it's tiny footprint compared to other international airports, it works about as well as it can. Our only shot at something better was killed by Governor Weld when Devens was removed as a "Dulles" possibility.) Is there a state agency that can come anywhere close to claiming achievements like these over the past few years?

In spite of what many have said over the past 10 years, the independent authorities concerned with infrastructure don't need to be reigned in (the non-infrastructure ones might). Instead, their remit needs to be expanded, since they are, by design, insulated from the day to day political b.s. and election cycle nonsense that prevent us from pursuing any long term infrastructure improvements. My personal view is that if the turnpike authority had been in charge of the Big Dig from the beginning and had been given tolling authority for 93, my guess is that we wouldn't have the budget problem we have now, we'd have a more equitable tolling situation, and we wouldn't have as many maintenence/safety problems (since the old turnpike, like the other truly independent authorities, did not have liability protection. Of course this can't be proven one way or the other, but I certainly don't think it would have ended up any worse.

My bottom line: unless and until the political gridlock and nonsense ends, independent authorities are our only shot at getting any big infrastructure projects done.

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Good post. The quasi-public agencies do indeed seem to function better than your average govmint agency, but they also have had a track record of many of the same patronage/corruption charges that get thrown at the rest of State govt. The governor has targeted the quasi's and the large salaries and VERY generous benefit packages that their directors and much of their staff take in. The last MassPort director was a good example of that -- it gets us in a similar discussion as we have with corporate CEOs - are they really worth that money? Is that the only way to get a decent job performance out of someone?

But with the quasi's you also get this thing that they have power over some public good/infrastructure that brings them a degree of govt power that private companies don't have. It's kind of hard to boycott or comparison shop for essential govt services (although Manchester and Providence airports are offering some options). MassPort runs a tight ship in a small footprint - they also had a Governor who handed over an Olmstead-designed park for them to shit all over. They've abused East Boston for years and it's taken a LOT of work on the part of community activists there to get to a sort of detente with them. And corruption at MassPort -- well, just ask Susan Taraskiewicz's mother.

So I don't know what the answer is. People who go into government jobs should be trying to the best they can and not just be collecting a check, but if the private sector behaves abysmally, why should we expect the govt schmoes to be any different? With transportation, I think even if things were being run completely without graft, waste and stupidity we'd still be screwed because we haven't been maintaining this stuff sufficiently for the past 40 years. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.

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Thanks for a thoughtful comment on my earlier comment.

The tragedy involving Ms. Taraskiewicz was before my time, but I had always heard that it was her airline colleagues, not anyone at Massport, who people thought weren't coming clean. Do I have that wrong?

On a much lighter note, with respect to "patronage/corruption" stuff (which I put in quotes only becuase I'm not sure that it is exactly the right word for the kind of nonsense behavior that I think we're talking about), I would say only this: if it's happening both in the state agencies that can't/don't get anything done and at the authorities that can/do get things done, I know which one I'd rather live with.

My last point is with respect to private companies not having the power over public goods/infrastructure that the authorities have. I wish that were the case, but as we know from the Indiana Toll Road, Chicago's Skyway, and airports all over Europe, all of which are now either controlled or essentially controlled by private entities, that's no longer the case.

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Great post - and I think the best of the best is the MWRA - a great product at a very reasonable price. Can't say I'm a huge fan of Massport - Logan may be small but there's no excuse for the perpetual dinginess - heard we just spent $5 billion fixing it up and I'd call the improvements minimal in most areas - but it is better.

thanks again.

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I have given up on the Green Line multiple times over the past few weeks, opting to walk for the most part. Strangely, the 66 has been far more reliable and way less crowded over that same time frame. Basically what I'm saying is I'm pretty sure this is a sign of the Apocalypse.

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aren't going to take serious notice until commuters finally have a full scale riot, burn and gut a few streetcars/subway trains/buses [like some Brazilian commuters did a while back]. Seriously, they don't give an F about 'tweets' and strongly worded online posts. But, most people are passive aggressive domesticated 'middle class' and afraid to make a scene.

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Here's a better idea. Fire some of them at the ballot box and elect some representatives that actually LISTEN to their constituents.

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However, the partisan primary electoral system that Massachusetts has frequently presents us with a choice between an entrenched incompetent incumbent Democrat who is near-impossible to beat in a primary, and a Republican challenger offering cures that are worse than the disease. Throwing out an incompetent in favor of someone whose idea of the role of government boils down to "every service is socialism!" doesn't get us very far. Sigh.

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