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Comments
did those board members vote for millions in "security"?
Because while there have been "rail vehicle accidents, fires, signal system failures and power outages"...the MBTA has been hard at work installing fancy infrared camera systems in North Station, and cameras in Orange Line cars (but of course, not the Red Line or Green Line), and busses...galore.
I think I counted something like TEN cameras on one bus in Cambridge recently, not including the two externally.
Let's not even get started about the Hut Hut Bus.
Politics all the time...
Let's just chalk this up to the silly season (election time).
If I am not mistaken....Grabauskas is a Republican...right?
The board members are all Democratic appointees?
Isn't this self-explanatory?
This will be my 5th year
This will be my 5th year living in Boston proper, and the fifth year that service has degraded.
Time for Danny Boy to go. We need someone in there that's competent and enthusiastic about public transit, and will turn around the T before throwing on shiny paint and new extensions of a system that effectively broken.
Grabauskas, Aloisi gird for battle, when is the denouement?
Grabauskas talks to Associated Press, accuses Patrick, Aloisi of playing politics, charges Aloisi leaked the board-member letter to the press, since the first he knew of it was when reporters started calling.
Aloisi retorts in a statement:
And you thought *your* work environment was hostile
Is MBTA General Manager a political appointment by the governor? If so, and if things have gotten to the point that the GM is accusing the governor of playing politics, that's gotta suck for the GM.
Grabauskas has a five-year
Grabauskas has a five-year contract that ends in May 2010. He gets the remaining value of the contract if they let him go before that. Looks like the governor and the secretary want to turn up the heat so either Grabauskas will leave on his own before May or the climate will be such that there won't be much fall out from spending the money to buy out the remaining months on his contract.
Let's see a scorecard of Grabauskas performance
Let's see a scorecard of Grabauskas' performance on all of the important elements of the job and his responsiveness to problems that have been brought to his attention by the board, the management he directs, and riders.
The study would take less than a week and instead of watching this be played out as a political squabble, it could be assessed on the merits.
Unfortunately, becuase it is a personnel matter, we would be cut out of the loop unless they decided to poll riders for input.
Scorecard
Scorecard, or quickie consultant or peer review -- this is BS on everyone's part when what we need is vision, leadership and some artful financing to get the T into the top ranks of major metro public transit. Why does our government (Gov's Mansion and State Houses) and agency leadership look like such a sandbox?! My kids never looked as bad, during terrible twos or high-hormonal teen years. Yikes?!
not clear
The essential conflict is 3 board members who find the General Manager's performance to be substandard and insufficient for the task at hand moving forward so leadership, vision and financing are all great ideas but it's not clear from your comment how we get there from here.
Let's be realistic about the T - It's not Dan's fault
I, for one, am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that signals are not functioning properly and that other maintenance issues are not being addressed by the General Manager of the MBTA.
Come on, everyone. You all know damn well what is going on here, and if you don't, I advise you to take that 15 page booklet from one of the T employees who are handing them out in the subway this week (yeah, yeah, I know...how much did THAT cost?).
Regardless of how you feel about the GM, you have to acknowledge that he, and everyone else who takes the job, is doomed to fail until the financing issue is sorted out. The T is spending between a quarter and a third of each dollar it gets in revenue on debt service, most of which, as you all know, was forced on the T by the Commonwealth and the Big Dig environmental mitigation commitments. The T also gets beaten into the ground each time it tries to raise fares. There is no business or government agency in the world that can provide a decent service under these circumstances.
So until we start talking seriously about new and reliable revenue streams for the T, we will get nowhere. A good place to start would be to levy a surcharge of at least $100 on each real estate conveyance in the T's service area (the MTA in Metro NY does this). Just as no one has ever backed out of a real estate purchase because of the Community Preservation Act surcharge that has been in effect for years (and is more than $100), no one will back out of buying real estate because of this. It is also fair - being in the T's service area enhances the value of property - and significantly in some cases (just ask the people who bought property in Davis Square before the Red Line was extended). It is also progressive - a favorite attribute of UHers - because generally, the poorest folks are not buying property (at least not since reality returned and little things like, oh, a 20% downpayment and proof of income are required again).
A final point. Love him or hate him, you have to admire the way Dan G. is giving it right back to these people. The guy is doing precisely what the people who decided that the GM of the T should get a contract wanted the GM to do, i.e., telling the politicians (and their appointee puppets on the MBTA board) to either let him do his job or buy out his contract. Ironically, those people who decided that the GM should get a contract were politicians. I can a least chuckle about tomorrow morning while I'm sweating my ass off on the Green Line because instead of maintaining the AC on the older cars we have to pay the bondholders.
issacg, it's not
issacg, it's not unreasonable to hold the General Manager accountable for how well or poorly he's doing his job.
Reasonable Expectations
I agree. However, you have to undertake that performance evalution acknowledging that performance expectations are a function of resources allotted. That is where the reasonableness to which you refer enters the equation.
If your manager at work tells you that she wants you to oversee a huge operation, tells you that she wants "world-class" service, and then procedes to give you a fraction of the resources that even the most talented person in the world would need to get the job done while at the same time not interdicting, and perhaps actively colluding with, people who are trying to undermine you, well, that's just not reasonable.
It is absolutely unreasonable to expect someone to do something and not allot to him anywhere near the resources required to do it. The T is not unlike every other business these days -Everyone is trying to do more with less, and most are discovering that alchemy went out with the 17th century.
Booklet?
What booklet? What was it about?
T Booklet
It was a booklet entitled something like Your Service, Your Voice. It was about 15 pages laying out the specifics of how much fares might be increased what service might be cut, and why there might be combination of both (and telling you about the upcoming public workshops and hearings in August). It is very interesting (but potentially depressing) reading.
This is particularly true if you're a Green Line rider like me. According to the booklet, many of the bus routes that might be headed for the chopping block are the Newton/Brighton express routes because there are "alternate transit" routes for those. So far as I can tell, those alternate routes are the Green Line, and the 57 bus, which feeds into the Green Line along Comm. Ave or at Kenmore. An already overburdened Green Line could get much, much worse if those buses were eliminated.