Results tagged “dangrabauskas”

Remember that schedule of public meetings about MBTA fare increases we posted last week? Well, those workshops kick off this afternoon at 4pm at the State House (in the Gardner Auditorium). Bostonist plans to attend and send updates on the good stuff via Twitter, so start following us on Twitter to get the latest and greatest on the potential fare hikes. (We suppose that resignation thing might come up, too.) If you're not the Twitter type, don't worry; we'll write up a summary of the meeting for you once it's over. Information galore!

We're slightly surprised, so we don't really know what to say. But official word is in: Dan Grabauskas has resigned. The MBTA General Manager had encountered extensive criticism during his tenure. William Mitchell, general counsel for the MBTA, will fill the position until a replacement is found. Fare increase workshops are still on, but the fare changes may undergo further revision given this new development. Either way, Dan will get over $300,000 to resign: the cost of his contract, intended to extend through May.

• Senator Edward Kennedy will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama on August 12. In his 46-year Senate career, Kennedy has produced legislation supporting public schools, civil rights laws, healthcare, senior citizens, the military and Americans with disabilities. [Boston Globe]

• Approximately 100-200 Massachusetts farms are battling the same fungus that caused the 19th-century Irish potato famine. [Boston Globe]

Interested in what Dan Grabauskas thinks about the T's imminent financial collapse? He'll be on WBUR's Radio Boston at 1 p.m. today, and you can ask him yourself. (Link swiped from UHub.)

The MBTA unveiled a new budget for 2010 this morning that cuts wages by $130 million, effectively eliminating 1,200 of its 6,000 jobs, reports WBUR. (No estimate was given regarding the percentage of bad drivers who would be among the layoffs.)

"Happy holidays to all, and a fare-free Christmas Day!"

In an astonishingly sensible move, the MBTA has lifted a policy limiting the use of reduced-fare Charlie Cards to specific gates. Now people with Senior, Transportation Access Pass/TAP, Blind Access, or RIDE CharlieCards can use their reduced-fare cards at any MBTA fare gate. There are about 176,000 MBTA riders with such cards. The policy dated from days when fare boxes actually accepted money, and MBTA workers checked reduced-fare cards as customers passed through reduced-fare gates and paid their special fare. Now that there's no need for workers to check cards, there's no need for the gates to be restricted. MBTA manager Dan Grabauskas seems to have actually listened when “A number of senior citizens asked us why, when trying to enter the station to catch a train, they should have to battle tourists with luggage, parents with baby carriages and other customers who are trying to exit through the same gate." In addition to fighting with regular-fare folk, Grabauskas said, “several customers who are blind and use guide dogs shared with us that while it is possible to train a guide dog to find the fare gate array, it is often extremely difficult if not impossible to teach the dog to find the one wider gate that is not positioned in the same location in every station. Customers who are blind and use a white cane had an equally challenging time locating the one gate that would accept their Blind Access Card throughout the subway system.” So does this mean the MBTA actually did something useful for its customers? Say it ain't so!

Two MBTA trains collided at Boylston this morning. The "minor" accident (according to the MBTA) caused major transportation delays throughout the Green Line. Seven individuals on the cars that collided were taken to local hospitals, but no serious injuries have been reported. The trains were not derailed. Non-injured passengers got to walk through the subway tunnel to the Boylston station, which was shut down along with some surrounding stations. The MBTA alert advises that bus shuttle service is offered offered from Arlington to Government Center. This Bostonist, after a fun half hour stuck between Hynes and Copley, saw bus shuttles at Copley as well, but rejected them in favor of walking, which was probably a smart move. Anyone else have a nightmare commute this morning?

     

The MBTA officials must really be dreaming. Besides implementing a fantastical $1.2 billion "Little Dig" project, our public transportation system is also trying to get Bostonians to be nice. Say what now? Yes, it's true--the T thinks some adorable little signs will help us nasty Boston folk learn to ride the rails in a way that doesn't ruin everyone's day. Unfortunately, the MBTA marketing masterminds seem to have forgotten the #1 rule of public transportation: when someone makes your commute crappy, throw some bad behavior right back at 'em. There's the passive-aggressive bag bump, the oblivious failure to move into an empty car, the backpack-on-the-seat dis, the oops-I-spilled-my-Dunkin-on-you, and--our favorite--the perpetually perturbing stand-square-in-front-of-an-open-seat move. All of these tactics are based on one principle: being wholly indifferent to others' needs. It's not that we don't know what to do, it's that we just don't care.

In a revolutionary development for the MBTA, the organization has decided that it might be nice to tell commuters when trains are arriving. As we all know, some stations already have announcements like "The next Red Line train to Alewife is now approaching," but those announcements usually occur at about the time you can either see or feel the train on its way. It would be nice to know whether your wait will be 5 minutes or 25, and some other cities, like DC and Paris, already have countdown-type systems that work pretty well. There's a "Next Train" countdown feature being planned for commuter rail, and the MBTA will tackle bus alerts after that. Installing individual countdown or update signs at every bus station would be extremely expensive, so the focus is on finding ways to provide phone or PDA alerts. Riders will be able to text their bus route number to the MBTA and get a response indicating scheduled arrival times. We think it'd be nice if we could just, y'know, call an MBTA hotline and get a list of when trains are coming, but maybe that's too high tech.

Remember that 9% raise the MBTA gave to its top brass but couldn't figure out how to pay for? Well, now it doesn't have to. After Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen asked T general manager Dan Grabauskas "WTF?", Grabauskas rescinded the pay increase for the T's highest paid employees. Non-union administrators making less than $70,000 will still see a boost in pay.

The MBTA management has done such a good job avoiding bankruptcy, fare hikes, crashes, fires, hackers, and, of course, riding the T themselves, that they are getting a 9% raise, reports the Globe. General manager Dan Grabauskas and will not be getting a raise, but he is the party who authorized the increase for the T's executives, who currently make an average $83,650.

Today the MBTA rolled out new Emission Control Diesel buses in the North Shore. The 70 new buses (23 in service now; more to come at the rate of 5 buses per week) will run 24 bus routes departing from the Lynn Garage. The routes serve about 26,000 customers per day in 12 North Shore communities: Beverly, Chelsea, Danvers, Lynn, Malden, Marblehead, Peabody, Revere, Salem, Saugus, Swampscott, and Wakefield. MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas said that 80% of the North Shore bus fleet will be brand new once the rollout of new buses is complete. There are also 20 new buses coming to Cabot Garage in South Boston.

MBTA general manager Dan Grabauskas, who never takes the T, told the Globe to expect a "hefty" fare hike in 2010 if the state doesn't bail out the beleaguered transportation authority. Fare increases have happened every three years since 2001, when the legislature stopped covering the T's debt at the end of each budget period. Without the fare increase or legislative action, Grabauskas warned, the T will have to cut bus routes (a lot of low hanging fruit: consider bus 48, Jamaica Plain Loop, which, at last count, gets used by one old lady once a fortnight for grocery shopping) or run the trains less frequently (less frequently than what?). The T, which gets the bulk of its funding from the unreliable state sales tax, has already depleted its rainy day fund to offset a $75 million deficit. It faces up to $150 million in back pay and benefits from a recent negotiation with the carman's union, and an estimated (by Bostonist) $756,939 bill for the SUVs that its upper management uses to breeze past the commuter rail on its way in from the suburbs.

The Herald reveals that good ol' Danny G. drives to work each day in his MBTA-owned SUV. At least the SUV is a hybrid--but it's still more environmentally damaging than public transportation, not to mention a burden on taxpayers. MBTA manager Grabauskas drives from Ipswich to Boston daily when he could take his own commuter rail instead. He argues that he needs the flexibility to go anywhere at anytime. Uh, and the rest of us don't? If the T doesn't work for Dan, it doesn't work for a lot of other people, either. Maybe if he took the commuter rail each day, he could spend that commuting time doing actual work to improve the T's services--rather than providing such shoddy (and expensive, particularly in terms of the commuter rail) service that people feel the need to drive instead. Or maybe Dan avoids the T because he's afraid of all the complaints he'd get if he had to mingle with the hoi polloi. Try the taking T into town at least once a week, would you, Dan? You can drive your SUV around the city once you get here if you feel the need.

The T negotiated a 13% wage increase with the Boston Carmen's Union without budgeting the funds for the increased expenses. The agency is now struggling with how to cover a $150 million tab from the salary increase. The T has already spent its rainy day fund when it faced a $75 million budget shortfall this year. This, while ridership continues to climb due to gas prices. The Carmen's Union points out that the salary increase is not the root of the T's problems; years of budget shortfalls, expansion, and debt mismanagement have left the agency in dire straights. Here's the question: Are MBTA fares too low? Or could the budget be supplemented by a gasoline tax that gets more drivers off the road and onto the T, especially during off-peak hours?

Universal Hub talked to Joe Pesaturo and found that the MBTA still needs to finish some work on the inbound rail ties on the Longfellow Bridge tonight and tomorrow night. Service into Boston should progress "full speed ahead" starting Wednesday. The outbound tracks, however, still need more work, which will happen the weekends of July 12 and 19. Guess we'll be crawling into Cambridge for a while yet.

Despite two significant tragedies last week (a fire at Park Street and a crash in Newton), new reports say MBTA ridership is up. Rising gas prices are thought to be part of the reason. T-alerts now have over 10,000 subscriptions. The MBTA is in debt and struggling to keep up with its expansions.

At the moment, it isn't clear that the fatal trolley accident that killed Green Line driver Terrese Edmonds had anything to do with MBTA manager Dan Grabauskas. But the spotlight is on him after so many ugly Green Line incidents, producing an article from the Herald's Dave Wedge indicating that, if Governor Deval Patrick decided he wanted to replace Grabauskas--and he might--it wouldn't be easy:

Stuart Spina, a 17-year-old student at Commonwealth School, stood before the MBTA Board of Directors yesterday and told them how to fix some of the most sluggish, inefficient routes.

In general, a person should save a little money in case something bad happens. But the MBTA, which General Manager Dan Grabauskas says is broke, has had to deplete its reserves significantly.

In his appearance last week on Radio Boston, Dan Grabauskas didn't discuss the issue of violence on the T. No one else asked him about it, either. But he has a lot to do now that a 15-year-old named Tiara Amarante documented the perils of riding the 23 bus. People riding the 23 are living in fear of thugs who pack heat, fight and intimidate riders on a daily basis.

Radio Boston had MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas on the air on Friday, and he took questions from callers about the T. He likely realized that he was about to put his feet to the fire, as Radio Boston began the show with a few quotations, such as "I hate the people on the T, I hate the service, I hate everything about the T."

. They did it on purpose to save money, effectively punking riders who are told a bus or train will come at a certain time, only to wait for a ride that will never arrive.

Ever "Written to the Top" to complain to the MBTA that a bus or train you expected never arrived? And maybe, just maybe, they wrote back in apology?

--MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas has received plenty of angry e-mails in his time, and should be able to take some serious heat. But he is furious about an e-mail from a Department of Corrections employee that got way too personal. Grabauskas is gay, and the e-mailer used anti-gay slurs about Grabauskas when describing MBTA service. Now Grabauskas is upset with Deval Patrick and his administration for not doing something about it sooner. The employee has been suspended. [Boston Herald]

We can't control the nasty weather that occasionally strikes Boston. When the sleet stings your face, or when you step into a deep, cold puddle, you just have to convince yourself that the moment will pass. Soon, you'll be underground in a cozy T stop where you can thaw out or dry off.

-- Former "Most Eligible Bachelor," and now infamous sleazeball, Gary Zerola has been acquitted of kidnapping and attempted rape by a jury after less than a day of deliberation. He still faces other charges. However charges that he's a major creep still pending in the court of public opinion. [Boston Globe]