Blue Mass Group has a lengthy interview with former Governor Mike Dukakis, who pulls no punches when it comes to public transportation funding. Among the gems is the quote cited above, "every mode of transportation loses money," which the Duke mined during a jeremiad about highway funding. Other topics include the shaky funding for the T—especially relevant considering proposed rollbacks on the new sales tax. The Duke supports a gas tax, noting "Five or six cents on the gasoline tax is what the T needs...to get back on track, along with much better management[.] While I know people don't want to pay any more, the fact of the matter is that gasoline today is costing us, what, a buck more than it did a year ago? And that's all about speculation in the oil market, and we kind of sit there like lemmings and take it." The whole podcast is worth a listen. [Blue Mass Group]
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Bike riders in Boston got the short end of the stick with the MBTA opened its first bike cage in Alewife, the last stop on the Red Line, in the city of Cambridge. But now, thanks to a wad of cash from ARRA, a/k/a the stimulus bill, the T will be opening its first Boston bike cage, at Forest Hills station in Jamaica Plain.
Okay, okay, we get it. You work a very important job that does not allow you time to eat and thus you must pack your breakfast, lunch, and dinner in separate neoprene lunch totes (color-coded, of course) for consumption at your desk. You must then carry around all of these neoprene totes in a neoprene duffel. You must also carry around an additional duffel bag full of indeterminate items (presumably workout gear) to show others that You Work Out, or at least You Carry Around a Bag That Might Contain Workout Gear. And if you're a woman, naturally you need a massive purse (perhaps a Birkin, though that's so last year) as well, because women do love those. What's the final touch to your bag-laden (but certainly not bag lady) ensemble? Why, a neighbor on the MBTA to hit with your bag(s), of course!
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.
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.
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.
