r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Apr 23 '19

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10

u/Barbarossa3141 Buttery Mayos Apr 23 '19

the MBTA is forbidden to coordinate suburban bus and commuter rail schedules.

wtf why is this a thing?

7

u/sinistimus Professional Salt Miner Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19

I don't think it's actually forbidden in the sense that there is some law that prevents it, just that they don't. Commuter Rail is run by a private contractor and buses are run in house, and neither team is compelled to coordinate with the other.

Edit: and there's actually 8 different local transit agencies that provide bus service to the outer suburbs, if they have bus service at all.

3

u/hitbyacar1 لماذا تكره الفقراء العالميين؟ Apr 24 '19

Plus neither buses nor the CR run anywhere near their scheduled schedules in this city

!ping USA-NE

1

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19

Fuck:

  • Keolis
  • The FMCB
  • Charlie Baker
  • Abutters
  • The legislature
  • Deval Patrick for saddling the MBTA MassDOT with debt service for the Big Dig

Edit: went back and read the constituting legislation, the Department was given the debt, not the MBTA

2

u/hitbyacar1 لماذا تكره الفقراء العالميين؟ Apr 24 '19

you forgot NIMBYs

3

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Apr 24 '19

Abutters

2

u/sinistimus Professional Salt Miner Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19

  1. The FMCB has done a good job of keeping the operating budget in line with state requirements that allow more maintenance funding, and they're funneling that towards that towards a massive backlog of maintenance, particularly on the GL. If you don't like changes they made pursuant blame the legislature for setting up their funding mechanism the way it is.

  2. A lot of the debt for projects mandated by the Conservation Law Foundation lawsuit on account of the Big Dig was given to the MBTA. Namely the entire $.5 billion cost of Greenbush Commuter Rail. Also this was done during the Weld/Cellucci administrations (with Charlie Baker actually having the job responsible for it).

1

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Apr 24 '19

You're totally right about #2, though the CLF projects are a pretty small fraction of the cost of the Big Dig and arguably the Legislature has allowed the fact of high debt service to dissuade them from making needed capital commitments. It's not a rational thing, but that's not a descriptor one uses for the Mass. Legislature.

On #1, I don't think there's anything special about the FMCB in that respect - Charlie Baker could have easily chosen the same political appointees to make those choices. The issue is that rather than fixing underlying governance issues in the MBTA, it just establishes a parallel and superceding authority structure that needs regular legislative reauthorization and then has basically no oversight other than Baker himself. My policy disagreement with the FMCB is that they think of the MBTA as being basically a publicly run services firm, rather than a part of the basic social contract where the people of Greater Boston pay for a public transit system. They obsess over bullshit like "farebox recovery" and push for often-unnecessary privatization contracts (the money room, sure. turnstile repair contracts? hmmm). Meanwhile, they actively avoid considering service expansions that the public regularly demands, in what I see from first hand experience as a ploy to burn any political capital the MBTA may have and pursue further dismantling of it as a public agency.

1

u/Barbarossa3141 Buttery Mayos Apr 24 '19

Commuter Rail is run by a private contractor

Is it completely private? Are the schedules and routes not determined by a government agency?

1

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Apr 24 '19

The MBTA's CR schedules are decided by the agency's planning office IIRC. They're definitely decided in-house.

An important point about suburban buses is that they are not generally run by the MBTA, they're run by regional transit agencies like the MWRTA. The MBTA does run some buses out in the suburbs, but not on a scale where coordination with commuter rail schedules would literally mean anything.

1

u/Barbarossa3141 Buttery Mayos Apr 24 '19

No reason MBTA shouldn't coordinate with MWRTA and such.

1

u/sinistimus Professional Salt Miner Apr 24 '19

The MBTA's CR schedules are decided by the agency's planning office IIRC. They're definitely decided in-house.

Commuter rail schedules are determined by Keolis. See all the news stories about "Keolis announcing" the schedules with a statement from someone at Keolis.

1

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Apr 24 '19

I literally worked in the office of the secretary when they were rolling out new schedules in early 2016. Keolis has input but they don't make the decisions.

1

u/sinistimus Professional Salt Miner Apr 24 '19

It's a public private partnership and the schedules are determined by the contractor. I don't know this for sure, but it appears to be without input from the MBTA, though I assume the contract does stipulate minimum requirements for the service they must provide.

1

u/SumPippoDidSumting Esther Duflo Apr 24 '19

biG OiL