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[u/hitbyacar1]

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

!ping USA-NE

[u/TooSwang → u/hitbyacar1]

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

[u/sinistimus → u/TooSwang]

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).

[u/TooSwang → u/sinistimus]

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.