Comments on: The MBTA: one mistake may be regarded as a misfortune; 900 looks like carelessness

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:44:51 +0000

I love this thread and this diary. I feel like I’ve come home. Oh…wait…. I live here. Right. Anyway, watching the mess at the BU Bridge for the past 2 months was at first maddening and now only annoying. Boston is determined to use NONE of the engineering smarts that get trained here.

By: jwreezy

jwreezy — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:48:33 +0000

"What I want to know is: as someone who loves this city very deeply, what can I do to fix what’s broken? I’m not leaving this place. I want to make it better."

Steve Laniel: Not just another cut-and-run Bostonian.

By: Dylan Thurston

Dylan Thurston — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:57:38 +0000

I don't know anything about the specifics of this case, but as far as I can tell construction projects are always overdue. Steve, the apartment you're living in is one example...

But Boston also seems to have it particularly bad. The Big Dig was a major disaster. The rumors were mob involvement.

By: Aaron Weber

Aaron Weber — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:54:57 +0000

MBTA screwups are a combination of things, some of which are their fault, some of which are not.

MBTA funding is a fixed percentage of the amount the state takes in in sales tax. So, the amount they have is totally unrelated to the amount they need to spend.
Then, they spend it poorly and inefficiently. Nobody wants to give them more money when they don't have any confidence it will be well-spent.
The system is very old and its design doesn't make it easy to maintain - signal and track work usually involves shutting a lot of stuff down, more so than in newer systems that learned from the design flaws of the T.
They haven't maintained the system well, so it breaks a lot.

By: mrz

mrz — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:38:15 +0000

It seems like the bridge might be maintained by the conservation/rec folks but I have to think that once T tracks are involved, it’s all MBTA. Maybe the bridge taking forever to get done is the slow grinding of MBTA vs. conservation/rec interdepartmental slowness?

By: Kathode

Kathode — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:37:31 +0000

There’s also the closing of a lane on the BU Bridge for 3 months for sidewalk work. The work did not actually begin until early August and the lane was closed at the end of May. Wait until the students and vacationers come back. Gridlock, here we come!

By: slaniel

slaniel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:41:38 +0000

Hi giselle,

The Pesaturo reference was actually a jab at the Globe. Whenever the Globe runs a story about the MBTA, they invariably talk to Pesaturo and to Grabauskas, and to no one else.

By: giselle

giselle — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:33:48 +0000

if you are calling Joe Pesaturo with questions about the Longfellow Bridge, then you are calling the wrong agency. The bridge is owned and maintained by the department of conservation and recreation

By: mrz

mrz — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:28:15 +0000

Hey, didn't that used to be called the "Straphanger's Union"?

But, as far as the MBTA goes, I suspect it's two things: 1. Political B.S. 2. Monetary problems. I remember #2 from an NPR interview with Dan Grabauskas where people were asking questions like "WTF are things [i]continually[/i] broken?" and it boils down to the fact that the T is in the Red. I forget from what, though. Maybe the Big Dig? I'm not sure. So what happens is, the T basically gets money from car tolls and fares. A large chunk of that goes to debt service, a large hunk goes to pay workers, and the remaining scraps go to maintanence, I think.

So, yeah, they [i]know[/i] that whenever it rains, the glass in Porter station leaks and takes out one escalator and floods most of the stairwell, but they either don't have the money, or the politics basically says they need some dude replacing all the electrical fixtures in Porter instead of fixing the damned windows so that the escalator doesn't rot out and require continual maintence (which, BTW, also requires the escalator to be shut down!).

By: Adam Rosi-Kessel

Adam Rosi-Kessel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:09:48 +0000

I've always thought Boston needs something like the Straphangers Campaign (Wikipedia). If there is an analogous Boston-based organization, I haven't heard of it, which suggests that it's not doing its job very well.

The Transit Rider's Union might be worth checking out, but my sense is they are more focused on transit equity than the broader issues the Straphangers Campaign has taken on.

You might also find it amusing to know my captcha challenge for this comment is "Somerville."