STATE HOUSE, Boston — At a Beacon Hill oversight hearing on July 10, Massachusetts transportation officials said the Big Dig debt is starving other road and bridge projects statewide.
 
At the hearing, state transportation officials said the total cost of the Big Dig, including interest on borrowing, has grown to more than $23 billion. It is the costliest highway project in the nation’s history.

Dana Levenson, the chief financial officer for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said the Big Dig is preventing the Commonwealth from doing work on other transportation projects.

“The magnitude of the debt and the attendant debt service required by the Commonwealth, MassDOT and the MBTA certainly keeps us from tackling not only desirable but necessary capital projects for the good of the Commonwealth, its taxpayers and transportation users,” Levenson said.

This year, the Department of Transportation will pay $129 million in debt service alone on the Big Dig. The state will pay somewhere north of $300 million. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority will pay $125 million. And the interest payments are going up.

State Transportation Secretary Rich Davey said the current administration didn’t create the problem — but they still have to deal with it.

“I told the assistant minority leader that I think I was in grammar school when it started," Davey said. "We didn’t build it. But it's ours to manage.”

Furthermore, in order to get approval for the Big Dig, the state had to agree to build several large transit projects, including the extension of several commuter rail lines. The Green Line Extension is expected to cost $1.3 billion, adding to the state's Big Dig financial obligations.

“In corporate America every single day, on professional sports teams every single day, if the team you have isn’t getting you where you need to go you need to find a different way of doing it," she said. "You need people with different voices, fresh talent, different perspectives.”
 
Candaras and four other senators wrote an amendment to the bailout bill that would suspend the MBTA’s board of directors and replace it with a new governing board.
 
They argued that this is the third time the state has been asked to bail out the MBTA. And that the agency gets more public subsidies than other major transit system in the nation. And that it already receives 60 percent of its funding from general state revenues.
 
Senate leadership and other lawmakers agreed the bailout bill would only provide a one-year fix for the T's financial woes, and that long-term solutions are needed. But they said that replacing the managers of the MBTA wouldn’t cure the T’s unsustainable structural deficit, aging infrastructure and large Big Dig debt load.
 
The House passed its bailout bill on June 13.

"More riders would normally be a good news story," she said. "The problem is that the MBTA has serious financial problems and so the investments the T needs to make in order to accommodate those riders, they can't afford."
 
The MBTA shoulders the biggest debt burden of any transit agency in the nation.

In order to afford new cars to accommodate the increase in ridership, the researchers said Massachusetts has to provide help.
 
"We're talking about a billion-dollar investment just for the Red Line and the Orange Line cars. So we need to find resources that the Commonwealth would provide in order to let the T start the process of buying those new cars," Pollack said.
 
She added that replacing cars dating to the 1960s and power systems a century old is about more than safety and aesthetics: The Orange Line has trouble keeping enough balky cars in service to meet demand while the Green Line’s electrical system and fleet cannot support the number of three-car trolleys that ridership otherwise dictates.

What, the T doesn't make you want to sing and dance? (Courtesy)

 
BOSTON — Bostonians may curse the many troubles of the MBTA, but they love to hate it. Now there’s a musical that many of us (well, those who ride the MBTA) can relate to — from the Boston sports fans who crowd the T after games, to the tourists trying to make sense of subway maps, to the college students out for a night of partying. Born out of ImprovBoston, “T: An MBTA Musical” has moved to the Club Oberon stage in Cambridge through July 13.

Melissa Carubia, lyricist and music director of the show, said the inspiration behind the musical was simply because the T is an active part of the Boston lifestyle.
 
“The T is kind of like one of those things in Boston that you can’t imagine life without. It’s like the Red Sox,” said Carubia. “When it’s bad, everybody loves to complain about it, it’s on everybody’s mind. And when it’s good, it’s just a part of the fabric of our city that we sometimes take for granted.”
 
The musical started out as a 6-minute sketch for political sketch group Mosaic and ended up becoming a full-blown musical, filled with characters like “Charlie” (as in Charlie Card), “party girls” and “bros.”
 
Jeffrey Mosser, director, came aboard the project after Carubia and writer Michael Manship approached him. After he read the script and listened to the songs, Mosser was immediately interested.
 
“I saw this as an event more than a theater piece. It was so exciting and so fun,” said Mosser.
 
The relatable stories are what make the musical an event. By doing research on the T lines, Carubia found stories and inspiration for the characters in the musical.
 
“I looked up the opinions of what people thought the characters of each line were. That crowdsourcing through Yelp, through Facebook helped me build a show that resonated with everybody,” Carubia said.
 
And for the most part, Mosser said since a lot of people have their own T story, the show really does appeal to everyone.
 
“The most important part of this story that I can tell you is it isn’t malicious toward the MBTA,” Mosser said. “It’s to tell all of our stories, it’s towards all of our audiences who all have a story about the train ... if you have your own T story, that’s the audience we have, that’s the audience we’re looking for.”
 
Even officials from the MBTA came out to have a look.
 
“At our first incarnation of the show, Richard Davey did come to see the show. He loved it; he was blown away by it,” Mosser said.
 
“He posed for pictures with the cast afterwards and got a CD. It was great,” Carubia said.
 
One of the main goals of the show is to make the audience feel like they are actually riding the T.
 
“We try to make sure that it feels like you’re on a big red train at 5 in the afternoon,” Mosser said. “We have seating right on the T, where actors are dancing right in front of you, immediately in front of you, so you feel like you’re sitting right on the train.”
 
And the most ironic aspect of this show is when it’s over, it’s too late to take the T home.
 
“That’s one of the conflicts of our show, too. One of our characters couldn’t get home,” Mosser said. “We chose this time slot full knowing that this might be the result. That just shows us the world we’re living in … the slice of life!”
 
 
 
 

June 13, 2012

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON —  The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill June 13 giving the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority the money it needs to avoid drastic cuts … for now.
 
House lawmakers agreed to bail out the struggling MBTA with state funds. The bill would transfer nearly $50 million to the transit agency from a fund that had been intended to help reduce air pollution.

On the House floor, lawmakers emphasized this was only a one-time, limited bailout and that the MBTA will be short on cash again next year
 
Rep. Joseph Wagner (D-Chicopee), who chairs the economic development committee, said there still needs to be a long-term solution to fix the transportation system’s broken finances.
 
"To ignore that there’s a problem, to ignore that there’s a cost to fixing the problem and really to frame this appropriately — to ignore that we’ve got more than a billion-dollar-a-year gap in terms of transportation financing needs versus available revenues is to ignore a whole lot," he said.
 
The bailout bill still needs Senate approval.
 
Bus and subway fares are already are scheduled to rise by an average 23 percent on July 1. Transportation Secretary Richard Davey warned of deeper cuts in service if the bill isn't passed by then. 
 
"We're optimistic that the Legislature will come through, but optimism doesn't pay the bills," he said. "So we do need a bill that's passed, and soon. Otherwise there will be more cuts on the table."
 
Lawmakers said 2 weeks is plenty of time to meet the deadline.

Politicians rally at South Station on June 11, 2012. (Phillip Martin/WGBH)

BOSTON — Massachusetts officials, local mayors and advocates rallied on June 11 in Boston’s South Station for a solution to the state's transportation funding crisis.
 
State transportation secretary Richard Davey headlined the rally, saying that bridges, roads and transit systems across the state were crumbling and in need of updates and repair. “The current transportation system we have today we cannot afford and the kind of improved system we all want we cannot afford,” he said.

State transportation agencies are saddled with debt — most of it from the Big Dig. 45 percent of the state transportation budget goes to the debt burden. Transportation officials have said they need new sources of revenue for maintenance and new infrastructure. But raising the gas tax or hiking tolls have been political nonstarters. and Lawmakers in Western and Central Massachusetts are reluctant to dedicate tax dollars to Boston-area roads and bridges, and vice versa. 
 
Still Gov. Deval Patrick, local mayors and outside groups are upping pressure on lawmakers to take action.
 
“We’ve allowed ourselves to be divided by region, divided by mode," said Somerville mayor Joe Curtatone. "In a battle over dwindling resources, suburbs have been pitted against cities. Rural communities have been pitted against urban areas. Drivers have been pitted against rail and transit users. That has got to stop and stop now.”
 
They’re calling on lawmakers to produce a long-term funding solution in the next legislative session.

To a visitor, "Wood Island" doesn't mean much. To the locals …
 
"That was a wonderful park," Scantlebury says. "Three beaches — it even had a cinder track. It was designed by Olmstead … and the airport just took it all over."
 
He lives upstairs. L. lives down the block.
 
"East Bostonians are provincial, we are. There's nothing wrong with that" she says, slicing, rolling and placing. "And if you live here you're more a North Shore shopper than you are a Boston shopper because it's easy to get to in your car."
 
The room smells of lemon, sugar, nutmeg, oil and Luyo's perfume. Scantlebury rolls out a rectangle of dough on a thick blanket of flour and starts cutting out rings. The front door slams and Luyo goes out to the ancient cash register.
 
--
 
At 60 cents per donut, how does Betty Ann's stay in business?
 
"Well, I own the building," Scantlebury says. "What people don't realize is when you're paying for donuts from a chain you're paying for the number of people who handle them." He places the rings on a wire tray that looks like it went through Korea. "I stay ahead of the bill collectors and I'm single so I only have to worry about myself."
 
When the tray is full, he lowers it into a wide pot of oil. "We've gotten quite a bit of press for being fairly unknown," he says, flipping the donuts over. No gloves protect his bony forearms — "I'm living proof donuts aren't fattening!" he cracks.
 
He shows off the real coal-fired oven built into the wall. But really, the room shows itself off: the bricks, tongue-and-groove walls and tongue-and-groove ceiling are all painted glam-rock silver. Scantlebury shrugs: "My father did that before I got here … and he's not around to ask."
 
Good and brown, the donuts come out to drain.
 
L. says, "Don't put my name in this article, please! I'm a retired schoolteacher. I don't want the kids to find me." Cut, roll, place.
 
Before she was a schoolteacher, she was a kid back when the women stayed home. Walking home on a warm night with all the windows open, "Oh, the aromas and the smells, they were overpowering," she says.
 
--
 
The screen door slams. Today is unusually quiet, Scantlebury says, going out to the front room: "Fridays are usually pretty busy — ever since 'Chronicle.'"
 
But it's 8 a.m. and people are starting to arrive. Though they come alone, no one orders for one. One woman is taking donuts to the courthouse; another, to the kids she babysits. Bob Impemba, 59, obligingly stops for a brief interview. He visits from Winthrop every month or so. "Not as often as I like," he says. "It's a dietary thing."
 
Has the place changed? "Never changed," he says, and with a grin, "Owner's pleasant."
 
"I'm still crazy!" Scantlebury responds, cheerfully. He explains, "His older brother went through St. Mary's with my older brother."
 
L. steps behind the counter for a minute. "I've been coming here since I was a little kid," she says. "And truly we survive on repeat customers. Not internet people."
 
Like JoAnn Rick of Winthrop. "I'm 75. I was 11 when I first started coming here. They used to have the bread, you'd get the hot bread after school," she says. Now $12.85 buys her "a dozen jelly" (no plural) in a box, two jelly and a cruller in a bag, and four jelly and two plain in another bag. "My husband owned a Dunkin' Donuts for years but you know what? These taste better," Rick says.
 
A woman in a red shirt comes in. She doesn't say a word. Luyo fills her order.
 
--
 
Back in the kitchen, Scantlebury tosses donuts in sugar. "The closest I've come to our jelly donuts is in Cornwall," he says. That's where he vacations. But something's missing in those.
 
L. is back at her counter. "In this country I really feel we've done a real disservice to people who do hand work or manual labor," she says. Slice, roll, place. "If you don't have a suit and tie your work has no value."
 
When she was a kid the priest had to warn people from the altar that the donuts would still be there when Mass was done. Times have, of course, changed. "There's a bagel place over in Chelsea — Katz's," Scantlebury says, pronouncing the word "kates." But, the owner told him, "'People don't want to schlep all the way over to Katz's every day to get their bagels.'"
 
He slides a tray of donuts into the unlit oven to proof. There is a long discussion of the Euro and why it's not working.
 
L. insists once more: no name. "Once I went to try on ladies' undergarments" and guess who was working at the store?
 
But you should come back on Sundays, Scantlebury says, when the shop showcase is full with pies and cakes, lemon squares, coffee rolls, brownies. And "it's like a social club sometimes," he says. "They come here, run into someone they went to school with."
 
Which may be more important than the donut.
 
Where should WGBH stop next? Leave a comment here, email the reporter or let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Subway, commuter rail, light rail, major bus depots — all are eligible.

 
May 18, 2012
 
BOSTON — Yelp isn't just for retail establishments and restaurants: Some people use the open review site as a home for their musings and warnings about Greater Boston's public transit.  First we looked at bus routes you might never have heard of. Now we turn to six stations you almost definitely know.

N.B.: Opinions are those of the Yelper and do not necessarily reflect the views of WGBH, WGBH News or anyone who isn't running late and fed up.
 

1. Porter Square

(35 reviews, 4 stars)
 
Brian D., Roxbury: You know that scene from "28 Days Later" when the army lady and those 2 kids have to get down the broken escalator to escape certain death by starving zombies? Yeah, they could have filmed that at the Porter Square T Station. ...

Wow. 

Vertigo. (3 stars)
 
Leighann F., Astoria, N.Y.: Things I can accomplish while riding the escalators down into the depths of the Porter Square T Station:

2. Reply to at least three emails.
3. Check-in on my Yelp App.
4. Read a couple of pages in a paperback book.
5. Listen to half of Beck's "Hell Yes" from the Guero album.
6. Stop at the half-way point of the decent, where there is a conveniently located Citibank ATM, and grab cash.

See, the stairs aren't so bad. It's all about multi-tasking. (4 stars)
 
Chris M., Medford: I was expecting to be greeted by angels when I finally got to the top, but there were only gangsters, who I am under the strong impression based on their yelling, that they were in fact, crunk. (3 stars)

2. Sullivan Square

(15 reviews, 3.5 stars)
 
Elizabeth G., Somerville: This place could be a film set for a movie about nuclear war. You know, the scene where they show what disaster hath been wrought on the planet.

One might come here for a pleasant morning stroll amid concrete flyovers. A stroll in which there are no crosswalks and no sidewalks. … The best part of Sullivan Square is the Schrafft building, with its neon-pink sign, the headquarters of a New England candy company of days gone by. To express your reverence, say it 3x fast, in a teenage-boy Beavis & Butthead tone of voice: "Schraaaaafft..."

One might also come here for the adventure of navigating an 8-way intersection in which approximately only 50% of the streets are labeled. It would be a great starting point for the Amazing Race — drop them here and see if they can figure out what country (decade, universe) they are in! (2 stars)
 
Jeffrey H., Washington, D.C.: Oh, and why else do I love Sully? Well there's a Dunkins and a convenience store inside. I never fail to laugh whenever I see the old crazy blonde woman behind the Dunkins counter scream, "GET OUTTAH HEYAH" when a pigeon flies in through her window and perches itself on a maple frosted coffee roll. Watching a crazy woman scream and throw cups at a bird-rat? Priceless. And hey, I thoroughly enjoy stepping over to the convenience store to buy some diet cokes and pop tarts whilst I watch the scum of Slummaville spend their paychecks on scratch tickets, megabucks, and Chiclets. (2 stars)
 
Dan W., Charlestown: Sullivan Square ain't pretty, but neithah's ya motha, kehd. (3 stars)  

3. Courthouse Station

(4 reviews, 3.5 stars)
 
Nathan R., Waltham: Buckminster Fuller's dream has come true at last! If you desire a glimpse of the shimmering neon space-transit of tomorrow, take a stroll down its gleaming center runway. Let it wash you in its soothing purple glow. 

Courthouse Station is a true testament to human folly, an astounding mixture of architectural brilliance and decadent waste that looks like the foyer of an interplanetary discotheque. It's the most inexplicably bizarre site in the entire MBTA service web.

Nobody's ever there, so bring friends and make love in it. (5 stars)  

4. Airport Station

(7 reviews, 4 stars)
 
The only non-tourist review:
Andrew H., Somerville: It's on the blue line. The blue line is the most unfortunate line of all the MBTA lines. The only reason that more people hate the green line than the blue line is because not many people ever take the blue line consistently enough to realize how truly miserable it is. … I lived a few blocks from this station for six months and learned its mysterious ways. 

The positive: 
1) Through the park, as you come up on the station, you can see the inbound trains approaching. If you feel like running, you can sometimes catch the train. 
2) It's a very pretty station.
3) The brand new parks on either side of the station are some of the best maintained parks in all of Boston and you can have a great time there. 
4) You can learn about Amelia Earhart on the walls. 
5) There are trains here that can take you away from Airport Station. 

The negative: 
1) You're on the blue line.
2) You live near the airport in a terrible neighborhood.
3) This place is PACKED with tourists.
4) You have to cross some crazy bridge to get to the non-airport side of the neighborhood if you just got off an outbound train here.
5) You're on the blue line.

I guess as I wrote this review I realized more that the Airport station itself isn't terrible, it's just the fact that you're on the blue line and in East Boston that's so terrible. Airport Station is an overall well designed place that the MBTA actually should have spent money on and did successfully. (3 stars)

5. Andrew Station

(6 reviews, 3 stars)
 
Chris W., Boston: Riding the T when we were younger the voice recording would say "entering Andrew" and the kids on the train always seem to find that funny and laugh. 

6. Copley Square

(4 reviews, 3.5 stars)
 
James B., Boston: This is a subway station. Subway cars arrive intermittently and take you from here to your destination, or at least somewhat closer to it. The station does this job well, unless of course the cars are delayed. However, this is not the fault of the station. (3 stars)

May 15, 2012
 
BOSTON — Those used to tracking the bus or train on their smartphones now have a new tool to help with the T. Last week, the MBTA announced that Google Maps now offers interior views of 24 stations on Android phones.
 
"One of our best partners has been Google and obviously they have incredible reach," said Josh Robin, director of innovation at the MBTA. "They approached us about being their first transportation partner" for station maps in the U.S.
 
Indoor maps were already available for a number of U.S. and Japanese airports and shopping centers. See [potentially not entirely up-to-date] list.
 
All the MBTA had to do was hand existing CAD drawings over to Google. "They do the cool part," Robin said. Cost to the MBTA: $0.
 

So they're cool. But are they useful?

"People that are new to the stations … will obviously use something like this more," Robin said. He thought they would also help people who need accessible paths and noted that some stations are particularly complex. "Downtown Crossing — you can go two to three blocks underground," he said. "You can see where the bathrooms are in South Station."
 
Two fans of the transportation/internet nexus came down on opposite sides of the question.
 
"I honestly think they're of limited usefulness," Laurie Deitemeyer said in an email. She tweets as @RideLikeCharlie and hadn't been able to get the feature to work on her Android phone yet.
 
Lower-tech wayfinders made more sense to her. "I think it would be much more effective to have station maps posted," she said. "That would be easier than taking out your phone and waiting for maps to load with limited underground service."
 
Indeed, this reporter's stab at viewing Harvard Station from its bus tunnel yielded nothing but a spinning beach ball. (InSite Wireless provides underground service, Robin said; individual carriers make their own deals with the company.)
 
However, Jason Bereza, who moved to the area in mid-January and blogs at The T Adventure, thought the maps would help "in the cases of stations with multiple exits and for finding things such as restrooms and customer service windows such as the time I got lost trying to find the one at Downtown Crossing," he said in an email.
 
Bereza would like to see additional labels where stations have multiple levels and different entrances for inbound and outbound trains, and to indicate which bus routes stop where. The latter "would've saved me the time I spent 15 minutes walking around Harvard Square trying to find the 1."
 
And perhaps there's a use above and beyond the prosaic commute. "If the purpose is not for people to find their way, but instead for people like me to look at station maps for fun so I can visualize them better, then they're probably awesome," Deitemeyer said.
 

 
BOSTON — We shouldn't be surprised: In a world where no sandwich shop is safe, of course there are Yelp reviews of MBTA stops and routes. Indeed, there's an entire Public Transportation category. Read in a batch, these reviews describe people's daily lives with an eye for detail a novelist would envy. 

They're such good reading we're splitting them into multiple posts. First, reviews of bus routes you may not know so well, including the 70, 85 and ... 194? 

Notes
- By "lesser-used" routes, we mean not the 1, 39, 66, 77, e.g.
- Some of these reviews are several years old; presumably the Yelper has since moved.

Bus Route 70: Happy hour

(7 reviews, 2 stars)
 
Anouska B., Boston: You know when you're the drunk girl on a bus through suburban middle America eating Triskets out if your coat pocket. Yeah, that's me. (4 stars)
 
— The author of this post is 98 percent sure this Yelper was her next-door neighbor back when she lived on the 83 and 87.

Bus Route 73: You'll meet some important people

(12 reviews, 2.5 stars)
 
Brian N., Philadelphia: Through a year of commuting from Belmont, I have discovered the secret to avoiding the madness that is the Bus 73 during rush hour. What's that, you ask?

Don't take the bus during rush hour. (3 stars)
 
Chris L., Rochester, N.Y.: 1:00am - I look, with frustration, at the man sitting next to me. He returns a similar look. We become friends. His name is Raymond. I don't think he's drunk.

"I'm Raymond. Good to meet you. I'm so damn tired. All I wanna do is go home and take these wet shoes off. I've been out on the water all day."

1:05am - My friend Raymond, who may or may not be drunk, tells me he knows very important people in Belmont and Watertown. I mention that the roads in Belmont are horrible and I live in Watertown right now, but I'm thinking about moving.

"It's too bad I'm so tired. Any other day, I'd make a phone call and have that road fixed for ya. Tomorrow. You know the New York Diner? Go talk to the owner and tell him Raymond sent you. He'll have you living and eating for free. As long as you do good, you'll be treated good. I know some important people." (1 star)
 
Courtney C., Somerville: Beware the "young dude." He wears a chain wallet and is usually sipping what looks like [a] smoothie made from the souls of his passengers, and wreaks of cigarettes (not that cigarettes are a universally offensive scent, I just want you to know it's him). He looks like he might be 21 or so. His methods of stopping and starting are more nausea-inducing than your grandmother's. (1 star)

Bus Route 85: Empty but for the smog

(3 reviews, 3.5 stars)
 
Robin J., JP: There is never anybody on this bus. It's not that the bus doesn't go anywhere important, because it does. It starts at Kendall, goes through Union Square, and ends up on a small residential street in a nice little neighborhood between there and Davis Square. I bet the people who live on this street aren't too fond of the 85 bus, because once it gets to the end of its route it sits at the end of the street blocking traffic and chug-chug-chugging its smog until it starts back up again.

I used to take this bus to work a few days a week, and half the time I was the only rider. Totally, totally creepy. Also totally, totally wasteful. (3 stars)
 
— Yours truly used to live on that very street and loved the 85 because it stopped, well, right there.

Bus Route 88: Like being in France

(4 reviews, 3.5 stars)
 
Mandy, MA: In the wise words of Ja Rule and Ashanti "Baby! I'm not always there when you call But I'm always on time."

Such is my experience with my beloved 88 bus. It's not always there when I want it to be (i.e. when it is raining, freezing, when I overslept and am late for work,etc..) but it *is* relatively on time and dependable, a veritable miracle considering it's part of the MBTA. 

This bus will take you from "the Paris of Somerville," Davis Square to the "Galleries Lafayette of Somerville," The Cambridgeside Galleria.

You get to ride it with a variety of interesting folk: school kids, senior citizens, brutally handsome urban hipsters, angry corporate patsys, and a man who can mumble the whole screenplay of Robocop to you if you sit next to him! and me! (4 stars)
 
Jeremy F., Brighton: I had a guy talk to me from the middle of Highland to Lechmere about how you need to be gentle with a woman, it's what separates us from the animals. Then he told me if i got a bike and worked out I could look like spiderman. "Don't you want that, your arms and back lookin like spiderman?" (3 stars)

 Bus Route 194: The bus that doesn't exist

(2 reviews, 4.5 stars)
 
Matthew M., Boston: There's no published schedule for the 194, so you won't find it on the MBTA's website. But it shows on http://nextbus.com, and if you hop on the first inbound run of the 89 or the 93, the automatic system will announce that you're on route 194.

The 194 is the first inbound run of the 89 and the 93, which goes from Clarendon Hill to Sullivan Station to Haymarket (where you can catch a host of other early morning buses, like special routes of the 39 and 57 that start at Haymarket). The bus came precisely on schedule at Powderhouse Circle (a minute after 4:33) and was exactly on schedule at Sullivan (4:47) and Haymarket (4:57).

I'm one for one with this bus. Four stars for precision.
 

Part 2 of this series: Porter Square, Courthouse and other subway stations you know and (possibly) love.

WGBH's Bob Seay, right, interviews Richard Davey of the Mass. Department of Transportation

Excerpts from the interview ...

Seay: The first suggestion: Expand service. More riders, more revenue.

Davey: True. That is true. But what folks have to realize, though, is usually that our costs go up.

The only service we run that makes money is our Patriots game-day commuter rail.... All the service that we run is subsidized. Today it costs you $1.70 to ride the subway with a Charlie Card? To run the service costs more like $3.20 per ride.

Seay: The second suggestion: Have the state take back the Big Dig debt.

Davey: I think that's a fine idea but with the caveat that — that is about $1.7 billion. It equates to about $125 million a year. You're just handing them, the state, the same problem. How are they going to pay for it? What kind of either programs would be cut or revenues would be raised? ... I think folks have to be careful what they wish for.

Seay: Suggestion #3: Raise the gas tax.

Davey: If we did that in the future, as the governor proposed, we have to be clear that that or any other revenues we might raise, would be dedicated to transportation across the Commonwealth. I think that whether real or imagined, folks that live outside the metropolitan Boston area... feel as though in the past, too many resources or a disproportionate number of resources have gone into Boston-based projects.

Seay: Suggestion #4 is have better PA systems so we can hear what they're saying.

Davey: [laughs] Charlie Brown's teacher has been retired. ... I think the PA systems certainly in the stations are pretty clear. I agree that the PA systems in some of the trains aren't so clear and so as we buy new trains we're moving to automated announcements. And soon, coming soon, we've been talking about it for a while but we don't want to roll it out until we get it right, will be the countdown clocks in the subways. 

Seay: The fifth suggestion was improve fare collection.

Davey: I think the most challenging piece for us has been our commuter rail. And we just announced last week that we're going to launch a pilot program later this year with a company from England that allows you to purchase your commuter rail ticket on your cellphone. It will be the first commuter rail in the U.S. to adopt this. ... We estimate through surveys that about 75 percent of all of our commuter rail customers have smartphones. So rather than spending tens of millions of dollars to put in gates and Charlie machines, this will cost us virtually nothing and the customer will literally have the ticket machine in their hands.
 

As fare hikes and service cuts await passengers, there's been little movement on solving the T's long-term problems. In the second part of his interview with WGBH News, Davey addressed the question what will happen if the legislature fails to act to address the T's budget deficit by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

May 2, 2012

WGBH readers and listeners care about the MBTA: Your responses to our "How I'd Fix the T" survey hit the triple digits — and they weren't one-word answers, either. The suggestions and ideas ranged as broad and wide as the commuter rail network ... but some trends did emerge. So, with a tip o' the e-ink to Harper's, here's your MBTA Index.

Percentage of responses over 150 words: 19
 
Word count of longest response: 359, cut off by survey window
 
Distance of farthest-flung respondent from the State House measured in B branch Green Line cars: 105,171.89 *
 
… Distance in smoots: 1,393,920

Percentage of respondents wanting more service/no cuts: 31
 
Rank of "expand service" in WGBH's Facebook poll: 1
 
Number of mentions of an "urban ring" that would connect the existing lines: 6
 
Year that six communities entered a compact to start planning an "urban ring": 1995 **
 
 
Number of mentions of the phrase "Big Dig": 13
 
Dollar amount of suggested increase in the gas tax: 1¢ – 5.1¢
 
Number of responses suggesting a new T pass for "SUV baby carriages": 1
 
 
 
Number of criticisms of T employees' work ethic/customer service: 6
 
… of T employees' fashion sense ("wrinkled, untucked shirts"): 1
 
Proportion of T employees who are great, according to one respondent: 99 44/100
 
 
Ratio of comments about the bus to comments about the commuter rail: 10:7
 
… of the buses to the Blue Line: 20:1
 
Bus routes identified by name: 1, 52, 77, 87, 88, SL5
 
Mean proposed maximum wait for a bus, in minutes: 11.67
 

Number of respondents wishing fellow T users "a nice ride": 1
 

* B branch cars are 74 feet long. Sources: AnsaldoBreda, Kinkisharyo, Wikipedia for the train manufacturers.
 
** Source: Boston Redevelopment Authority.

BOSTON — A number of responses to our "How You'd Fix the T" survey mentioned other cities and countries that show how good a good transit system can be ... possibilities explored by WGBH's Phillip Martin in his story "How to Create a World-Class Transit System."

 

David Wilson, Cambridge
Uses the Red Line, Orange Line
I've lived in Zurich, Switzerland; Shanghai, China; and Singapore, and in particular Singapore and Zurich have remarkable public transportation systems. The key in both cities is that the cost of driving into the city has to be prohibitively high enough that it becomes burdensome not only to low-income individuals, but also high-income individuals. Tolls paid via transponder as you enter the city core in an automobile, which can be graded to be higher at peak traffic times, are a particularly effective way to do this, as Singapore and London have demonstrated. There should be no way to get downtown in a car without paying tolls. The vast majority of that significant revenue source can then be diverted to support the growth of public transportation.

It also seems to me that there are a lot of cities in the world which have successfully expanded their transportation grids in recent decades in a planned, coordinated and ultimately highly successful fashion. My impression (which admittedly is based only on casual observation, not any kind of research) is that the upper echelons of the T are hired from within. As a result, it seems likely that there is an endemic corporate culture of "this is how we do things" at the T. I think that it would be a worthwhile investment to bring in consultants from some of the world's biggest public transportation systems, like London and Tokyo and certain cities in continental Europe, as well as some of the cities in the US which have recently and successfully grown their own public transportation networks, like LA, and advise on how to coordinate and facilitate growth and sustainability within the system.

Julie Ecker, Boston
Uses the Orange Line
While recently in NYC subway fare was $2.25/trip and is good for a 2-hour window. I would change fare structure in Boston. Those who need connections from bus to bus or subway/bus should be able to ride one direction for one flat fare and not have to pay for each leg. Especially since poorer neighborhoods are more likely not to have subway and to have buses instead.

Mary Devlin, Washington, D.C.
Uses the Bus System, Red Line, Green Line, Commuter Rail
As a Massachusetts resident attending college in Washington, D.C., I've noticed how much better and more efficient the Metro is than the T. First of all, the rules against eating on the Metro make it extremely clean. Second, there are extended hours on the weekend. Third, there's cellphone service almost everywhere underground. And fourth, you know exactly when trains are coming and can download a cellphone app so you can see when the next train is coming. The T could definitely take a few lessons from the Metro.  

Jan Pechenik, Cambridge
Uses the Bus System, Red Line, Green Line, Silver Line
If you want to see a world-class public transportation system in action, go visit Hong Kong. The first thing I do would be to make the T much more convenient than it is now, without raising fees. Buses and trains should arrive every 5 or 10 minutes. Smaller buses and shorter trains for off-peak periods, but no need for schedules because you would never have to wait more than 10 minutes for a ride. Once you have the convenience problem fixed, you can increase the comfort level (e.g., slightly wider seats on train) and promote programs that encourage people to take the T.  

Joanne Fray, Lexington
Uses the Red Line
I would post clear maps showing the routes of the vehicles like the maps in the Paris Metro and the London Underground.  

Gerry Katz, Chestnut Hill
Uses the Green Line
Run it on a schedule — like every other urban train system in the developed world!

And one dissenting voice, from Gillian, in the comments on Martin's story:

I'm a little surprised you held WMATA in such high regard. The Metro is saddled with debt, has serious safety concerns and the ridership is hardly enthusiastic about the customer service. The Metro fiscal model is horrid. The sheer number number of employees as well as inflated salaries help make it one of the most expensive public transit systems in the country for riders. Research peak of peak fares, penalizing those who use Metro for what it was created for, commuting! Because of this the federal government subsidizes employee commutes or offers free parking so they don't have to shell out over $400 a month for commuter bennys. Each year Metro is faced with dwindling funding because of the "tri-state" reach and zero commited funding from either of the three districts. Having lived there for 6 years it was great to be able to go just about anywhere on Metro as well as have updates on boards in the station but it was a budgetary stretch each month and considering weather constrictions (heat, snow and rain), safety (theft and train crashes) as well as overcrowding and horrid attitudes by employees made it a D+ in my book. At least in Boston you get what you pay for: a less expensive system that isn't very extensive and not technologically advanced. If Boston can provide Metro service (at its best) and keep Boston-sized fares, I'd move closer to the city!  

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Fred Salvucci headed the state transportation department under two governors. He rode the #1 bus with WGBH's Bob Seay and gave his take on what's wrong with the MBTA and how to fix it. Their conversation, in five parts:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

"I would put in more runs per day. If the buses between my home in Medford and my workplace in Newton were reliable and frequent, I wouldn't be driving."
— Rachel Sommer, Medford
 
"Add more service and reduce fares. Ridership would increase, with increased revenue."
— Kenneth Brody, Sharon
 
2. Have the state take back the Big Dig debt
 
"The first thing I would do is get the state to re-acquire the Big Dig debt from the MBTA. The MBTA spends over $100 million every year just to service the debt, which is totally unfair to its riders who want or have nothing to do with the Big Dig."
— James Lee, Jamaica Plain
 
3. Raise the gas tax
 
"I would ask the state legislature to up the gas tax another 5.1 cents per gallon and dedicate that to paying down the T's debt and making it more efficient."
— J. F. Dargon, Wareham
 
4. Have better PA systems so we can hear what they're saying
 
"Simply fixing public address systems in stations and on trains and making sure that delays are communicated effectively would make traveling by T much more civilized."
— Alicia Toney, Stoughton
 
5. Improve fare collection
 
"I rode the T daily from Cleveland Circle to Coolidge Corner in 2011. Leaving Cleveland Circle, at least 50 percent of the time the drivers would wave us on and NOT collect fares. This would happen at all the stops until I got off! No wonder the T is broke!"
— Dr. Deb Sampson, Hancock, N.H.

BOSTON — Liam Day is writing a series of poems inspired by riding the MBTA bus routes. In each poem, like the view from each bus ride, his passing look at the city tells us something about what it means to be human.

Day explores the meanings of the word moraine while riding No. 214 and contemplates how our human-made landscape also changes over time. While taking the No. 15 to Haymarket, Day spies some withered fruit and ruminates on our own aging and mortality, while on the No. 10, a view of the Hancock’s lit offices becomes a persistent reminder of the daily grind. Sitting on the No. 43, coasting past the State House and civil war memorial, is a meditation on the tension between 21st century living and the sacrifices our ancestors made to put us here. In all these works we get a deeper understanding of our city, an appreciation for its glorious and grimy parts, and a sense of how remarkable an ordinary bus trip can be.


Day shared some more of his bus route poetry with us to put on view:

 
HYANNIS, Mass. — Summer on the Cape means beaches, boating and sun. It's a boon for Cape businesses — but a hassle for everyone getting there, with traffic from Braintree to Bourne and beyond. An influx of tourists each summer doubles the Cape's population to 215,000.
 
Transportation officials expected to launch a new weekend train service from Boston to the Cape this summer to help ease that congestion. But with the MBTA facing its most significant budget crises in its history, the service is now on hold — and not because it would cost the MBTA money. It wouldn't. But with fare hikes and budget cuts on the table, launching a new train service to the Cape could be a political blunder.

 
A man, a plan
 
The plan was to spare weekend visitors from traffic by having a commuter rail train leave South Station bound for Hyannis on Friday evenings, Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. Passing through Middleboro Station, it would travel over Cape Cod's most-forgotten bridge: a railroad bridge in Bourne. Today, it's used only a few times a week by a seasonal dinner train, as well as by what's called the "trash train," because it hauls away the Cape's garbage.
 
This new service is known informally as the "tourist train." It would travel along state-owned tracks before arriving at the Hyannis Train Station and Transportation Center, where buses idle in the parking lot before heading to Boston … in the same traffic as cars.
 
On an upper floor of the transportation center is the office of Tom Cahir, the head of Cape Cod's transit authority and the person who first proposed the tourist train. He said a recent study concluded there's a demand for rail to the Cape. With the bridges handling 130,000 vehicles per day, people are looking for a car-free option.
 
"Quite frankly," Cahir said, "our plan was to have the plan commence Memorial Day weekend this year, 2012, and we told the folks doing the study that was our objective. And the guys came back to us with a report saying we could perhaps meet that objective."
 
All the necessary maintenance and repairs could be completed to meet the deadline and run the train safely this summer. But the report raised concerns about the MBTA's financial troubles — concerns Cahir shared.
 
"It does appear as though this service ... would be an expansion of the MBTA," he said, "at least that's how I would look at it, and I think the citizens of Massachusetts would look at it: ''What is the MBTA going to Cape Cod for when they haven't gone to Fall River and New Bedford yet, and they have all this debt and are raising fares?'"
 
To spare the MBTA any public perception problems, Cahir decided to put off the tourist train until next year, and in the interim to move forward with the maintenance issues the study identified.
 
"I should be very clear," Cahir said. "The MBTA never said, 'Tom, this might appear like expansion.' This is just from my knowledge, and I don't want to create any further headaches for them."
 
Budget politics
 
Politically, launching a weekend service during the MBTA's budget crises could be a mistake. But the irony is … the tourist train wouldn't cost the cash-strapped agency any money. Cape transit officials said no new equipment would be needed, and they estimated the train would attract more than 16,000 riders each summer at a fare of $20 each way. Combine that with parking revenue along the route and some federal dollars, and Cahir said the service will pay for itself.
 
"So it really would be a windfall for the MBTA rather than an expense," Cahir said.
 
Acting MBTA general manager Jonathan Davis said he relied on the judgment of Cape Cod officials as to when to begin the service. "However, we have the reality of having a budget deficit and we need to concentrate on what we're providing today. But I also think we should look at providing ways to expand service," he said.
 
Try again next year
 
Cahir was optimistic the tourist train will begin Memorial Day weekend 2013. But still, with projections indicating the service will bring more than $1 million in new tourist spending to the Cape, Chamber of Commerce director Wendy Northcross told WGBH News that she was disappointed with the delay.
 
"It is doubling frustrating when you look at the delays we're potentially suffering from bridge construction and bridge repairs and Massachusetts Department of Transportation repairs," she said. "It would just be nice to have that alternative to put up for the people, that you can get here without your car."
 
Cape transportation officials also are considering launching service between Hyannis to New York City in the coming years. By easing traffic congestion and including bicycle transportation on the trains, both plans are designed with the environment in mind. With train service, supporters say, there's no reason for a Cape Cod vacation to begin and end in traffic.
 

BOSTON — The door closes behind me and I slip $1 into one slot and 50 cents into another. I’m on the #28 bus heading to Dudley Square. Many residents of Boston’s Black and Latino neighborhoods who use mass transit each day pass through that historic depot. The station, among the city’s oldest, is located at the heart of those communities, and all area buses — like the road to Damascus — lead there.
 
The problem with elevated rail
 
Beginning in 1901, Dudley was the main stop for direct train access in Boston. Like Chicago’s famous "L," the Orange Line traveled above the city on an elevated rail line until it was torn down in 1987 and moved to the Southwest Corridor. It’s what happened after that that has made so many people in Boston’s minority neighborhoods question the fairness of mass transit policy.

Those questions are the subject of a recent documentary titled Equal or Better: The Story of the Silver Line, by Kris Carter. The film maintains that a promise was made to replace the old Orange Line with equal or better transportation options. But the service that replaced the elevated T was a bus, the Silver Line, which can take more than half an hour to get downtown. The elevated rail got you there in 10 minutes.
 
However … “elevated rail in a city cuts the city in half," said systems expert John Sterman of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “This was the problem with the old elevated rail in Boston and the old elevated highway for cars, and we have a much better environment now that that elevated railway is gone.” Sterman is a member of MIT’s newly created transportation initiative, which was formed to explore innovative ways of improving public transportation.
 
“Even though it’s cheaper to throw up some steel and put the train up overhead, there’s a lot of social costs to that,” Sterman said. The old elevated rail line also literally cast a permanent shadow over houses and business along Washington Street.
 
Arriving at Dudley at rush hour, Camera Core said though she’s not all that nostalgic about the old elevated train, it was easier and more reliable getting back and forth from downtown than buses. “It’s just always late,” she said as her bus finally pulled into the station.
 
Alejandra St. Guillen leads the Massachusetts Latino Civic Education Organization from offices just blocks from Dudley. She asked, “Why can’t we go underground in the places that are really crowded and come up for each stop, which would facilitate the traffic and really allow for direct access in town instead of having to take two buses or take the bus and the Silver Line, which is really just another bus?”
 
Getting to the workplace, whether urban or suburban
 
Marilyn Swartz Lloyd heads up MASCO, the Medical Academic Scientific Community Organization. She said Latino and Black activists in Boston have long pointed out a disconnect between minority neighborhoods and historic transportation policy, and that with cutbacks in service it is more important than ever to ask questions.
 
“How do you get people to work in their neighborhoods to the larger areas like the Financial District and the Longwood area, so that they have jobs and so that it takes them as short a period of time as people who are going on the direct spokes on the wheel?" she said. "You have to have more transportation that ties the spokes together and I think that it's particularly true in the Longwood area, where the highest population of our workers are from Dorchester and Roxbury.”
 
As many as 104,000 workers, students, patients and vendors pour into Longwood each day. According to MASCO, about 20 percent of employees who work in the medical district would be affected by cutbacks, including the elimination of two bus routes.
 
But it’s not just downtown Boston and inner-city job centers like Longwood that are dealing with how to get their workers to their desks, stations or machines.
 
Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson wrote the seminal book When Work Disappears. He said there is a mismatch between many new jobs — which are in the suburbs — and the people who need them most.
 
“80 percent of the entry-level jobs are located in the suburbs," he said. "And, therefore, a lot of people really depend on transportation to get to the jobs. The lack of feasible transportation, however, exacerbates this mismatch because the lack of transportation options not only increases reliance on automobiles, it also makes it difficult, very difficult, for those without cars — particularly inner-city residents — to get to suburban jobs.”
 
That’s a catch-22. You might say, “Well, there is commuter rail.” But most MBTA rail service was set up to get suburbanites into and out of the city and not the other way around.
 
Searching for solutions
 
“The Brookings Institution actually did a big study last year and they specifically looked at how well the transit system served jobs," said Stephanie Pollack of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University. "And we weren’t .the best and we weren’t the worse. We were in the middle of the pack.”
 
Even so, it’s going to take some major planning to alter the way we think about transportation and jobs, especially as it affects the poor and minorities, she said. “So we need to both make the transit system better serve the places where jobs are and where people are who need those jobs, and we need to change land use policy so that we make sure that when we’re locating new jobs in the region we put them in places that folks can get to on transit.”
 
Swartz Lloyd and others are calling on companies — public and private — to step up efforts to provide transportation to and from transit stations for workers and job seekers without the means to get to those jobs. “I think just like the private systems are working to pick people up from train stations and at subway stops, there may be some way that we can all interconnect as well,” she said.
 
It’s estimated that companies to subsidize the cost of transportation for their workers are spending as much as $40 million. Waiting for a bus, commuter Sean Walker said that’s the only way he could afford the rising costs of getting back and forth from his home near Ashmont Station to his job: “I got a pass for both the bus and the train, so it’s about 60 bucks.”
 
But he’s still dealing with the lingering problem of time. He works near Symphony Hall and lives near Ashmont Station in Dorchester. “It takes me overall an hour," he lamented. "In some areas if you don’t catch [a bus], another won’t come for half an hour to 45 minutes. “
 
Alternatives to the bus
 
African Americans, Latinos, Cape Verdeans and Haitians are heavily dependent on bus service. MBTA ridership is estimated at around 400,000 per weekday, with the heaviest passenger concentrations in Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester.
 
Boston city councilor Charles Yancey is lauding a joint MBTA and community plan to provide minority commuters more direct rail access, getting them from Mattapan to downtown in 20 minutes rather than 60. “It’s called the Fairmount Line, which runs right through the heart of the communities of color from the Newmarket down to Mattapan Square,“ he said.
 
The crown jewel of that plan is a new station that will be located off Blue Hill Avenue near the Cummings Bridge. The station will include a modern platform with wind screens and a message board announcing train arrivals.
 
“I also believe that we should improve the connections with Dudley Square and ultimately in the future we should have a Green Line–type of LRV type of operation running from Dudley Street all the way downtown," Yancey said.
 
Still, for those who rely on buses to get home, to school, to work or in search of employment, the amount of time it takes to get there leaves many frustrated. Some on that day passing through Dudley Station thought back to the time when the elevated trains pulled up to the platform and headed downtown. It was not the best system, but it was faster.