The MBTA’s response to a federal directive ordering the embattled company to repair its extreme staffing shortages — slicing again service — is petulant and vindictive and reveals the necessity for a whole change in management.
The time has come for Gov. Charlie Baker to right away take away the T’s General Manager Steve Poftak and any of the ineffective, toothless board of administrators which might be below his management.
With these new service cutbacks, the T is now utilizing riders as pawns in a harmful recreation of go the buck. The individuals who depend on the T to get to work and faculty are getting screwed over, as standard.
Riders and common T customers have put up with rather a lot over time — extreme payouts and pensions, tools failures, repeated accidents, full lack of transparency and accountability, elevated crime — so the bar is already low.
But the T’s response to the Federal Transit Administration’s order requiring the company to rent extra dispatchers is a brand new low.
How way more are we keen to place up with at this hack company?
New trains and extra employees or security audits will not be going to unravel all of the T’s security issues.
It’s time for brand new management. Shutting down service will not be management.
Passengers on the Red, Orange and Blue strains will now solely get weekend service on weekdays, which implies standing on the platform as much as quarter-hour longer ready for a prepare. Which means being late to work or a gathering or faculty. It additionally means extra crowded circumstances on trains and platforms within the COVID period the place individuals are attempting to take care of protected distances from one another.
The T has clearly taken the straightforward manner out on this dispute with the feds, blaming the FTA for its issues.
“With a limited number of dispatchers, these new timetables allow the MBTA to schedule dispatchers in compliance with Federal Transit Administration directives, and continue delivering service in a safe and reliable manner,” the T stated in an announcement.
Safe and dependable? Ha. Good one.
Do we actually have to go over once more the litany of accidents and different incidents on the T? They embody, simply within the final 12 months and a half, an accident on the B department of the Green Line, injuring 27 folks, a commuter rail crash with a automotive that killed the motive force, an escalator malfunction at Back Bay that harm 9 and a lethal accident on the Red Line when a rider’s arm acquired caught within the door, dragging him to his loss of life.
After promising to revamp the T when he first turned governor, Baker has taken a hands-off method to the most recent collection of accidents and incidents as a result of he will get a State Police chauffeur and doesn’t have to fret about attending to work on time.
No governor desires to personal the T. If Baker tried to interchange management, he would personal the T’s issues, and he doesn’t need that.
Fixing the MBTA ought to be the No. 1 concern of the brand new governor when she or he takes workplace. The trains and buses of the T are the lifeline of the Boston area, getting of us to work or faculty or physician’s appointments and giving them a protected different to driving.
We want new leaders who’re keen to shake issues up and make security and reliability an actual precedence.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”