Things I do not understand: T - Grabauskas edition

Grabauskas also gets high marks from (6.00 / 2)

from the Disability Community represented by Legal Services (only in State House News Service)

Officials from the Boston Center for Independent Living and Greater Boston Legal Services have also come to the defense of Grabauskas.  "Upon coming to the MBTA, he was immediately confronted by a major class-action lawsuit detailing broad non compliance by the T with the Americans with Disabilities Act," officials from the two groups wrote in a July 29 letter to Patrick obtained by the News Service.  "He immediately reversed a four-year process of stonewalling and acted aggressively to implement innovative solutions to problems, working with MBTA customers with disabilities to develop a landmark settlement that has substantially improved the ability of thousands of people with disabilities-and many, many others in the T's general ridership- to use buses and subways.

and from Tom Menino also to State House News Service

Under fire from board members and closely watched by Patrick administration officials, MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas won crucial support from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino Thursday.

"Everything I've asked Dan Grabauskas to do with the city of Boston, he's done it very well. He's worked very closely with our city. We've accomplished a lot with him on the T and I think it's getting down to personalities now," Menino told the News Service. "Let's see if he's done the job. If he's done the job, let's let him do the job."

Menino's support is key for Grabauskas because Boston is the MBTA's largest service area.

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by: Judy Meredith @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 15:07:07 PM CDT

two sides of the same coin (0.00 / 0)

That settlement also entailed the commitment of money the T didn't necessarily have to make these upgrades -- http://www.mbta.com/about_the_...

State Street ($75m)
Savin Hill ($17m)
Orient Heights ($30m)
Arlington ($28m)
Copley ($21m)
Kenmore ($31m)
Green Line: New No. 8 Low-Floor Cars ($224m)

I'm not saying ADA accessibility was responsible for 100% of the costs above (although I picked projects from the list that were predominently about accessibility).  But when the system's finances are going off a cliff, these projects -- worthy though they might well be -- should be seen as part of the problem as well.

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by: Ed Poon @ Mon Aug 03, 2009 at 08:47:34 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Indeed (5.67 / 3)

Some of the MBTA improvements listed on that page (note: delete the last character in the link, a colon I think) are in fact used to improve efficiency (extended platforms to allow for 6 car blue line trains and 3 car D-Line trains mean 20%/50% increases in capacity with little additional expense).

But, lots of that is pure ADA.  Now, I'm not opposed to ensuring accessibility for the disabled; in fact, I work for it locally.  But, so long as The Ride is such a growing part of the MBTA budget, and so long as paratransit is still required by law even if the entire trip (embark station, debark station, intermediate stations, and all vehicles) are ADA accessible, the MBTA still has to provide The Ride to anyone with a doctor's note.

From a business standpoint, ADA is a losing issue.  It's an incredible amount of money in CIP to add fewer than 1% more riders.  It doesn't even decrease the liability of The Ride.  Now, I'm not arguing against it, because society demands that we serve as many as we can, especially those who are less well off.

Still, the T is absolutely bleeding.  Any CIP projects which don't pay back in safety and/or savings are sucking money at a time when there just isn't enough to go around.  Maybe the state should directly fund some ADA improvements, and leave the MBTA to fund those which relate to maintaining/improving current operations.

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by: stomv @ Mon Aug 03, 2009 at 09:17:30 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Good Questions, Charley. (6.00 / 1)

Especially the part where legislators say, "he's a good guy doing a difficult job."

The way the legislature works, decisions seems to be made with very little open debate to hash out pros and cons.  Some idea like "let's clear the T's debt" come up, and the response is a shrug from one or two influential chairmen or "not this year."

Grabauskas clearly has a good relationship with the legislature--but is he serving the cause of improving transit by never asking the legislature for more money to clear the T's debt?  If that failsafe for the Green Line costs $300 million that he doesn't have, why doesn't he push for that money, for the sake of his passengers and drivers?

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by: joeltpatterson @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 16:02:04 PM CDT

T safety (0.00 / 0)

They should just fix the parts of the current safety system that are broken. If they just fixed those red lights, instead of letting the drivers get used to them and blow through them because they never turn green, it would cost a lot less.

They can get a new handy dandy safety system, but if they let stuff break and never fix it, the new system will be as bad as the old one.

This is the basic problem with Boston, the expectation is the place is fucked, and at the pace repairs take place, it would take 100 years to fix it, so we'll just get by somehow. How many years have trucks been hitting the bridges on Storrow Drive? Well we'll just get by somehow.  

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by: Seascraper @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 18:32:03 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

He has been asked to perform an impossible task (6.00 / 4)

The MBTA has no ability to fund the capital improvements needed to address the safety issues raised by the NTSB. It has no ability to address its fiscal issues so long as it is burdened by Big Dig debt and required to fund itself from a portion of the sales tax.

The transportation secretary, James Aloisi, was a key player in creating the Big Dig debt and then foisting it on the MBTA. Governor Patrick chose Mr. Aloisi to be transportation secretary.

How does an administration hold its own Transportation Secretary accountable for his decisions (taken in 2001) that created today's predictable and predicted consequences? How does an administration hold itself accountable for choosing that Transportation Secretary while having full knowledge of his role in creating the problem?

Mr. Grabouskas is taking the fall for a problem that he did not create and cannot solve. Replacing Mr. Grabouskas with some other prospective fall guy won't solve the problems.

The performance of the General Manager of the MBTA -- whether good or bad -- is not the problem. The problem is the structural failure created by Governor Celluci and Tom Finneran in 2001. If that structural problem isn't solved, the MBTA will collapse -- no matter who is foolish enough to agree to run it.

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 19:41:43 PM CDT

In other words ... (0.00 / 0)

It's an impossible task because the people who are defending him for doing an impossible task are persisting in making it impossible!

Say what?

And in any event, I'm just not even sure I buy that line of argument. Need more info, though these seem to be essentially untestable questions.

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Blue Mass. Group
So what politics do you deserve?

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by: Charley on the MTA @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 19:49:01 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

My take on what Tom wrote is the opposite... (6.00 / 1)

The person throwing Grabouskas under the MBTA Bus is the person (Aloisi) that made Grabouskas' job impossible because of the poor decisions Aloisi amde years ago.  

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by: FrankSkeffington @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 20:58:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Precisely (0.00 / 0)

Mr. Aloisi was a terrible, embarrassingly inept choice for Transportation Secretary. No executive with any insight into the problem or the organization suffering from the problem would choose Mr. Aloisi. Any executive with any genuine sensitivity to organizational dynamics would have demanded his resignation half an hour after reading his self-serving back-stabbing public comments about Mr. Grabouskas. Not that Mr. Grabouskas is displaying any courage himself -- he should have already resigned.

The choice of James Aloisi as Transportation Secretary was a bonehead decision, Charley, as is the apparent decision to keep him on. It may be that Governor Patrick is the only electable progressive in the cards.

That doesn't change the reality of his mishandling of his, and the state's, most important priority.

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 22:23:48 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

With Aloisi still hanging around... (5.00 / 1)

...the state GOP (Baker) has a convenient foil in fending off accusations about his Big Dig involvement.  The Governor should've left Aloisi in the shadows.  What a dreadful appointment.

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by: cater68 @ Mon Aug 03, 2009 at 06:13:33 AM CDT