MBTA Cuts Ahead: COVID Causes Commuters To Consider Comprehensive Changes

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Host Joe Selvaggi and Pioneer Institute Senior Fellow Charlie Chieppo discuss the reasons for the recently proposed cuts to MBTA service, and offer suggestions as to how the agency’s leadership could use this crisis to improve the service’s long-term health.

Related: Read Charlie Chieppo & Jim Stergios’ recent op-ed in Commonwealth magazine: “Contracting with private providers could avert MBTA cuts.”

Guest:

Charlie Chieppo is a Pioneer senior fellow. Previously, he was policy director in Massachusetts’ Executive Office for Administration and Finance and directed Pioneer’s Shamie Center for Restructuring Government. While in state government, Charlie led the successful effort to reform the Commonwealth’s public construction laws, helped develop and enact a new charter school funding formula, and worked on state workforce issues such as pension reform and easing state restrictions against privatization. In 2000, Charlie was a member of the MBTA’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Forward Funding and has written and commented extensively on T and other transportation issues. He was a contributor to “MBTA Capital Spending Derailed by Expansion,” by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation with Pioneer Institute, which won the Government Research Association’s “Most Distinguished Research” award. Chieppo is a graduate of Boston University’s College of Communication and Vanderbilt University Law School.

Get new episodes of Hubwonk in your inbox!

Related Posts:

Accessing Healthcare Anywhere: Lessons For Liberalizing Telehealth

Joe Selvaggi talks with Josh Archambault about the benefits of state policies to enable interstate telehealth that empowers patients to reach their healthcare professionals in other states, and for providers to offer service anywhere they are needed.

Silicon Valley Bust: Bank Failure’s Causes, Cures, and Culpability

Joe Selvaggi talks with financial market and monetary policy expert Dr. Norbert J. Michel about the causes for the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the what its demise portends for depositors, the banking sector, and the regulatory regime that governs it.

Public Union Constitutionality: Returning Government Accountability to the People

/
Joe Selvaggi talks with Philip K. Howard about the legal theories in his newly released book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions, which questions whether the structure of public employees unions frustrates the will of the people, and abrogates the responsibility of elected officials to an unelected and unaccountable privileged class.

Realizing Rent Control: Targeted Tenant Relief or Broad-Based Road to Ruin

/
Joe Selvaggi talks with Greater Boston Real Estate Board’s President and CEO Greg Vasil about the likely effect on all residents of Boston of Mayor Wu's rent control proposal now before the City Council.

Unchecked Agency Power: Consumer Safety Bans Fair Process

/
Joe Selvaggi talks with Pacific Legal Foundation senior attorney Oliver Dunford about his work on Leachco v. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a case challenging the constitutionality of an executive agency structure (CPSC), in which leadership is beyond presidential removal, which uses its product safety mandate to ban products with no independent recourse for producers.

Cooking Without Gas: Stove Ban a Plan or Conspiracy Theory

/
Joe Selvaggi talks with reporter and author of six climate policy books Robert Bryce about his investigation into the statements made by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner about the safety of gas cooking and the origins of the movement that assert that such appliances could be and should be banned.

Innovation Reduction Act: Price Controls’ Prescription for New Therapies

/
Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s senior fellow Dr. Bill Smith about the changes to drug pricing laws included in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act provisions and discuss who wins and loses as drug companies announce their response to new law.

Residents Rescuing Refugees: Welcoming Ukrainians Yearning To Breathe Free

/
Host Joe Selvaggi talks with George Mason Law Professor, author, and immigration expert Ilya Somin about the newly announced Welcome Corps program which empowers Americans to sponsor and help relocate refugees from Ukraine and other places of war and persecution.

Sinking U.S. Shipping: Ineffective Law Creates Waves for American Economy

Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Cato Institute research fellow Colin Grabow about the failure of the Jones Act, a law that sought to protect the U.S. shipbuilding and merchant marine capacity. They examine its downstream effects on inflation, supply chain fragility, and energy access that directly affect every American.

Shopping Hospital Value: Price Transparency Mandate Brings Market Forces to Medicine

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute's senior healthcare fellow Barbara Anthony about her recently released paper, Massachusetts Hospitals: Uneven Compliance with New Federal Price Transparency Law, and how price transparency can empower consumers to shop for better value and encourage hospitals to offer more competitive costs.

Immigration Unbound: After Title 42 Comes the Deluge

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Todd Bensman, senior fellow at the Center For Immigration Studies, about the conditions for aspiring immigrants and border security officials at the U.S.-Mexico border and the likely effects of the expiration of Title 42, a policy that had denied asylum claims during Covid-19.

Eight Billion Minds: Unsustainable Population Bomb or Infinite Resource?

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Cato Scholar and author Marian Tupy about his new book, Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, focusing on the contrast in policy perspectives between those who see humans consumers of finite resources and those who recognize the unlimited potential of human ingenuity.