THE PIONEER BLOG

Jim Stergios

A highly temporary solution on higher education

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With my older daughter heading off to college next year, the question of how much debt is too much debt for her take on is something I’m mulling over quite a bit these days. How much can you pay, how much will she need to borrow and work, and how much support, if any, can the institution provide? US Senator Elizabeth Warren has been asking this question, and she is right to raise the issue, given the burden on, as she puts it, their later “economic lives”—buying a house, leasing a car, building some savings, investing, etc. So what of Senator Warren’s proposal to cut federal borrowing rates from 10 to 4 percent?  Her call to wipe out the federal […]

Mary Connaughton

And What About the T’s Retirement Costs?

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Pension and other post-employment benefit (OPEB) costs significantly impact the MBTA’s financial position.  There’s been much talk about the T’s retirement costs but relatively little about how those costs and their funding rank among other large transit systems.  The MBTA has not set assets aside to fund OPEB obligations and is underfunding its pension costs. Neither is unusual, but what sets the T is apart is that it is significantly underfunding both. We reviewed each of the following systems’ 2013 audited financial statements to obtain data (not all systems have yet made 2014 statements available) Here’s how the T compares with pension information: *may include multiple pension plans The MBTA is the lowest of the largest transit systems in funding […]

Jim Stergios

Why the free fall in support for the Olympics

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Notwithstanding articles that pass the blame off on John Fish, then Doug Rubin’s Northwind Strategies, then everybody else on the local committee, the striking fall in support for the Olympics has little to do with any one person. It has to do with trust. While not for or against the Olympics at this point, I will admit that, as is the case with any big bold project, we believe it is important to remain skeptical early and to ask lots of questions.  That was true of the debate over the South Boston convention center in the 1990s, when we came out in opposition to the project, or more recently casinos, where we limited our work to questions surrounding the public trust […]

Editorial Staff

2015 Hewitt Health Care Lecture : Under the Microscope: Advancing Health Care Value Through Greater Transparency

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Dr. Robert S. Kaplan is the world’s leading authority on strategic performance measurement. Professor Kaplan discussed measuring medical-condition outcomes as well as the costs of treating medical conditions, and how these can lead to more transparent pricing.   Tickets: $50. To register click the Register Now! Button. For faster check-in please print and bring your ticket to the event. Ticket price for students: $25. No cost for Pioneer Members. Become a member today! Sponsorship opportunities are available, on the registration page. About the Featured Speaker: Dr. Robert S. Kaplan is the world’s leading authority on strategic performance measurement. He is a co-founder of both Palladium and its predecessor firm, Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, and currently advises practitioners on emerging best practices and […]

Editorial Staff

The MBTA Commuter Rail’s Cost Structure Is Off the Rails

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Read coverage of this report in The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. Pioneer Institute’s ongoing analysis of the MBTA’s operations, finances, and performance aims to inform the public debate about the true problems plaguing the T and the most effective ways to improve the commuter experience for Massachusetts’ 1.2 million public transit system riders. Calls for more state funding ignore the system’s serious governance issues, including its misguided focus on expansion projects at the expense of its maintenance backlog. In recent weeks and months, we published reports using Federal Transit Data to compare the MBTA to other, similar systems across the US. Our last report on the T’s level of capital funding showed that the MBTA has not been cash […]

Mary Connaughton

Projections Matter and the MCCA Got it All Wrong

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The Boston Business Journal was dead-on when Craig Douglas wrote, “the BCEC’s expansion plan is a case in point for why Massachusetts is in such a financial quagmire today. It’s had virtually no relevant financial vetting. Its cost projections are Big Dig-esque.” His case in point was the recent room-night figures reported in the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s annual report.  “In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the BCEC’s slate of events directly generated 264,669 hotel room nights — its second lowest 12-month total since 2007. The Hynes generated another 208,000, or half of what it managed to book in 2001.” Charlie Chieppo, the master of all things Convention Center, put the grim hard numbers into further context in a […]

Scott Haller

Sunshine Must Return to MBTA This Spring

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What began as a benign winter, accumulating only 2.9 inches before the New Year, quickly escalated into a 99.1 inch, two-month-long blizzard throughout January and February. As the snow thaws and sunshine finally returns to Boston’s streets we must take care to learn what we can about dealing with disastrous winter conditions. What have we learned? Chronically deferred maintenance projects result in a rail system ill-prepared for consistently inclement weather; constant expansion has left the MBTA’s resources spread thin; don’t count on reliable delay information from the MBTA to help plan your commute; and when the going gets tough, the MBTA gets going a few months later. Recent on-time performance reports for the commuter rail for the week ending in […]

Mary Connaughton

Time to Fine Keolis

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My train was on time this morning, no T-alerts popped into my email and, at long last, I enjoyed an express trip to Boston.  For that, I am delighted. Still, we can’t let the last couple of woeful months on the commuter rail melt away like the snow. MBTA commuter rail trains were late 72 percent of the time during morning rush hours in February, even though a much limited train schedule was implemented during the second half of the month. Delayed and cancelled trains exacted heavy tolls on commuters, employers and families. With near-record snow fall and freezing temperatures, Mother Nature wreaked havoc on the system. Keolis, which operates commuter rail for the T, blamed bad weather for failing signals, switches […]

Scott Haller

Commuter Parking Woes Highlight the MBTA’s Problem With Planning

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Almost a decade after the completion of the Big Dig, the project aimed at solving significant transportation needs has become a legendary case study of mismanagement. What do we have to show for it? The tendrils of the megaproject continue to tie knots around the state’s infrastructure decisions.  Some of the transit projects that the Conservation Law Foundation negotiated with the state back in 1990 are still underway, including, for example, the long-awaited Green Line expansion to Tufts University in Medford. The principal components of the Big Dig project—the three highway tunnels, new river crossing, rail expansions and other features—are completed, but have the expected results been realized? While downtown is no longer subject to the rumblings of the elevated […]

Greg Sullivan

The MBTA’s Problem is Not Lack of Funding

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Background Since the mid-1990s, Pioneer has participated in the public debate concerning ways to improve the operations and financial footing of the MBTA through reports, events, public testimony and participation on a state-appointed commission.  Our principal interests have been the Authority’s operations, finances, pension system and governance (leadership and accountability) model.  With the crisis this winter, the Institute has redoubled its efforts to provide insights on these topics.  As part of that work, we have examined various aspects of the MBTA’s funding picture, especially as many have responded to the crisis by simply calling for more funding from the state. Even as the Institute has called for debt relief for the MBTA, we believe it is important to underscore the […]

Scott Haller

When Will Commuter Rail Return to Full Service?

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March 30th can’t come soon enough for commuter rail riders, though Keolis may dread the date’s arrival. This is when the commuter rail operator promises to finally return to normal service levels, weeks after the blizzards of February. Keolis continues to face an uphill battle as their latest on-time performance statistics leave much to be desired. Trains during peak commuting hours were only on time about 60 percent of the time during the week ending on March 13, with some individual lines scoring below 10 percent. While this is somehow a major improvement over the previous week’s performance, it is still unacceptable to the thousands who rely on the trains to make a living. Looking further into the reports reveals […]

Jim Stergios

How to measure the MBTA’s operational efficiency

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Pioneer has long been interested in the efficiency of the MBTA relative to other systems around the country.  As noted in a blog response to an organization critical of our work, we are not interested in ideological playtime with numbers. The organization, called the Frontier Group, which is allied with advocates of continued MBTA expansion, notes that Pioneer should focus its operational and efficiency analyses on costs per “unlinked passenger trips.”  When we began our recent series on the MBTA we had a number of in-house discussions regarding what would and would not provide useful information on operational efficiency.   In transit speak and then in basic laymen’s terms, here is why “unlinked passenger trips” don’t tell us much about efficiency, […]

Mary Connaughton

Pioneer’s Transparency Update: Sunshine Week Edition

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To some, it may seem insignificant in that police departments have wide discretion in responding to public records requests, or that a school district can charge exorbitant fees to the public for document requests. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that state agencies routinely respond to public records requests well after the mandated ten days, or that our state legislature exempted itself from sunshine laws. But when you view government transparency through a wider lens, these seemingly minute events or business-as-usual exemptions take on grave collective significance. Our democracy is only as strong as our will to hold government accountable.  Lack of disclosure stunts the public discourse that is essential in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. […]

Jim Stergios

Suing to Lift the Charter School Cap

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  Lawsuit – who is part of it – Michael Keating (Foley-Hoag), William F. Lee (WilmerHale), Paul F. Ware Jr. (Goodwin Procter).  Good on them for doing it.  Is it a civil rights issue?  You bet it is.  The long history of the Civil Rights movement runs right through the Brown v Board of Education decision 60 years ago.  Education has been a central battleground. Does that make bringing a lawsuit the wise course of action?  I admittedly have multiple (and not exactly aligned) views on the merits of legal action. All kids deserve access to great schools – and all parents deserve choices.  In a free society – supposedly, a society of merit – education is the variable that […]

Jim Stergios

A few thoughts on the new Boston school superintendent

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Recently on Greater Boston, when asked his appraisal of the final candidates for Boston superintendent, former state education secretary Paul Reville sniffed that it was a weak lot.  I don’t often agree with Paul, given that under his leadership Massachusetts went from among the fastest improving states on the Nation’s Report Card to stagnant (and declining in early grade reading), the state ditched the US History MCAS graduation requirement, he and the commissioner politicized what was a pretty objective charter school approval process… I could go on but in the great Greek tradition of “let bygones be bygones,” I feel like after you get a few digs in, you must leave more for another day. Reville was right on the pool […]