THE PIONEER BLOG

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 […]

Greg Sullivan

The Myth of the Underfunded MBTA

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When the MBTA collapsed last month under the weight of snow and frigid temperatures, former General Manager Beverly Scott and countless others were quick to blame the problems on years of underinvestment in the system.  But a comparison to other large transit systems reveals that the MBTA is not underfunded.  In fact, as measured by both passenger miles traveled and vehicle revenue hours, the T received the most capital funding of any of the nation’s 10 largest transit systems between 1991 and 2013, the last year for which data are available. Previously, we demonstrated that MBTA commuter rail capital spending per 1,000 passenger miles traveled was the highest of any major American commuter rail system between 1991 and 2013.  This […]

Jim Stergios

Tocqueville on the threat of a mild despotism

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Pioneer focuses on four policy issues that we believe are critical to making Massachusetts freer and more prosperous — a world-class education for all, accessible and affordable health care, government that can do big things but is not overweening, and a dynamic economy. That’s the mission, but the mission is informed by a deep belief in a republican form of democracy (both small r and small d) and a standard issue copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America on the night table. Bedtime reading brought me to a passage in Volume II that is both powerful and worthy of reflection.  Not because of this or that individual law, but because of, if you will, the accumulation, the “network of small complicated rules, […]

Scott Haller

Will MBTA Win Back Riders?

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Yesterday the MBTA Board of Directors approved a plan to compensate T riders for dismal service since the storms of late January and February. It will take more than a few perks, however, to erase the months of devastation that the T’s inconsistency has caused for the average worker. The plan calls for a single free day of rides on all forms of transportation on April 24th (the Friday of Massachusetts’ school vacation week), as well as a 15 percent reduction in monthly and weekly passes in the May. The plan’s estimated $5 million cost comes at a time when the T’s apparently forgotten maintenance backlog approaches $7 billion and its out-of-control debt pushes $9 billion when interest is included. […]

Greg Sullivan

Setting the Record Straight on MBTA Expansion

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Pioneer has previously written that rapid expansion was a major cause of the MBTA’s recent meltdown.  More recently, we wrote that MBTA is the only American commuter rail system that lost ridership between 2003 and 2013. In a recent blog post, the Frontier Group questioned Pioneer’s assertion that the MBTA “has expanded more than any other major transit system in the country over the past 25 years.” This table, which is based on National Transportation Database data, demonstrates that, since 1991, the MBTA has added more than twice as many rail miles, counting commuter rail, subway, and trolley lines, than any of the other 28 other transit systems operating at that time. FIGURE 1:  Rail miles added by transit authority, 1991-2013 The […]

MuckRock

Mayor Walsh’s office turn public records requests about the Olympics into PR

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one already. A prominent politician conveniently can’t find any emails related to a controversial topic. Then, following a period of public rancor, s/he magically produces said emails, with all the controversial bits removed. Sure seems like that’s been happening a lot lately, huh? Shortly after it was announced that Boston was a frontrunner to be the U.S. Olympic Committee’s choice to compete to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, MuckRock (along with a number of Massachusetts journalists) put in a public records request to Mayor Walsh’s office for all emails between Walsh and the Boston 2024 organizing committee, as well as any reports or proposals that one would imagine would be generated when you’re planning […]

Jim Stergios

Getting our priorities straight on the BCEC and the MBTA

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Scot Lehigh and Shirley Leung in the Globe today both focused attention on the idea of, as Lehigh put it, “tak[ing] the $1 billion in bonding bandwidth it last year dedicated to expanding the Boston Convention Center & Exhibition Center and instead apply[ing] it to helping improve the MBTA.” The background here is that at the end of January, Gov. Charlie Baker put the brakes on a $1 billion bond offering approved last summer to pay for expansion of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC).  The Governor ordered a two-month delay so his finance team could address emergency 2015 budget issues while simultaneously preparing the governor’s 2016 budget proposal. Pioneer had long called for state leaders not to move […]

Jim Stergios

Getting our priorities straight on the BCEC and the MBTA

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Scot Lehigh and Shirley Leung in the Globe today both focused attention on the idea of, as Lehigh put it, “tak[ing] the $1 billion in bonding bandwidth it last year dedicated to expanding the Boston Convention Center & Exhibition Center and instead apply[ing] it to helping improve the MBTA.” The background here is that at the end of January, Gov. Charlie Baker put the brakes on a $1 billion bond offering approved last summer to pay for expansion of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC).  The Governor ordered a two-month delay so his finance team could address emergency 2015 budget issues while simultaneously preparing the governor’s 2016 budget proposal. Pioneer had long called for state leaders not to move […]