OPINION: Responding to a recent CommonWealth Beacon commentary piece sounding the alarm over sharp increases in the MBTA’s operating budget, former state transportation secretary James Aloisi says the system needs to hire more people and provide more service for us to have the transportation system we need and deserve.
THE FOLKS AT the Pioneer Institute are focusing their attention once again on the MBTA, and their complaint (well, it is actually their recurring complaint) is that the T’s operating budget is spiraling out of control. As evidence of this, Charles Chieppo and Andrew Mikula wrote recently in CommonWealth Beacon:
“Since fiscal 2021, system operating costs have risen more steeply every year, including by nearly 15 percent between fiscal 2023 and 2024. The biggest culprit is the bus system. In 2019, the MBTA spent $153 per hour in operating costs to run a bus, compared to $220 at New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. By 2023, costs had risen slightly to $263 in New York, but the hourly cost of operating an MBTA bus nearly doubled to $297, exceeding New York’s costs.”
This analysis of the T’s operating budget is very misleading, as it fails to take into account the variety of reasons why the T’s operating budget has increased, and fails also to acknowledge how critical those increases are to the proper functioning of the system.
Why has the MBTA’s operating budget increased significantly since fiscal year 2021 (which includes a portion of 2020)? Let’s look at the facts.
The major global pandemic disruption of 2020-2021 saw T ridership (and fare revenue) plummet to unprecedented levels. Beyond the massive hit this had on T revenues, the pandemic also caused an unprecedented workforce shortage. Many people quit or took retirement, and the impact of the pandemic on the bus driver workforce was especially severe.
Driving a bus is probably the most challenging job at the MBTA. You have to drive a huge and unwieldy vehicle in Greater Boston traffic conditions, and do so safely every day while carrying a large number of passengers who themselves can often have challenging needs.
A bus driver needs to navigate Boston’s narrow streets and congestion, in all types of weather. A bus driver is in close proximity to passengers. A bus driver needs to manage fare collection on the bus, and needs to ensure accommodation for riders with baby carriages or accessibility devices. Attracting people to do this type of work is not easy, particularly in a low-unemployment marketplace.
What made it near-impossible to restore the workforce after the pandemic? In 2015, after a succession of paralyzing snowstorms shut down the T and exposed longstanding problems in its operations, the Baker administration, in its zeal to reduce costs, secured a temporary exemption from the state’s privatization statute, the so-called Pacheco Law, which puts limits on the ability to contract out state services.
Using this as leverage, they entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the T’s Carmen’s Union that saved money at the expense of younger or new workers. The most notorious provision of that contract was the provision restricting all new bus driver hires to work only part-time hours, capped at 30 hours a week, with fewer benefits than more senior drivers.
This worked well until the pandemic gutted the bus driver workforce, and the T needed to hire bus drivers to fill the huge gaps. The collective bargaining agreement was wisely renegotiated by the Healey administration, and the restrictions on full-time work were removed, signing bonuses were offered, and wages were improved to be competitive with other US transit agencies and with the Metro Boston marketplace.
Once those provisions were put into place, applications for bus drivers rose dramatically – by over 300 percent — and bus service was able to be restored to acceptable levels. These necessary changes worked to bring bus driver staffing to its needed level, but they cost a great deal of money. For Chieppo and Mikula to cite the bus system as the biggest “culprit” driving operating costs while ignoring this recent history is an omission that undermines the credibility of their argument.
In addition to bus drivers, as I have previously written, the T also needed to recruit new dispatchers into its Operations Control Center, in order to run more subway service. It should surprise — or trouble — no one that hiring more people into essential jobs in this low-unemployment, post-pandemic period costs more money.
Beyond the saga of retaining and recruiting bus drivers, Pioneer seems to forget that the T is growing, not retrenching. Operating new services like South Coast Rail and the Green Line Extension – both initiatives embraced by the prior administration – requires more funding. To run late night service, the T needs more operating funding. To reduce traffic congestion and offer more sustainable mobility services through the Greater Boston region, the T needs to improve commuter rail frequencies. To prevent fare evasion on the trolley and bus systems, the T needs to hire fare engagement representatives.
In short, to provide the services we need, want, and expect from our public transit system, the T needs to do more things and hire more people and pay them competitively. There’s nothing controversial or troubling about this.
Indeed, there are many advocates, myself among them, who believe that the current operating budget is insufficient to meet the full needs of our regional economy.
The T should be performing more routine and programmed maintenance activities as operating expenses, rather than deferring work so it can be paid out of the capital budget. The T should be running more service across the system, and this requires hiring more operators for all modes. The T should beef up its planning and procurement and project management capabilities in order to get more work out more quickly. All of this will cost more money. This is not a call for profligate spending; it is a candid appraisal of the role of the transit system of a major US metropolitan area.
I have written several times about ways to tame the growth of the operating budget and ensure that its resources are spent on helping T riders. For example, the T still pays 100 percent of the cost of paratransit service for disabled riders, an annual amount in excess of $140 million. This is a human services issue as much as it is a transportation issue, and this cost should be borne by the Commonwealth, not the MBTA.
Since 2015, the T has been in a very dynamic period. I acknowledge many of the positive aspects of the tenure of the Fiscal Management and Control Board created in the wake of the system meltdown that winter. The FMCB adopted several useful reforms, but they also embarked on a strong reinvestment program for the system. Reinvestment and reinvigoration of public transportation, by definition, means more services to more places and improved performance. This is not achievable on an austerity budget.
The MBTA certainly has an obligation to spend its rider and taxpayer funds wisely, and it also has an obligation to be fully transparent with data and analysis so that everyone can rest assured their hard-earned T fares and taxes are having their intended impact.
But accusing the T of spending too much when, in fact, it is probably not spending enough, is simply unwarranted. Reporting budget numbers without proper context is not sufficient or credible analysis. Pioneer does a disservice to the T, to T riders, and to all residents of the Commonwealth when it presents facts out of context and misleads people to think the T is spending more than it needs to or more than it should.
James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation.
THE PIONEER INSTITUTE BEGINS THEIR PRESENTATIONS FROM A VERY CONVINCING, BUT WARPED & PARTISAN PERSPECTIVE - ALWAYS!
The PIONEER INSTITUTE was founded by Lovett C. Peters who also founded
THE BADGER INSTITUTE:
THE BADGER INSTITUTE CREDIBILITY & BIAS
PIONEER INSTITUTE WIKIPEDIA
Although there is pretense of impartiality, it is clearly right wing & misleading. Note just NUMBER CRUNCHES & NO LINKS!
The White Toothed Governor Charlie Baker was in office from
2015 - 2023 and the MEDIA gave him pretty warped coverage.
It was BAKER's choice to control the MBTA.
Remember the NO BID BATHROOM SCANDAL?
BAKER appointed incompetent, inexperienced BOOBS and
then made excuses for them.
SLOW ZONE SHORTSLEEVE campaigns on his record at the
MBTA, ignoring problems, ignoring SAFETY ISSUES, ignoring the
CHINESE RAIL CAR FAILURES, ignoring the FAULTY NEW TRACKS
that required replacing and much else. What exactly did he do to
improve service?
And KEOLIS?
The MBTA hired EXPENSIVE OUT OF STATE EXPERTS who NEVER
travelled to MASSACHUSETTS to address such things as CAPITAL
EXPENDITURES & REPAIRS.
Whose BRAIN FART was that?
That was among the first issues the newly elected Gov. Maura Healy
addressed.
Is $2.1 billion a good deal? Explaining the bargain to resolve Massachusetts' massive jobless claims mistake
EXCERPT:
And your total comes out to… $2.1 billion. That’s how much Massachusetts has to pay back the feds. Gov. Maura Healey’s administration revealed yesterday that they reached a settlement with the outgoing Biden administration last Friday to pay back most — though not all — of the $2.5 billion in federal COVID pandemic funds that the state misspent under Gov. Charlie Baker.
WBUR
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.