MassDOT Takes Pretty Pictures as Green Line Extension Gets Underway

Work is finally underway for the much-awaited first phase of the Green Line extension north to Medford. Last December, MassDOT issued the first contracts to Barletta Heavy Division and followed that with the go-ahead to start construction on a set of demolitions and bridge widening projects that will, according to the MassDOT web site:

• Reconstruct and widen the Harvard Street Rail Bridge in Medford
• Widen the Medford Street Rail Bridge in Somerville
• Demolish 21 Water Street in Cambridge in preparation for the construction of the new Lechmere Station under Phase 2/2A of the GLX project
• Construct retaining walls and noise walls adjacent to the Harvard Street Rail Bridge
• Relocate MBTA Commuter Rail tracks in the Harvard Street Rail Bridge area
• Upgrade and replace existing storm drain system between Harvard Street and Granville Avenue

These projects will continue for 2 years until March of 2015. During that time, the state plans to maintain its transparency and documentation through photos. According to Joe Pesutauro of the MBTA:

With strong support from the Green Line extension team, DOT Communications staff has done a total of 53 separate posts with Green Line Extension meeting, outreach, and construction information since the MassDOT blog debuted 50 months ago. More than one [post] per month on average and more than on any other single MassDOT/MBTA project.

Each of those posts was accompanied with a Tweet and link on Twitter.  Each such item is now also posted on our more recent MassDOT Facebook page, including two FB posts within the past week- one on the upcoming meeting and one displaying one of the Flickr construction photos.  We have a Flickr set established to add future construction photos.  All this in addition to the separate efforts on T social media.

The biggest highlight is MassDOT's latest album on Flickr, which captures the construction and is a great visual progress update. MassDOT has been doing this for some time to show very occasional and infrequent updates on bridge construction for the Accelerated Bridge Program, but the MTA has been posting album after album of construction updates for even less time. MassDOT started in the summer 0f 2009 with 1,165 uploads while the MTA has uploaded over four times that in half the time, starting with its first post in March of 2011.

Granted, the MTA has at least one dedicated photographer, but it has roughly the same number of ongoing capital projects and maintenance needs as MassDOT and the MBTA combined. Suffice it to say, MassDOT's planning site is well-organised, but much of the information is either hidden deep within many clicks or in lengthy PDF documents; the closest thing to a dashboard is the 'Projects' tab on the main MassDOT page. The MBTA's project page is slightly better, but is a simple table that doesn't give indication of scope or size of projects, instead listing project statuses. Deeper in, there isn't much consistency to project documentation, impact, or even format.

Other agencies have varying levels of success with building project dashboards. The CTA has a presentable planning site that highlights major upcoming projects. BART's project site is incredibly accessible through its good design via simplicity. SFMTA's site is more text-heavy, but highlights major projects well, perhaps only by default because they have fewer but wider-scoped projects. Washington Metro also has a very text-heavy project page littered with links to PDFs, but many of these are studies and preliminary analysis for projects and are well-organised into major categories on a single page. WMATA even has a rider-oriented blog-style site called PlanItMetro for focused feedback and updated on various projects, similar to MassDOT's blog. The NYC MTA, which has far more ground to cover than most in gaining public trust, has the best capital projects board; the capital projects are organised by division, similar to the way our capital projects are presented, and outlined with a breakdown of estimated and actual cost and deadline with notes for any discrepancy.

NYC's MTA arguably has bred a similar, if not deeper, strain of distrust as the MBTA and re-constituted MassDOT, which didn't exist until nearly four years ago. The MBTA/MassDOT need this kind of visibility and information accessibility. The T and MassDOT/former EOT have come a long way to show that they hold themselves accountable to its stakeholders outside of hour-long update meetings, regardless of whether the current people in leadership are responsible for the decades of actions that have bred the distrust in the agencies. A Flickr or Twitter feed or even Facebook page are more accessible than a physical meeting or even a PDF of the PowerPoint presentation from the meeting posted to the web.

The Green Line Extension does have a Facebook page, but as of this writing is not linked from the main project site, which suffers the same disjointed branding, presentation, and deep linking of information as many of MassDOTs other project pages. This capital project is the most promising in being a consistently transparent project through regular photo updates, but this consistency needs to be pushed across all projects and start well before any shovels hit the ground. This will be hard for the much maligned and beleaguered agencies, but both Secretary Davey and MBTA GM Scott deeply know and daily act on how important transparency is to public accountability and trust. While they're just getting started turning things around, many others in their field are leapfrogging past them and we can learn from those advances going forward.

LivableStreets hosts a T-riffic night of T Trivia

The turnout for this evening's LivableStreets first (hopefully annual, semi-annual, quarterly, or even monthly) T trivia night was on-par with what programming manager Kara Oberg had expected, but definitely filled the room on the lower level of Lir on Boylston St. On the evening's agenda: drinks, food, networking, and community-building.

'I just met these people an hour ago', said a student among a group that seemed to have known each other for years. The group, itself, a perfect mix of the attendees this evening: students, train enthusiasts, and professionals across every trade.

At the adjacent table, former LivableStreets board member, current Walk Boston board member, and graphic designer Nina Garfinkle sat with David Loutzenheiser, transportation planner of MAPC, and several others. A mix of who's who of transportation advocacy and trivia lovers, the event seemed like it was only missing a visit from MassDOT secretary Richard Davey and newly appointed MBTA GM Dr. Beverly Scott.

The trivia questions ranged from MBTA triviata to political and financial issues. One of the first round of questions included facts about the Boston's Green Line being the most heavily used light rail line in the US and the origin of the T's iconic logo of a 'T' in a circle.

Artie, a transportation engineer from HDR Engineering, brought in many of his friends to form his team. A designer of the very streets we walk, drive, and bike on or travel rapidly underneath, he was very 'new school' of those within transportation engineering, many of whom are notorious for taking an auto-throughput-first view of street design. Upon mention of 'sidewalk bumpies', he politely enlightened me of their more correct industry term: detectable warning pads. His consultancy work with the city of Boston and its outlying areas has even brought him into the engineering and design of innovative mid-block crossing notification strips for the visually impaired, a feature often not needed in or overlooked by most walkable American cities because of their lack of mid-block pedestrian crossings.

His most interesting insight was something that many miss when talking about re-urbanisation: I think that many disabled people will start moving into cities because of their ability to provide [the disabled] services and accessibility that suburbs simply can't provide in order to give them independence. In areas outside the T, mobility and independence can be very costly and time-consuming for the disabled, as shown by The Ride's growing costs and hurdles as compared to the rest of the MBTA's operations. Even as the fixed routes of the T have become more accessible, affording the disabled and elderly better independent mobility, other systems have been improving their accessible services, like the MTA in New York and the CTA in Chicago that have started piloting newer, more flexible vehicles designed specifically for accessible door-to-door transit services.

A number of student organisers from Northeastern were also present, including Justin Bensan, Daniel Morrissey, Alexa Torres, Jake Berman. The group is in the process of creating a 'transportation club' at Northeastern as a means of bringing forward mobility issues at their school and building a community around alternative transportation issues. Led by Jake Berman, president of the nascent club, and Justin Bensan, founder of the Northeastern branch of Students Against T Cuts, the group wants to build the club on the momentum from last year's unified protests against severe service cuts and advocacy of more balanced transportation funding.

In the hopes that this might be a more regular event, I asked Kara about the next T trivia night. Of all the planning that had to come together for the evening, she noted the most time-consuming was coming up with all the trivia questions. That said, I challenge the state's decision-makers to come to LivableStreets' next T trivia night to see how much they actually know about the system that drives the economic engine of the Commonwealth.

Not everyone has to be a transportation expert or historian on the T, but without an appreciation for it, we may as well be blind to the T's funding problems as we would a spewing, backed up toilet.

MBTA's Fare Enforcement Campaign Dead on Arrival

The MBTA is at it again, but this time they're not simply introducing more inspectors to roam the system with a campaign to get people to 'pay [their] fare' because '...it's only fair'. MassDOT Secretary Davey has announced he is introducing legislation next January to the legislature to make more penalties for fare evasion more severe. All that has been announced is the increase of the first time fare penalty to $100, up from $15.

According to existing legislation (MGL Ch.159 Sec.101), there is a 12 month grace period to pay the pitiful fine before they notify you of your late payment and give you an additional 90 days beyond that before they prevent you from renewing your license. That is, if you even get charged the fine by the inspector or police officer. More often, they will simply ask you to pay your fare. Furthermore, these fines are non-criminal citations that barely have the gravity to make someone think twice about evading fare.

While Secretary Davey has yet to formally introduce the legislation, I am honestly unsure how effective these big pushes will be over time if the MBTA cannot sustain the manpower for frequent and random sweeps by plainclothes Transit PD with concealed ticket readers/validators (like transit gestapo...). You should always feel pressured to pay your fare in case you get fined; the fact that people still don't feel that way today is proof this has already failed.

Further, $100 is hardly enough for a first time fine, especially when other systems, even in the US, charge considerably more. In Portland, Oregon, fare evasion will cost you $175 and in London, it is a misdemeanor for which you will receive a summons[PDF].

The most problematic behaviour induced by the current penalty for fare evasion and lax policy of enforcement is fare evasion on the Green Line. People often sneak onto trains through rear doors, especially on crowded trains. The incidence of random fare validation checks by plainclothes transit police is few and far between or at least infrequent enough to not deter even the least daring Bostonian (or exhausted commuter) from not paying their fare.

While the number of citations is up to 3,248 this past year from 818 in 2007, how effective has this really been in closing the gap? In 1984, the MBTA estimated a loss of $400,00 in fares from evasion, which adjusted for inflation would be twice that amount, not factoring in the last two decades of fare increases and record ridership (of which has been recorded through fare collection) the system has seen. The current loss could well be in the millions of dollars, enough to cover the cost of running a bus route or two, let alone the improvement of several routes as part of the MBTA's cost-effective $10 million Key Bus Routes programme.

The platform-side ticket validators should be leveraged as part of the MBTA's campaign instead of deploying personnel to simply monitor stations for a short blitz. They are at most major surface-station stops  so you can validate your card as you wait or as the train is loading and board at the rear doors. As it is, most people don't see the purpose, few know what they do, and many don't realise they even exist.

The tickets they vend are proof of payment (and a receipt if you don't have a LinkPass) and you are supposed to hold onto them, not put them into the fare box on the train; some drivers will collect it from you if you hold it up and say 'fare validation', but they're not really supposed to. If I board at the rear after validation and a driver asks me to pay up front, I politely shout back that I've validated my fare. Drivers should be reminding you to pay your fare, not commanding you to come up to validate.

The MBTA needs to stop with these high-cost, high profile efforts, properly deploy all-doors boarding, should have pushed for this legislation sooner, and should also be including into the legislation more robust provisions to ensure that tickets get paid on-time (or at all). The MBTA has botched up all-doors boarding and proof-of-payment several times; this time the MBTA has an excellent opportunity with the high-profile announcement of the upcoming legislation to really reduce fare evasion.

This legislation should have been put forward years ago as the CharlieCard was introduced and the infrastructure to support it was installed. It should not have been prompted by a severe budget shortfall, but it is possible the leadership to push such legislation may have not been at the top. Davey's predecessors, both at the DOT as Secretary and MBTA as GM, were administrative characters who sought to run their systems, but were conservative in their approach to change.

While Davey may credit them for the work that they've done, she should take the credit for pushing through the significant changes he has done in his 3-year meteoric rise to his current leadership position. So far, he is taking to heart the popular mantra in transport: organisation before electronics before concrete[PDF]. Is he the Robert Moses-like leadership Massachusetts needs for its transport network?

I challenge him to prove his leadership by presenting a unified vision of transport for Massachusetts in the next decade, because in dire times, we still need a vision to work toward and not simply a state of good repair to settle for.