When Does "Operational Efficiency" Mean a Better MBTA?

Above: Bus lanes in central London have improved operational efficiency of the bus network by increasing the number of people buses can move a given hour or mile [Photo: Andrew Nash]

Recently, a certain lobbying group has been arguing that the MBTA shouldn't be judged by how many people use it to get around, but rather by how many dollars it costs to run a vehicle for an hour or a mile. This cost per mile argument follows on the heels of their recently debunked assertion the that T is over-funded as compared to other transit agencies when looking at cost per trip. Those cost per trip comparisons didn't really make sense because they tried to compare the T to transit systems which provide vastly different services, which require different levels of investment to serve different populations (i.e., some agencies run only local bus or rail service, while the T does all of those, plus regional commuter rail, express buses, ferries, etc.).

So let’s address the cost per mile metric – it can be useful in certain circumstances but doesn't tell us much about the value of the service provided. Anyone who rides the T knows that the reason we run it is so that people can get from place to place, not so that we can spend the fewest dollars to run a vehicle for some time or distance, regardless of whether it serves anyone's transportation needs.

It's an axiom in business that you get what you measure. Doing better on some metric doesn't necessarily mean you're improving what you really care about. Keeping that in mind, let's consider some ways in which we could increase the T's "operational efficiency" as bound by the cost of T service per vehicle mile or vehicle hour.

Here are some bad ideas that would improve "operational efficiency":

• We could (but shouldn't) eliminate the Transit Police. They don't move a single vehicle and you only hear about them when trains are delayed because the Transit Police are looking for a person who, say, assaulted a rider.
• We could (but shouldn't) replace all Commuter Rail service with buses. Instead of one train you would need a bunch of buses and the trip would be slower. But if you're just looking at the math of "how many miles have been covered by how many vehicles for how many dollars?", then you'll think you have improved service.
• We could (but shouldn't) get rid of all bus service in or near Boston, and replace it with bus service that drove at a moderate speed along a quiet highway somewhere. You'd get much higher average speeds than say the 1 bus running through Boston and Cambridge, so yay for lower cost per mile but no one would ride it.

However, there are ways to reduce those operating costs per vehicle hour or mile which would actually improve service:

• We could replace subway cars more regularly, so that they don't break down as often - for instance, all the Orange Line cars are from roughly 1980 and haven't been upgraded since.
• We could buy more new buses so that they would break down less often and we would have more in reserve.
• We could give buses in high-traffic areas dedicated lanes, let them make traffic lights turn green - that's called signal priority, and let buses jump ahead of traffic where there isn't room for a dedicated lane on the whole length of the street. The most egregious place where buses should have signal priority is at D Street in South Boston, where the Silver Line, supposedly "rapid transit", waits over a minute at a light that's not even very busy.
• We could introduce HOV lanes on highways which buses travel on. This would let express buses and cars with multiple people skip the traffic on 93, the Pike, Route 3, and so on. People who waited hours for a Braintree shuttle bus this winter saw the impact of not doing this. One upcoming project which cries out for a bus lane is the replacement of the Tobin Bridge to Charlestown that the 111, 92, 93, 426 and 428 buses use - that's over 20,000 people a day on those buses who could save time if the new bridge got a dedicated bus lane.
• We could allow people to board buses and Green Line trains at all the doors and occasionally verify people have paid after they board. San Francisco's transit system MUNI did this; it makes buses and trolleys run faster and actually reduced fare evasion.
• We could change the Commuter Rail system to use electric power, as is happening in California. Electric trains can accelerate faster, which would speed up trips and let us serve more people with the same equipment. It should be possible to do this one line at a time and get the benefits for each line as it's electrified.
• We could build a train tunnel from North Station to South Station, the so-called North South Rail Link. That could make the Commuter Rail system more useful, for instance to riders who live north of Boston but want to get to South Station or Back Bay. It would also make it easier to do work on trains which run south of Boston, which currently have to make a roundabout trip to get to the only Commuter Rail maintenance facility, which is in Somerville.

As you can see, all of these useful changes either require political will or more money or both. So when people tell you that the T could improve its operational efficiency, tell them that you agree and you've got some ideas for how to do it.

Contributing editors: Ari Ofsevit, Jeremy Mendelson, Josh Fairchild, and Marc Ebuña

UPDATE: NYC Donates Snow Fighting Equipment; Governor Releases $30 Billion Plan

APRIL FOOL'S DAY SATIRE UPDATE: Sadly, we won't be getting a donation of snow fighting equipment and the Governor seems to be committed to be more interested in leaning on gains to be had from operational efficiency rather than a combined invest-and-reform approach.

Spring has sprung today for transit as NYC MTA CEO Thomas Prendergast announced a small donation of snow fighting equipment and the Governor announced a commitment of $30 billion over 15 years to drastically upgrade the MBTA's infrastructure and equipment.

NYC's de-icer car, a retrofitted subway car from a series that has long since been retired, is just narrow and short enough to run on all MBTA heavy rail lines - Red, Blue, and Orange - to clear ice from the third rail.

'You'll need a diesel locomotive to be able to push the de-icer car, but...uhhh...my information is that you don't have one so we'll throw one in, too', said Prendergast to standing MBTA GM DePaola at South Station.

'I was very surprised', said DePaola. 'I woke up to consecutive calls from [Transportation Secretary] Stephanie Pollack and my secretary that I needed to make my way as fast as I could to South Station. They had just gotten word from the MTA that Prendergast had just left Penn Station on an Amtrak train with a special delivery.'

Landmark Capital Investment in Transit

Meanwhile at home in the Bay State, Governor Baker, Senate President Rosenberg, and House Speaker DeLeo jointly announced their 15-year, $30 billion plan to drastically increase investment in the T.

'We are fully committed to investment levels commensurate with the maintenance needs of the country's 4th largest transit system', said Baker. The plan was sparked by widespread outcry by Massachusetts residents for better transit and inspired by a recent crowd-funding effort to raise $30 billion for capital investment in the T. 'We ended up raising the money by getting donations from all the legislators at the State House and going door-to-door raising money with various businesses in our towns.'

The plan includes a veritable wish list of regional access and core upgrade projects:

• Commuter Rail Electrification
• North-South Rail Link
• Urban Ring - Silver Line to be fully upgraded to light rail
• Outer Urban Ring on Route 128
• 'Overground' network - frequent service on inner-core commuter rail segments, defined by the DMU plan released by MassDOT
• Green and Blue Line signal modernisation
• Power systems overhaul for all rapid transit lines
• 6 BRT routes
• Blue Line Extension to Lynn
• Red-Blue Connector
• Pay-off of all existing capital construction debt

Completion for most projects is slated to be within the next 10 years. The plan is to have frequencies of rush hour trains to be every 30 minutes on commuter rail, 10 minutes on 'Overground' services, 3 minutes on all rapid transit lines, and less than 2 minutes on light rail. The MBTA and MassDOT are also accelerating work with the transport departments of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, Malden, Medford, Arlington, Watertown, Waltham, and Brookline to establish dedicated bus lanes or other infrastructure to improve bus travel times and ensure buses can establish frequencies to arrive every 5 mins during rush hour.

Paying off the T's debt will also eliminate over $400 million annual operating budget commitments and will allow the T to return to pre-austerity staffing levels.

'We'll now have the proper operating budget to give the people of the Boston metro the service they've expected of us for decades and that we have never had the investment to deliver on', said MBTA GM DePaola. 'This should brighten the day of many of our back office management, many of whom have been burdened with the work of three or more people for years as we've had to cut our budget by simply not back-filling positions as people left or retired.'

In addition to the budgetary breathing room, MassDOT has announced its partnership with several international development and property management companies to engage in accelerated development of multiple commuter rail lots and MBTA properties into mixed income housing, offices, and retail.

'Once and for all, we want to stop this practice of selling property for a one time cash infusion to make ends meet', said Secretary Pollack. 'We will be working with these neighbourhoods to add much-needed housing and valuable retail and office spaces to enrich the spaces around stations. We are capitalising on our vast properties to return even more revenue to reinvest in the system after we've caught up to the massive backlog of projects from decades of underinvestment.'

Regarding conservative concerns about excessive investment in the MBTA, the governor cited his understanding that operational efficiency can happen as we invest in the system. 'As my good friend Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone once said, "We can walk while we chew gum." I have confidence in the management I have in place at MassDOT and the T; we need to give these people the right resources to succeed.'

Scott’s Resignation a Wake Up Call for Massachusetts

MBTA GM Beverly Scott, PhD, delivered an impassioned speech earlier this week  [Photo via Boston Globe]

We’ve seen it before: the highly qualified leader of a beleaguered transit agency gets fed up with state politics getting in the way of him/her doing his/her job and resigns.

Take Jay Walder, former CEO of Hong Kong MTR, former Managing Director for Finance and Planning of Transport for London, and current CEO of Motivate, the company that manages Hubway. When he resigned as NYC MTA CEO back in 2011, it was not merely to take the job at HK MTR that paid 3 times as much. His resignation followed significant difficulty with indifferent politicians and seemed to be punctuated by his last in-person encounter with Governor Cuomo: getting passed over after travelling to the governor's office. Unlike here where the seat of state government is less than a kilometre away from transit headquarters, Walder had travelled to the capitol 2.5 hours by train upstate to see the governor.

Jay Walder as NYC MTA CEO [Photo via Wall Street Journal]

His gubernatorial jilting may not have been the direct cause of his resignation, but it followed a series of events that showed the governor didn't have his back. Like Scott, Walder was the previous governor's appointment. Just as here, there was little contact with the governor since the new governor's entry to office. And as in this case, clear praise from the governor only came after the transit leader stepped down.

In a recent lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School of Business, Walder plainly stated that US transit agencies simply cannot continue to depend on the state governments for revenue as they annually turn their back on the very lifeblood of their economies and, in turn, their tax revenues. Even at Hong Kong MTR, the world’s most profitable transit system in operation, major capital expenses for expansions are heavily subsidised by central government.

Baker may not have explicitly asked for Scott’s resignation, but it was clear from her press conference on Tuesday this week that she was mad as hell and she wasn’t going to take this anymore. At the moment, the motivation behind her resignation remains veiled, but it's clear that this doesn't come from a lack of confidence in her. The resignation letter she submitted shortly after a MassDOT board meeting in which she was lauded for her work reads like a melancholy goodbye to a good friend.

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Ultimately, where do we go from here? That's the hard part. Some have suggested hiring the new T boss from within. The benefit is that many of these people already know the nuances of the system.

Looking outside the T would prove more difficult, as we noted several years ago leading up to Dr. Scott's appointment. Public sector executives are paid considerably less than their private sector counterparts, which makes it more difficult to recruit knowledgeable and experienced talent. Add to that the weight of transit politics and near-guaranteed politicking with an unsupportive legislature and no sign of commitment to new or more revenue from the current administration.

The good folks over at Radio Boston also had a few words on what's to come. Former Governor Dukakis and David Gunn have reflected on what might be needed of Governor Baker in the coming weeks: get on the T.

Dr. Scott's point remains: 'Just take Bev out the picture...this is not just about cutting costs'; we need to actually start having the adult conversation because whoever comes next, they won't be able to do diddly-squat without a significant down payment on the capital investments we've needed thousands of yesterdays ago.