TransitMatters Exec. Director & Staff's Public Comments At August MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comment our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on August 24, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment. 

My name is Jarred Johnson, the Executive Director of TransitMatters and a frustrated T rider. 

The work of turning around an agency beset with a myriad of problems is no mean feat. I hope I have expressed gratitude for this board and the welcome change in leadership in the C-Suite. 

However, for people who don’t read the Globe, or attend Boston Chamber breakfasts, for the riders struggling to get to work on time every day, or trying to make a doctor’s appointment on time. In other words, the many people who depend on the Red Line, which is 40 min slower than at the start of this administration, or the 1 bus, which saw yet another service cut earlier this year, or the Orange Line, which is 10 min slower than before the shutdown. Those riders could be forgiven for thinking nothing fundamentally has changed. 

If this sounds harsh, then let’s be clear: the reality of their daily transit commutes is harsh. And harsh is not acceptable. I’m trying to bring in the voices of the people who can’t make a 10 a.m. meeting. I have tried to say this every single way possible: this agency is in danger of entering a death spiral. And if that happens, it will be because this agency is moving too slowly to show riders it is making progress, or that it cares about them. 

The ending of the “Show Your Charlie Card” is a small thing, but in my mind, it says a lot about how this agency sees the current landscape and how out of touch that view is. 

I also want to highlight the stark difference in how MassDOT had people out at Haymarket one year before the start of Sumner Tunnel work to alert drivers well in advance. It then asked the T to pay for free Blue Line service as well as subsidize Commuter Rail and ferry service. It had elected and senior administration officials riding the T, and it provided up-to-date information to encourage usage of public transit.  

These efforts show that you can try to effect mode shift and make people’s lives better in spite of infrastructure challenges when it’s a political imperative.

My argument isn’t that the T and MassDOT shouldn’t have done this for the 50,000-odd drivers using the tunnel, but that it should be the standard for 90,000 Red Line riders or nearly 300,000 bus riders. 

I care so deeply about this system and I think it’s key to our housing, climate, economic, and equity goals. I shouldn’t have to beg the administration to act like it. 

It’s time for that fundamental shift so promised in campaign speeches and first-day remarks to happen. I mean this in terms of communication, in terms of transparency, and in terms of taking decisive, visible, and immediately effective actions that make rider’s lives easier while you work on the things that will take more time. I also mean this in terms of coming clean with the legislature and the public about the significant looming operating budget crisis and the overall continued underfunding of the transit and rail system. This system needs an unprecedented infusion of new funding over the next ten years to remake the system. Incrementalism has left this agency and this administration playing a futile game of transit whack-a-mole. It won’t work, it isn’t working, and it will be a terrible legacy for you all to have.

I’ll close by saying that the T’s posture of conservatism—withholding information like the Capital Needs Assessment, saying nothing other than the truth even if it’s bad news—has not helped it in the past. It hasn’t led the legislature to act. It hasn’t made the T a bigger priority for previous governors. And there’s no indication that this will change. 

I want this agency to treat the slow zones and dropped bus trips wasting precious hours of riders’ lives like an emergency. 

I want the T to treat the extreme gulf of capital funding available to meet the need, which I know is likely 2x that of previous estimates like an emergency. I want the T to treat riders with the dignity and respect they deserve. And to fight for them, and indeed the future of our region.”

---

Below is the full transcript of the public comment our Policy Analyst and Programs Manager, Katie Calandriello, and TransitMatters Labs Co-Lead presented to the MBTA Board on August 24, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. Thank you for allowing us to comment this morning on behalf of TransitMatters. 

My name is Katie Calandriello, Policy Analyst and Programs Manager at TransitMatters, and we would like to respond to the current state of slow zones on our subway as highlighted by the Slow Zone Tracker on our Data Dashboard. 

We're encouraged by the state of slow zones on the Blue Line, but we continue to be concerned about the state of the Orange and Red Lines. In the former case, on the Orange Line, slow time is up 220% since before the shutdown last fall. In the latter case, slow time across the Red Line has increased 58% since July 20, putting it within 15 minutes of the post-inspection 83-minute peak on April 13 earlier this year.

This demonstrates that our slow zones have not been fixed, and in some cases have gotten worse. However, these aren’t just lines on a graph. Our riders are feeling these slow zones too. 

TransitMatters urges the MBTA to continue the “Show Your Charlie Card” program on Commuter Rail lines running adjacent to our subway system until slow zones return to their March 9, 2023 levels, before the blanket speed restrictions and track inspections. 

This policy was enacted to provide alternative service to riders with ongoing slow zones and it is the duty of the MBTA to continue this service until slow zones are ameliorated. 

In a time when our transit system is in one of the worst conditions it’s ever been in, we need to be doing everything we can to get riders where they need to be, safely, quickly, and reliably. 

It’s small policies like this that can help our transit network bounce back. 

Thank you.”

TransitMatters Announces Installation of Advocacy Posters in 18 Bus Stops Across Boston

The TransitMatters NextGen Bus team’s new bus advocacy poster!

BOSTON, MA, August 8, 2023 – While all aspects of the MBTA are in disrepair, the bus network is often ignored. With continually cut service in tandem with poor operational standards and underinvestment into the infrastructure that supports the functionality of buses, riders have not been prioritized. TransitMatters aims to change this. 

Through JCDecaux’s Non-Profit Program, TransitMatters is proud to announce the installation of our poster series “Modernize our Bus System; Let’s Prioritize Bus Riders” at 18 bus stops across Boston. 

“The poster is interactive, you can scan [the QR code], and it will bring up the poster in different languages,” said TransitMatters Executive Director Jarred Johnson at the poster launch event in Copley Square. “It will also connect you to the MBTA’s website so that you can give a public comment and not only show your support for bus priority but show your support for improving operational practices so that we don’t have things like bus bunching and so that we have just better operations overall.”

The QR code at the bottom left of the poster brings riders this landing page featuring two auto-email forms: one to tell the T to include better bus operational practices in their plans to improve the bus network and the other to tell the T to continue investing in bus-priority infrastructure. The TransitMatters NextGen Bus team hopes the linked resources will encourage bus riders to take action to ensure that the T prioritizes them in current and future bus planning projects.

The landing page also highlights the roadblocks for better bus trips, explains how to fix them, and creates a stream of action. There is information on bus priority infrastructure and operational practices, such as headway management and pulse points, and how riders can advocate for it. Together, this information can give riders a platform to advocate for themselves, their communities, and their commute.

The TransitMatters NextGen Bus team’s new bus advocacy poster at the Boylston St @ Clarendon St bus stop in Copley Square.

The poster depicts a road suffering from bus bunching and traffic in the background, transitioning to a bus speeding in its own lane in the foreground. Our poster series shows bus riders what their trips could look like if they were the center of bus advocacy. 

TransitMatters encourages our friends and followers to take a photo, tag us on social media, and use the hashtag #prioritizebuses if they encounter a poster at a bus stop. We also ask you to please share both Action Alerts with your friends and family!

TransitMatters Executive Director's Public Comment At July MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comments our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on July 27, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment.

My name is Jarred Johnson, with TransitMatters.

I want to talk about restoring public trust in the agency and fighting for riders. Confidence in the agency is at an all-time low and the agency’s actions, or lack thereof, are only eroding further and making the job of advocates more difficult.

The T is not doing a good enough job of demonstrating its care for riders. Ridership and service quality should be on the same level as safety. Lest my comments be misinterpreted, this does not mean that safety should be at all compromised. This means the T needs to raise ridership and service quality up to that level. This means attracting and retaining ridership must become a key priority. The T's quite frankly offensive posture towards riders has been disappointing, to say the least.

The recent Green Line Central Subway shutdown with less than 48 hours notice and no public information about what work was being done is not acceptable. I even spoke with an operator who told me they often find out about these diversions in the press along with riders. There is often incorrect signage and poor communication during these diversions. This is compounded by poor operations and inconsistent practices on the portions of the rapid transit network where service is running.

We must address the lack of transparency and accountability. Why is the Orange Line 10 minutes slower today than before the Sept 2022 shutdown? Who will be held responsible for the falsified or incomplete information that led to the global slowdown this past winter?

The story coming out of the Sumner Tunnel shutdown can’t be that the T bent over backward to help drivers with better information, free bus and Blue Line fares, and cheap Commuter Rail fares and then just stopped when it was over.

I wake up every day thinking about how to make the MBTA and how I can help. And in addition to my staff, I lead a team of volunteers who do the same without pay. I know MBTA staff wake up every day trying to run safe service, solve problems, and plan for the future. It’s disheartening to not see more of a visible change in how this agency operates. Leadership isn’t being vocal or transparent enough about how the agency is fighting for riders.

Riders have endured years of acute crisis and decades of underfunding and managed decline. This isn’t about ascribing fault to someone, but this board and this leadership team is responsible now. Seven months is too long to not know when the Red Line’s travel times will be back to normal. It’s too long not to have a timeline for returning rapid transit headways back to pre-pandemic levels. It’s too long to not have set a firm timeline for having enough bus operators to start Phase I or the Bus Network Redesign.

We don’t have time for the T to get all of its ducks in a row before improving its communication and taking action to improve service quality. People are making major life decisions based on the poor quality of today’s service and the lack of information about when it will get better. People are considering whether they’ll buy a car, or whether they’ll take a job in Atlanta. Companies are making siting decisions based on whether they believe the T will get better.

The T has a proud history and was one of the best agencies in the country if not the world. There’s an anecdote about just how good the T used to be: in the 80s there was an award competition that banned the T from competing for a few years because they won too many times in a row. We can get back there, but we’re missing the vision to make that happen. Failure is not an option, because the T is essential to the region’s future. The T is critical to addressing climate change, congestion, housing, socioeconomic equity and so much more.

I’m urging this agency to show a marked change in how it communicates with riders and to start delivering real meaningful results that change the perception of the system.

Thank you.”