The EGE wrote:Apparently the Globe isn't capable of looking up that the T doesn't have a substantial stock of non-revenue equipment, and has not for some time.
The red line has (had?) a diesel plow that spent the whole winter rusting on a siding. Stop making excuses for the T.
The T's payroll is infested with the worst kind of old-school southie-style blue collar deadwood, and it's no different from those other "great" Boston employers like BFD (with their nation-leading spending per employee paying for their kamikaze ladder units courtesy of the the maintenance dept and what passes for brake work there) or the public schools. There's this provincial "do as little as possible" culture that pervades every aspect of the T's operation, from the drivers to the maintenance dept, to the management, and despite their ridiculous payroll/pension practices, the answer to their woes is always "more workers, more money", because that's what keeps the pol's elected and the make-work cronies employed. It's a cancerous organization from top to bottom, and this winter we saw just how pathetic it all is.
That's not to say that there aren't some really good people working for the T at any and all level of the organization, there are, and there are hundreds if not thousands of them on the payroll. But just as there are also plenty of good people working for BFD, etc, that still doesn't change the overall culture of the organization. I for one think it's great that a light is finally being shined on just how ineffective the MBTA management and worker culture was this winter. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and it's about time we started taking an honest look at the T's relative strengths and failures as an organization.
Times are changing, and Boston is changing. In the past quarter-century, we've undergone a tremendous economic and cultural transition from being a sleepy, crumbling post-industrial backwater city like Baltimore, Cleveland, or Philly to being a real intellectual and economic center, a beacon of the 21st century knowledge economy on par with Washington DC or San Francisco. That said, the demographic, cultural, and economic changes that have been so beneficial for so much of the Boston area have made the rotten leftovers of its provincial past stick out that much more. If it's to last, the critical infrastructure (the MBTA) that helps to make so much of 21st century Boston possible also needs to push through the political inertia and catch up with the times. Otherwise, it will be that much easier for the city to lose so much of what it's gained in the past decades.
