BandA wrote:I don't think splitting off CR would help. It's already functionally separate in operations. They share purchasing, do they share planning? I think they even have separate unions. Would be nice if they hurry up the Charlie Card II and make it CR compatible, and implement distance fares that are equitable between modes.
Lot of the planning is consolidated, and being consolidated moreso over time. It makes less sense than it did, say, a decade ago to consider splitting off the agencies. There's also a third wheel in the mix in some of the outlying Regional Transit Agencies who run the 495-area bus districts. Many of those (LRTA, MVTA, MRTA, BAT) already manage the commuter rail stations within their districts for parking, plowing, maintenance, etc. Wachusett, for instance, was a big T + MRTA partnership...so while the state spent a lot taxpayer money for that station the MBTA agency did not bear all of the cost burden alone as the intermodal center (park-and-ride + new shuttle bus services to Gardner and Great Wolf) were primary MRTA initiatives. That offset for the RTA's already affects the assessment given to outer-district towns who belong to an RTA vs. inner-district towns contained within the T's bus and paratransit system. If anything the RTA's need lots more funding love going forward so they can expand their district reach, absorb more intensive station management for more of the 495-belt CR stops, and step up their involvement in multimodal planning so the 'vision thing' for those stops involves a whole lot more than just parking sinks airlifted from Boston.
Yes...RR unions are completely different from bus/rapid transit. Boston Carmen's Local 589 is an Amalgamated Transit Union affiliate, with ATU being strictly bus, rapid transit, paratransit, and back-end support staff therein. ATU and its like-minded transit unions delegate a lot of authority to the local posts, which is why the Carmen's Union is a household name and synonymous with 'the' T workers union. The RR unions primarily break along job functions: train crews, MoW and/or signal, shop, etc. And because RR's are orders-of-magnitude tighter federally regulated there's a lot less local flavor and influence and a lot more hegemony between regions (i.e. no Carmen's Local-level concentration of power in the local posts). Which is a function of the hiring market for any local RR workers being competitive between multiple railroads with similar and largely 'portable' union membership: T, Amtrak, CSX, PAR, P&W, etc. They all hire from each other, and their workers all plot their rise up the career ladder by changing roads. Whereas if you're an ATU et al. transit worker based in Greater Boston and not working for a school bus company or one of the other niche employers that ATU serves like public-private shuttles (e.g. the LMA's, university buses, senior shuttles) or an ambulance company (i.e. still a 'public'-service form of transit, albeit radically different in function)...you're pretty much working for the T and are a Carmen's member. Or living in a suburb and commuting to an identical job at one of the RTA's.
Difference between closed, very region-specific transit networks vs. playing in the same labor pool as national common carriers. SEPTA found out the hard way in the early-80's how inapplicable transit workers are to RR jobs with one of its ill-fated rail shuttle experiments, so that's an everlasting difference in labor organization by transit sector. Every state that has an agency managing all forms of transit statewide or in a district administers both the transit-side and RR-side labor agreements. The MTA, NJ Transit, SEPTA...even Amtrak with baggage handlers (usually ATU-affiliated instead of RR union -affiliated) and Thruway buses. As do some 'mothership'-level DOT or regional agencies that manage mode-specific sub-agencies like a subservient commuter rail district (e.g. Caltrain, which is managed by the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board). It's a very common arrangement--arguably most common amongst mixed-mode agengies depending on how loose your definition of "subservient" is for those Caltrain-like getups--to have transit workers and RR workers mixed under a common roof without that being administratively contradictory. Union membership would never be a reason to split commuter rail off from the rest of the T. Something else very big, convincing, and broadly obvious would have to compel that decision.
