Bill filed to remove commuter rail operations from MBTA

IIRC a Chief Safety Office was fired for being a whistleblower about unaddressed safety concerns. My interpretation of that Exclusivity statement in the bill is that if any Commonwealth funding is going to support a passenger or commuter rail operation, it is going to be through MassDOT and not another agency of the Commonwealth and that safety oversight of any operations not funded by the Commonwealth will be through MassDOT (instead of which ever organization failed to provide adequate oversight of the MBTA).

Whether it's compounding pharmacies, old soldier's homes, MBTA, $20B highway construction projects, obamacare, covid signup, Steamship Authority reservations, Covid signup, Registry of Motor Vehicles, the bank that prints checks & sends ACH for the state, the states' internal software systems, the state has trouble supervising anything. The DPU supervises natural gas utilities that explode, cable TV/internet providers that gouge, and MBTA safety!

Many of your rightful concerns are Baker-era legacies. What had been in place for 8 years doesn't get righted in less than 2 months of the new administration.

This reply is to a message in Should the MBTA take a backseat on Commuter Rail:

mbrproductions wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:11 am "MBTA should let MassDOT take over Commuter Rail, lawmaker says"
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/mbt ... am-straus/

This is actually an interesting bit of reporting from the Statehouse News Service consortium. Well worth the read. I'm guessing WBZ-4 news and the other outlets are all pretty thin when it comes to doing their own original reporting.

TransitMatters Executive Director Jarred Johnson described Straus's plan to shift commuter rail management from the MBTA to MassDOT as "a very expensive deck chair-moving operation."

"We ask too much, and therefore expect too much, from the T," Straus said. "It's a sprawling organization that, when you compare it to either other parts of state government or similar kinds of systems around the country, for good reason, pretty much no one else handles it the way we do."

Well, not really true. SEPTA is another agency that handles it the same way, which I take him to mean one agency overseeing both urban and regional rail systems. But it's true that most cities separate them in to distinct management umbrellas.

As for the merits, I can see an argument for separation, but not unless it coincides with a move to significantly expand the scope from commuter to a full regional rail model, including parts of the state not currently served.

This story ay be enough to kill this effort: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/05/ ... utors-say/

Pigsley is not some low-level hack, he is described as the Assistant Chief Engineer!!!!!!! For 8 years that this has been going on!! And overlapping that and back to 2009 he was "Facilities Manager Commuter Rail" according to his LinkedIn profile! OMG they caught him taking $8.5M, what other damage didn't they find out about or the statute of limitations has run out? And how much corruption and inefficiency did he oversee?

rethcir wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 12:44 pm This story ay be enough to kill this effort: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/05/ ... utors-say/

Why? It serves as evidence that the current setup is NOT working. I don't think it's relevant to whether or not Commuter Rail is its own entity or part of the T (which is a MassDOT entity regardless), but it certainly serves as yet another example of the private public partnership model being an atrocious failure.

I think Keolis operates the MBTA Commuter Rail under contract, not in a private/public partnership.

From what I've read, it is Keolis (and not MBTA) that discovered and reported the fraud, not the MBTA.

Pigsley was stealing from Keolis, right? Not the MBTA?

If so, I don't see how this bears on the question of Mass DOT separating the commuter rail from the MBTA.

RandallW wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 4:38 am I think Keolis operates the MBTA Commuter Rail under contract, not in a private/public partnership.

That's what a public/private partnership is.

charlesriverbranch wrote:...I don't see how this bears on the question of Mass DOT separating the commuter rail from the MBTA.

It doesn't.

CRail wrote: ↑Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:32 am

RandallW wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 4:38 am I think Keolis operates the MBTA Commuter Rail under contract, not in a private/public partnership.

That's what a public/private partnership is.

While a Public/private partnership (PPP) is a contract where a public entity enters into an agreement with a private entity where both entities assume material risk; generally these partnerships allow a public entity to provide partial capitol costs to enable a private entity to profit from operating a public service by eliminating the capitol costs of that operation, the term does not cover most transit operating contracts.

Were this a PPP, Keolis would (likely) directly receive a portion (or all) of the commuter rail ticket revenues and would operate trains (either owned by Keolis or MBTA) on schedules and frequencies that Keolis sees fit to provide to maximize Keolis's investment in the PPP (a PPP would likely include minimum service level requirements).

I understand the MBTA / Keolis contract to be a contract where MBTA pays Keolis to operate MBTA's commuter rail where all revenue (and potential profit) from commuter rails goes to MBTA and MBTA then pays Keolis to operate MBTA owned equipment on a schedule that MBTA specifies (basically Keolis provides crews to run MBTA trains). It seems that Keolis has little to incentive under this contract to independently invest in capitol or operating improvements that are not directed by the MBTA.

Disclaimer: I work for (depending on the purchasing organizations language/definitions) either a contractor to or vendor for multiple government and private entities; at no time has my firm ever entered into a PPP with a purchaser of our services or products.

Correct. Keolis is no different from the state hiring a cleaning company or trash collection. They're a supplier under contract. They don't keep any money they collect (although cash receipts might be an offset against what they bill the state/mbta for providing the service.

Contractors have zero risk in the situation. They get paid regardless.

In a PPP, there's risk sharing. If no money is made or there are huge cost overruns, both the state/mbta and the private partners lose money. If it becomes profitable, both sides share in the gain.



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There are many forms of public private partnerships, of which this is one. There is most certainly asset sharing (other than trains or tracks...) and financial risk to the private entity. The fare gates are Keolis's, for example, and there IS a revenue sharing system in place which did not exist in the previous two contracts. MBCR, for example, had a relatively small local player as the operating entity (Alternate Concepts, headed by former Secretary of Transportation Jim O'Leary) but required a much larger organization for financial backing (Veolia). In any event, this is nitpicking. The obvious point is that contracting out the service, regardless of how the contract is structured, is failing the Commonwealth. It made sense when we were paying the already operating railroad companies to not abandon their own service (with all their own assets, by the way), but now that the originals are gone it just employs a middleman through which funding can be easily misappropriated, as we see in the quoted article.

Removing the Commuter Rail from the T is an essential step, removing the private player from the Commuter Rail is another.

CRail wrote:
Removing the Commuter Rail from the T is an essential step, removing the private player from the Commuter Rail is another.

Who and what do you see operating commuter rail in this scenario?