BOSTON — A former U.S. Secretary of Transportation will be part of a three-member panel assembled by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to examine its operations, the Boston Herald reports.
Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation in the Obama Administration, will be part of the “safety review panel,” along with Carolyn Flowers, a former acting head of the Federal Transit Administration, and Carmen Bianco, former president of New York City Transit. They will look at MBTA’s operational procedures in the wake of incidents including two derailments earlier this month.
The agency had previously hired an engineering firm to look specifically into the derailments [see “Outside review of MBTA derailments could take three months,” Trains News Wire, June 18, 2019].
Specifics of the panel’s role, as well as its pay, are yet to be determined. But Joe Aiello, chairman of the Fiscal and Management Control Board that oversees the MBTA, said the panel will have the ability to recommend changes to current practices.
They don’t need a panel of experts to tell them what’s wrong with the system. Any passenger or observer with an ounce of common sense can see what’s wrong.
1. They let the union run the company and,
2. They spend too much money on expanding the system rather than taking care of the present operation.
There, that’s what’s wrong with the MBTA and I won’t even charge for that advice.
ROBERT – Though I’ve been in SE Masachusetts suburbs since I’ve not been in Boston itself in recent years and thus not ridden the MBTA. Do you see MBTA deteriorating since I last rode it? Over the earlier years when I was a more regular visitor the only problem I saw was that MBTA has too many riders, that the system just wasn’t built for enough trains or long enough trains.
Not recently but it past years I’ve ridden the Red Line quite a lot, Boston to North Quincy, Boston to Quincy Adams, Boston to Alewife, Boston to Davis Square. In other words, most of the Red Line. Plus now and then the Blue Line and Silver Line. I never noticed any problems. The problem I obsess on is the Green Line D-Train, 1950’s cheap, a grossly overloaded trolley where there needs to be a heavy-duty rapid transit service.