Boston bus plan busted

This story hurts me on two levels–the transit level and the community engagement level.  Boston and the state of Massachusetts have evidently scrapped a major plan for stimulus funding to help with rapid transit bus–widely viewed as the next big thing in at least bus transit, if not public transit as a whole, given how it compares in cost to rail.

What hurts in this case is a) part of the discussion pivoted on two important aspects of riding transit–a dedicated lane for buses and a median allowing for walker/rider safety, and b) it appears as if slightly more savvy community engagement might have (and might still) save the day.  “A previous lack of communication with the community required officials to spend their time defending their actions, instead of moving the plan ahead. As a result, there was not enought time to woo some residents, neighborhood supporters of the proposal say…“I hope we haven’t blown it…My real task is to keep the civic engagement, because what we have is the [heaviest] transit ridership in these neighborhoods.’’

Turns out the real riders really wanted this thing, but the approach didn’t reach them.  Lessons learned, I hope.  Community engagement isn’t about making a decision at the top and then trying to sell the public.  It’s about gathering input and, perhaps, buy-in, and crafting a solution that reflects that input and buy-in.

Transportation without observation is tyranny!

I’m a big fan of early American history (1770’s to 1800 or so), and especially of what went on in Boston during that time, so I couldn’t resist a riff on “taxation without representation” in a post about Boston’s beloved T.  It’s of particular interest to me partly because I’ve ridden the T a bunch as a frequent visitor and former student in the New England region, but partly because it’s about funding:

“The idea at the time was to give the T a fixed annual subsidy, abandoning the unwieldy practice of using state money to pay off MBTA expenses at the end of each year. The concept, wrote D’Alessandro, was laudable. But the state underestimated the agency’s expenses by $558 million between 2000 and 2008, he wrote, because of unrealistic projections for operating costs that were outside the T’s control.

For example, the original plan left no money for workers’ health care cost increases, even though they grew by 73 percent in the first eight years. The T, the state’s largest electricity customer, saw fuel and utility costs more than double over the same period.

To balance the books, managers deferred debt payments, masking the size of the T’s problems, D’Alessandro concludes.”

Elected officials, in my view, are much less interested in touting funding for necessary (or even more than is necessary) maintenance than they are for brand-new shiny projects.  That’s understandable; it’s harder to see or experience the value of maintenance than it is to experience the value of new infrastructure.  But as we’ve seen in countless cases, it’s so critical to fund maintenance and is worlds cheaper to fund than new projects.

And you would think when so many electeds champion funding for safety in general (usually cops, etc.), they would champion more funding for safety in transportation proactively, rather than reactively.  Let’s hope.