I was at work all morning trying to hash out this tjustice stuff and nonsense–the specific recommendations for reform that I would like to present to Senator Barrios and his colleagues in the legislature. I was working from home, and had a sushi date for 2PM at Jae’s in the Back Bay. Eat at Jae’s and supposedly you’ll live forever, though I don’t know if they have proof of that.
Anyway, I was working, working, working, and rushed out, knowing I’d be late, but that it would be OK with my sushi date, who’s usually running late, too. I get downstairs to the building foyer where I usually put my bike, and it’s gone.
Someone stole my friggin bike from inside my friggin building. How ya like that?
I had a flash to Holden Caulfield seeing those “fuck you”s graffitied all over everything. That’s how I felt. Like, damn, “You can’t ever find a place that is nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.” That bike was my place. One of ‘em, at least. I’m not about to reveal my others. Not on your life.
I missed my sushi date, of course, but my friend, bless him, had a bike to lend me. It’s not mine, but it’ll do until I can replace mine.
I’m not going to get into just not understanding at all people who go into other people’s houses and take things that don’t belong to them. I mean, this is Dorchester. I consider myself lucky. They could have stolen the bike and shot me in the head, too. So I guess I should actually be happy about all this.
My Metro op-ed from yesterday, HERE.
With State Senator Jarrett Barrios, a member of the Joint Committee on Transportation, on board and speaking at 4PM, I’m satisfied I’ve brought something to the table here. Senator Barrios and his staff have been courteous, helpful, and accommodating, and I thank them for taking this matter seriously and taking the time to meet with and rally the public to a worthy cause.
The main event will be from 4 to 4:30 PM on Tuesday, June 6th, as, hopefully, you all know by now.
I will have much, much more to say about the individuals, groups and organizations charged with representing riders, after the rally. I don’t want to alienate anyone beforehand.
Strictly Amateur
I will say this: Over the last couple of weeks I have been talking and on occasion meeting with representatives of various groups with varying levels of commitment to this issue. One recent exchange with a well-meaning lobbyist illustrates a typical philosophical difference. After exchanging emails, this representative of a well-known public interest group advised me thusly: “In my experience, a press conference is a lot easier than a rally. Especially if only 15 people show up.”
But I’ve been calling a press conference every morning when I’m about to have my BM, for years, and usually none of the major media outlets cover it. Humph.
I had an encounter with MASSPIRG yesterday that also illustrated the point. I was walking down Boylston from Berkeley to Copley Square around noon, and there were three of those awful, perky Blueshirts blocking the walk. That’s how they do it. It was impossible to avoid them or their membership drive without having to dash across the street and into traffic, risking life and limb.
I told the young woman who snagged me as I was hiding behind one of those dwarf trees they’ve got growing along there waiting for my chance to escape that (a) I was in a hurry (which I was), and (b) I would have a look at their website later (which I wouldn’t–but that’s our little secret). She insisted I sign up now (which I did not, as when anyone insists I do anything I don’t want to do, especially when it involves monthly payments, I most certainly do not). I was able to escape by pretending I saw a friend I was supposed to be meeting down the sidewalk, and wound up buying someone I didn’t know lunch. But that’s how it goes. It’s still the cheaper of evils in the long-run.
For the record, groups like MASSPIRG can call press conferences, apparently, and bully for them. Their thing is petitions and membership drives, and then, I assume, they have professional lobbyists who wear suits and schmooze with lawmakers to get legislation through. Again, all good. If it makes the world a better place, I’m all for it. But that’s not the only way people can be heard and things can get done.
I look at my humble little rally as a minor experiment in old-fashioned democratic hell-raising, without the middleman. We have pros and specialists for everything now, and while that’s how things get done, as I’ve said, I’m not so sure it’s the only way, or even the best way.
They assure us it is–that the crises of environmental degradation and human rights violations are so apocalyptic and urgent it is all best left to professionals to hash out the solutions. Many of the folks attached to the big-name public-interest lobbying groups seem to view old-fashioned community-building and public protest as quaint at best, harmfully amateurish and damaging to “The Cause” at worst.
I’m just not sure that I agree that “The Cause” is in better hands now that it is “The Cause, Inc.” Maybe, but who’s to say? The PR guys, I guess.
I’ll admit I’m a little old-fashioned, but I think there are merits beyond “The Cause,” even, for people coming together and exchanging ideas about things they have, by choice or sheer coincidence, in common. I think the idea of a common appeals to us, but the reality has become very much less attractive. This gulf between the idea of things and the reality can’t be bridged by signing an online petition, or joining a group that deducts their monthly membership fees from your bank account automatically and promises to do the work of democracy for you conveniently, without disturbing you with too many pesky details.
Don’t get me wrong. There are certain issues in which that approach is necessary and effective–because of their range or complexity, say–but when one of the points you want to make is that the public itself needs to get in on the process, you defeat your own purpose by calling a press conference “because it’s easier.”
That’s why my answer to the pros is: so what if “only 15 people show up”? I’d consider that a rousing success, actually.
You’re defeated when you do nothing.
Particular Challenges
There are some unique challenges to coordinating a public response to the T’s fare restructuring, and they are not merely coincidental. For one thing, there are some good things about the plan. Not everyone’s fare will increase. For another, many people who might be more inclined to get involved apparently work for companies that subsidize their T monthly passes. Whether you are personally negatively impacted, and to what extent, will obviously influence your inclination to protest.
The T has also planned a fairly short period in which to solicit reactions from riders in mostly symbolic Q&A sessions and hearings. Because the T is not at all a transparent organization, they did not include the wider public in any significant way in fare restructuring negotiations.
What is being communicated as for the nature of the relationship between the T and the public is: “The T is The Decider.” GM Dan Grabauskas comes out with these outrageous hikes for single trip bus and subway fares, and then condescendingly says, “but maybe we’ll lower them if you react.” What he’s saying is, the public’s role is to react. Not to be in on the process, but to bellyache about it when it’s all but over.
And people do react, but there is an undeniable sense of futility. The T makes the rules, they set the dates and times, and control the proceedings, and in the end, they decide, on their whim, whether or not to grant leniency. They are judge, jury, and hangman. Do you feel empowered by any of this?
Particularly the hearing on JUNE 6TH at the BPL, which, for whatever reason, has been scheduled for rush-hour, and will be half-over by the time most people get off work. But even if it was scheduled for 6:30, as most of the other remaining MBTA-sponsored gripe sessions are, it would not generate much buzz, or draw a big crowd. Partly that’s because we all feel a T-sponsored bitch session is, as I wrote in my weekly column, purely palliative.
And the meetings I have attended have borne this out. A good majority of those in attendance have used the opportunity to vent frustrations that should have been taken to the T personally, not in a public forum. But this is the only place and time they felt they could actually get someone–a live person–to sit and listen to their stories. Where they could be sure they were, at a minimum, being heard. What does that say about the T? About its commitment to customer service?
So, yes, the meetings show the level of frustration out there, but it’s not being channeled in a positive or productive way. It simply leads to more frustration.
Recommendations
For the Public: Given that the system is dysfunctional, as I’ve said, the way in which decisions are made has to change a bit. The latest round of fare increases has resulted in what I see as a mostly symbolic concession by the T, the establishment of the Rider Oversight Committee (ROC), whose mission statement is:
The MBTA Rider Oversight Committee (ROC), a diverse group of riders, advocates and MBTA employees, provides recommendations to the MBTA that communicate the needs and concerns of all riders in order to assist the MBTA in providing affordable, safe and quality service.
The Rider Oversight Committee was born out of the fare policy commitments. The MBTA, for the first time in its history, established the Rider Oversight Committee to meet monthly and discuss customer service improvements and service quality issues. The MBTA and the ROC come together to address the concerns of public transit customers.
All well and good, if overly fuzzy-wuzzy and vague. I would like to see the flow chart on this one. What relationship do they have to the T management? Is there a two-way conversation here, or is it just a monthly circle-jerk?
So what can the public do to give the ROC some teeth and make it work for them?
● Demand that the MBTA website include, at a minimum, a daily ROC blog and bulletin board that is easily accessible from the main page menu. The blog would deal with day-to-day issues impacting riders, and the bulletin board would serve as an open forum for riders to publicly air grievances, offer compliments, comments and suggestions, and ask questions of the T for which they can be assured they will receive answers accessible to all online.
There are websites, like badtransit, of course, that offer all of this. The point here is to integrate the dialogue about transit into the transit system itself, to give riders and the taxpaying public a sense that they are playing a real role and being heard and responded to by the MBTA.
● As a part of, or in addition to the ROC blog, the T should appoint an active ombudsman to directly and publicly investigate and address grievances on a daily basis.
● The ROC must be required to do more outreach and actively solicit public input. Through the internet and in the stations.
● Advocacy groups and riders unions must network and coordinate their efforts for the future. They must learn to utilize the internet as a tool for both delivering information to and soliciting it from their constituents. They must communicate with one another better, and they must be ready to mobilize on riders’ behalves when there is an issue that impacts them.
You will note that many of my suggestions have to do with instituting public participation, and not merely by proxy, in the hopes of gaining more transparency in the way the T is maintained.
For the MBTA: Transparency is a major issue. Consider the process leading to the latest proposed fare increases. What does the public know about it? Was any attempt made to inform the public of it before the proposed increases were announced?
Occasionally the General Manager posts a Message from Mars on the MBTA website, but hardly anything he has to say resembles the reality of riders’ daily commutes. His most recent MfM touts the T’s commitment to excellent customer service. And in the 27th dimension pigs can fly, rats can talk, and Al Gore is President of the United States. What this nonsense with knobs on tells me is that he is really not committed to excellence in customer service if he thinks it’s already been achieved on the T.
We are so used to the T touting meager accomplishments as major public service improvements or boasting about minimal compliance with the law as if they had initiated improvements themselves, that we’ve become discouraged about getting any straight talk from them.
Their recent addition of a translation feature on their website was treated as major news. They touted their compliance at last with parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law passed 16 years ago, as if they had done it out of the kindness of their hearts for the greater good of humanity. And half of their elevators still don’t work.
So what can the T do?
● Kill the rhetoric, come back down to earth, and start taking its riders’ reality seriously, by instituting the recommendations above: an MBTA ROC daily blog, a bulletin board that is monitored daily for grievances, and a full-time ombudsman with a daily public blog as well.
● When a complaint is lodged by a rider, the process is not clear. At a recent MBTA fare hike meeting, the MBTA representative, in response to several riders’ specific grievances, claimed that the MBTA “disciplines” its employees who misbehave towards its customers. I don’t believe it for an instant. If it did, atrocious behavior would be the exception, not the rule.
The culture of the MBTA is that of a typical bureaucracy, where secrecy and obstructionism are the norm, and self-preservation always trumps customer service. That has to change. In order for this to happen, every step in the process has to be outed.
We are all suspicious of what role we might be playing, unwittingly, in the T’s internal affairs. David Bernstein’s piece in the Phoenix highlighted this culture of intrigue, where the public is a pawn in the machinations of management in their dealings with their unions. I’m over all the cloak and dagger crap, though I can appreciate the many difficulties management has with particularly strong unions, not least political.
But we need to know about abuses. Therefore…
● The MBTA must be required to regularly post complete statistics regarding absenteeism and overtime, number and nature of complaints and action taken to redress them. We need to know what the management’s policy is regarding merit pay and promotion versus promotion based on seniority, and we need ready access on their website to statistics. We need to know precisely what powers the management has in personnel issues.
Information is power, and the T should be required by law to provide it, and to make it readily available to the public online. This level of transparency will expose the dysfunctional culture of the T, of course, but it will also lead to much needed improvements and cost-saving measures in the long-run.
● The process by which the T arises at its annual budget and sets its fares must be transparent, as well, and include public input from the beginning.
The internet is a perfect tool for transparency. The MBTA needs to use it.
For the State Legislature:
● make the recommendations above LAW. Sorry to sound so pushy, but institutional transparency cannot be a matter of choice. It must be a requirement for the T.
● Dedicate more funds to developing public transportation in the Commonwealth. This requires that legislators themselves believe in making the system work. It is not a social service to citizens with no other options, it is an economic necessity. Boston could not function without it. Take it more seriously. Incorporate it more vitally into your vision of the future of New England.
● Give the MBTA some latitude in choices for funding their operations. They currently claim to have discretion only in the realm of fares. If this is indeed the case, then they will be raising fares whenever they come up short, which will likely be always, and forever.
● Along with more budgetary options, Seek out ways to give management greater negotiating power in labor relations. These issues are intimately related.
● An inquiry to out abuses in the current culture of the T on all levels would go a long way toward changing the way the T is maintained and managed.
I will emphasize again that transparency on all levels will lead inexorably to solutions to what ails the T. It’s hard to move forward to a more efficient and effective transit system, much less to ensure fair fares, without full disclosure.
Transparency is the key to the first step in the right direction for the T.
