TransitMatters Executive Director's Public Comment At September MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comment our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on September 28, 2023:

“Good morning Madame Secretary, and Member Skelton Roberts and Mayor Sisitsky, welcome and congratulations. Chair Glynn, members of the Board, General Manager Eng, and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment.

I'm here to reiterate a point I've made before: riders and the broader public see an agency as dramatically worse than when this administration started. From abysmal headways that the agency is unable to adhere to, slow zones that have spread through the system like a pandemic, and a near-constant barrage of bad news related to the FTA engagement. And then the news of the unacceptable conditions of the newest billion-dollar piece of infrastructure. Confidence in the agency is at an all-time low. 

I know that the challenges to turning this system around are incredibly daunting. I know that there has been progress. From the hiring of a transit professional—the first since Dr. Scott left—to the success with bus driver applications. The picture is not all bad. But for riders, this means nothing. It means nothing to a rider who has to lose money because of a dropped bus trip on a line with reduced service for nearly 2 years. Nothing to the former rider who has dealt with 15-minute rush hour headways for more than a year, but has given up hope on a system that has deteriorated to the point that it takes an extra 40 minutes.

Time for talk to become action. We can't recycle people or approaches that have failed us.

I hear a great deal about safety, but not how we got to this point. It's funding. 30 years of austerity means this agency doesn't have enough track workers to fix slow zones faster than they pop up. Not enough track workers to comply with FTA guidance. Not enough capital staff to oversee contracts. The previous way of doing business has failed. I hope, I sincerely hope that we have reached rock bottom.

This agency is quickly gaining a reputation as a punchline. More concerning is the reality of agency being a punching bag. The fervor and anger at the state of the system and where riders fall on the list of State House priorities is palpable. My fellow advocates and I could set a date a month from now and have 1,000 people marching on Beacon Hill, but I'm not sure it would matter because riders wouldn't have their agency behind me.

When will this agency advocate for riders? When will this agency ask for the emergency tools and legislation to fast-track hiring? To ensure that the surge in bus operator applications results in hiring? What will this agency do to prove riders who think service will never get better wrong? What can you do for riders let down again and again who don't care about the content of these PowerPoints?

When will this agency adopt radical transparency? It does not inspire trust to learn about the faults of the Green Line Extension from the Globe, which they learned about from our tweets. I don't think the FTA appreciated that either. When will see the long-promised 6-month surge schedule? When will we have signage with timelines up on walled-off staircases and waiting areas? When will the T have the bathrooms open or have enough ambassadors to hold buses when diversions make trains late? When will the T move with the urgency of an agency on the verge of a death spiral? When the administration show riders that they are as much of a priority as tax cuts?

People ask me why I give these comments or why I still believe the T can turn around. I want the leadership and this board to demonstrate that these meetings and comments are worthwhile and that you understand what is at stake here. We are ready to help, but we can't do it alone.”

TransitMatters Exec. Director & Staff's Public Comments At August MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comment our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on August 24, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment. 

My name is Jarred Johnson, the Executive Director of TransitMatters and a frustrated T rider. 

The work of turning around an agency beset with a myriad of problems is no mean feat. I hope I have expressed gratitude for this board and the welcome change in leadership in the C-Suite. 

However, for people who don’t read the Globe, or attend Boston Chamber breakfasts, for the riders struggling to get to work on time every day, or trying to make a doctor’s appointment on time. In other words, the many people who depend on the Red Line, which is 40 min slower than at the start of this administration, or the 1 bus, which saw yet another service cut earlier this year, or the Orange Line, which is 10 min slower than before the shutdown. Those riders could be forgiven for thinking nothing fundamentally has changed. 

If this sounds harsh, then let’s be clear: the reality of their daily transit commutes is harsh. And harsh is not acceptable. I’m trying to bring in the voices of the people who can’t make a 10 a.m. meeting. I have tried to say this every single way possible: this agency is in danger of entering a death spiral. And if that happens, it will be because this agency is moving too slowly to show riders it is making progress, or that it cares about them. 

The ending of the “Show Your Charlie Card” is a small thing, but in my mind, it says a lot about how this agency sees the current landscape and how out of touch that view is. 

I also want to highlight the stark difference in how MassDOT had people out at Haymarket one year before the start of Sumner Tunnel work to alert drivers well in advance. It then asked the T to pay for free Blue Line service as well as subsidize Commuter Rail and ferry service. It had elected and senior administration officials riding the T, and it provided up-to-date information to encourage usage of public transit.  

These efforts show that you can try to effect mode shift and make people’s lives better in spite of infrastructure challenges when it’s a political imperative.

My argument isn’t that the T and MassDOT shouldn’t have done this for the 50,000-odd drivers using the tunnel, but that it should be the standard for 90,000 Red Line riders or nearly 300,000 bus riders. 

I care so deeply about this system and I think it’s key to our housing, climate, economic, and equity goals. I shouldn’t have to beg the administration to act like it. 

It’s time for that fundamental shift so promised in campaign speeches and first-day remarks to happen. I mean this in terms of communication, in terms of transparency, and in terms of taking decisive, visible, and immediately effective actions that make rider’s lives easier while you work on the things that will take more time. I also mean this in terms of coming clean with the legislature and the public about the significant looming operating budget crisis and the overall continued underfunding of the transit and rail system. This system needs an unprecedented infusion of new funding over the next ten years to remake the system. Incrementalism has left this agency and this administration playing a futile game of transit whack-a-mole. It won’t work, it isn’t working, and it will be a terrible legacy for you all to have.

I’ll close by saying that the T’s posture of conservatism—withholding information like the Capital Needs Assessment, saying nothing other than the truth even if it’s bad news—has not helped it in the past. It hasn’t led the legislature to act. It hasn’t made the T a bigger priority for previous governors. And there’s no indication that this will change. 

I want this agency to treat the slow zones and dropped bus trips wasting precious hours of riders’ lives like an emergency. 

I want the T to treat the extreme gulf of capital funding available to meet the need, which I know is likely 2x that of previous estimates like an emergency. I want the T to treat riders with the dignity and respect they deserve. And to fight for them, and indeed the future of our region.”

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Below is the full transcript of the public comment our Policy Analyst and Programs Manager, Katie Calandriello, and TransitMatters Labs Co-Lead presented to the MBTA Board on August 24, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. Thank you for allowing us to comment this morning on behalf of TransitMatters. 

My name is Katie Calandriello, Policy Analyst and Programs Manager at TransitMatters, and we would like to respond to the current state of slow zones on our subway as highlighted by the Slow Zone Tracker on our Data Dashboard. 

We're encouraged by the state of slow zones on the Blue Line, but we continue to be concerned about the state of the Orange and Red Lines. In the former case, on the Orange Line, slow time is up 220% since before the shutdown last fall. In the latter case, slow time across the Red Line has increased 58% since July 20, putting it within 15 minutes of the post-inspection 83-minute peak on April 13 earlier this year.

This demonstrates that our slow zones have not been fixed, and in some cases have gotten worse. However, these aren’t just lines on a graph. Our riders are feeling these slow zones too. 

TransitMatters urges the MBTA to continue the “Show Your Charlie Card” program on Commuter Rail lines running adjacent to our subway system until slow zones return to their March 9, 2023 levels, before the blanket speed restrictions and track inspections. 

This policy was enacted to provide alternative service to riders with ongoing slow zones and it is the duty of the MBTA to continue this service until slow zones are ameliorated. 

In a time when our transit system is in one of the worst conditions it’s ever been in, we need to be doing everything we can to get riders where they need to be, safely, quickly, and reliably. 

It’s small policies like this that can help our transit network bounce back. 

Thank you.”

TransitMatters Executive Director's Public Comment At July MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comments our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on July 27, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment.

My name is Jarred Johnson, with TransitMatters.

I want to talk about restoring public trust in the agency and fighting for riders. Confidence in the agency is at an all-time low and the agency’s actions, or lack thereof, are only eroding further and making the job of advocates more difficult.

The T is not doing a good enough job of demonstrating its care for riders. Ridership and service quality should be on the same level as safety. Lest my comments be misinterpreted, this does not mean that safety should be at all compromised. This means the T needs to raise ridership and service quality up to that level. This means attracting and retaining ridership must become a key priority. The T's quite frankly offensive posture towards riders has been disappointing, to say the least.

The recent Green Line Central Subway shutdown with less than 48 hours notice and no public information about what work was being done is not acceptable. I even spoke with an operator who told me they often find out about these diversions in the press along with riders. There is often incorrect signage and poor communication during these diversions. This is compounded by poor operations and inconsistent practices on the portions of the rapid transit network where service is running.

We must address the lack of transparency and accountability. Why is the Orange Line 10 minutes slower today than before the Sept 2022 shutdown? Who will be held responsible for the falsified or incomplete information that led to the global slowdown this past winter?

The story coming out of the Sumner Tunnel shutdown can’t be that the T bent over backward to help drivers with better information, free bus and Blue Line fares, and cheap Commuter Rail fares and then just stopped when it was over.

I wake up every day thinking about how to make the MBTA and how I can help. And in addition to my staff, I lead a team of volunteers who do the same without pay. I know MBTA staff wake up every day trying to run safe service, solve problems, and plan for the future. It’s disheartening to not see more of a visible change in how this agency operates. Leadership isn’t being vocal or transparent enough about how the agency is fighting for riders.

Riders have endured years of acute crisis and decades of underfunding and managed decline. This isn’t about ascribing fault to someone, but this board and this leadership team is responsible now. Seven months is too long to not know when the Red Line’s travel times will be back to normal. It’s too long not to have a timeline for returning rapid transit headways back to pre-pandemic levels. It’s too long to not have set a firm timeline for having enough bus operators to start Phase I or the Bus Network Redesign.

We don’t have time for the T to get all of its ducks in a row before improving its communication and taking action to improve service quality. People are making major life decisions based on the poor quality of today’s service and the lack of information about when it will get better. People are considering whether they’ll buy a car, or whether they’ll take a job in Atlanta. Companies are making siting decisions based on whether they believe the T will get better.

The T has a proud history and was one of the best agencies in the country if not the world. There’s an anecdote about just how good the T used to be: in the 80s there was an award competition that banned the T from competing for a few years because they won too many times in a row. We can get back there, but we’re missing the vision to make that happen. Failure is not an option, because the T is essential to the region’s future. The T is critical to addressing climate change, congestion, housing, socioeconomic equity and so much more.

I’m urging this agency to show a marked change in how it communicates with riders and to start delivering real meaningful results that change the perception of the system.

Thank you.”