We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the T.
America’s favorite late-night variety show, “Saturday Night Live,” aired a one-minute commercial spoof Sept. 18, 1976, about the then monopolistic phone company. Legendary comedian Lily Tomlin, playing Ernestine, a deliciously impossible-to-circumvent telephone operator whose giggles and snorts only make her more irritating and hilarious, addresses us from the company’s control center. Ernestine tells us her employer can do whatever they want, including shutting down service and ignoring complaints about charges on phone bills. “You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can’t handle it,” she says, concluding with the classic “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company,” which she delivers with a malicious and fetching grin while posing, one hand on her hip, the other at work adjusting her 1950s hairdo. The audience loved it. You can view the spot here.
Cut to the present. My friend and neighbor, M., has stopped riding the red line from Porter, where he lives, to Kendall, where he works, because it’s way too slow; because he’s started to spot syringes on the platform; because it stinks down there from urine; and because [fill in your answer here]. M. bikes to work now – even in the dead of winter. M. hadn’t heard about the new green line extension fiasco, the one with the wrong gauge rail ties, but he isn’t surprised.
He tells me the Tokyo subway system works because each line is independently operated, with stakeholders proudly one-upping each other to provide riders with better service, cleaner cars, nicer stations.
Now, I’m no free-marketer. I happen to like state-subsidized health care, which lets me choose from a variety of plans and tends to level the playing field on cost. But the story with the T is altogether different. Folks, the T has the monopoly on public transportation. It’s the only kid on the block. There is no one else. When we need to get from Point A to Point B by subway, streetcar or bus, there’s only one option, and it’s not pretty. I’ll spare us the punch list of problems; we know what they are.
What’s to be done? More to point: What would make my neighbor take public transit again?
To begin with, accept that the T’s systemwide problems (anyone take the orange line recently?) are not necessarily Cambridge’s or Somerville’s. Next, we have at least two options and should exercise both. Being a Cambridge resident I’ll focus on my city, but Somerville can benefit as well by enacting similar policies.
A new City Council would fast-track a pilot program for a city-run shuttle-style bus system. Half-sized electric buses (we’d double the fleet to accommodate the number of passengers), more agile than the T’s whale-sized clunkers, could navigate our increasingly claustrophobic main corridors with greater ease. Starting at MIT and running up Massachusetts Avenue to Arlington (or beyond? Arlington, are you with us?), the Cambridge-funded fleet would be free to all. Bring these smaller buses online, charge nothing, have them show up at bus stops more frequently and watch how quickly commuters return to public transportation.
The second option that should also be exercised is to have the council contribute improvement funds to the T. That may sound like throwing good money after bad, but the contributions come with strings attached. For starters, a city-led review with input from the T of the ills plaguing the red line from Kendall to Alewife (via Davis in Somerville, granted). Once the council gets that done, Cambridge’s new city manager, Yi-an Huang, and not the T suggests which contractors get to improve things. Anyone that’s had their home painted knows that contractors range from great to abysmal. By having Cambridge decide whom to hire to fix our corner of the T we are, in a sense, competing with the T. We are trying to go one better than they have (witness the past 10 years).
As long as the T remains the only game in town it’ll act like the monopoly it is. It’ll get it wrong, waste time and money, provide awful service and it won’t matter. It won’t care. It won’t have to. It’s the T.
Federico Muchnik is a candidate for Cambridge City Council
Before we ask our city government to repair or replace a struggling regional transit system, we should consider why the MBTA is having such problems and whether the proposed solution is likely to actually work.
MBTA management is facing years of inadequate funding (reluctant legislators from outside the T area, Republican governors reluctant to finance public utilities) as well as major staffing difficulties (including pandemic-induced changes in the labor force and the high cost of local housing), among other challenges.
It’s great to see candidates trying to imagine creative fixes for an unpopular state/regional agency, but we should evaluate plans for major projects separately from election-season enthusiasm.
Many have pointed out over the last years. Any city to spend 500m / $500,000,000 for the few tiny % of citizens that travel and ride in makeshift bike lanes the money could have been allocated towards a larger solution.
Free electric buses, a half billion dollars for T improvements many ideas as you point out. It’s over though the decision has been made – you should have ran 10yrs ago.
This is a bad argument.
Privatization is not a solution. I am glad it isn’t highlighted as one in the suggestions but it is implied as one easier. The history of privatized rail in the UK should be all we need to know in order to oppose it here. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/12/end-of-the-line-for-the-uks-privatised-rail-disaster
When you consider that those responsible for the abysmal state of the T (Baker and co.) also were advancing a privatization agenda you should oppose it even more. There is a long-standing neoliberal strategy to undermine public services and then use their failing as an excuse to privatize them. We should not fall for it.
As for the actual suggestions: I would not be opposed to Cambridge and Somerville exploring smaller shuttles for north-south routes currently not covered by any T service but attempting to run parallel and competing services on major corridors will not improve anything for anyone and will be a waste of resources. In order to improve bus service the cities instead should add bus lanes, queue jumps, and signal priority.
Having each municipality determine the contractors for their subsection of a system that runs across municipal boundaries is a recipe for patchwork repairs and an unequal quality of service across the region. It is better to all be in it together than to fix things in Cambridge only for it to all fall apart when you cross the river. More money to the T is a better idea.
Slaw,
I’m sorry but getting the entire region to commit to high quality transit is a pie in the sky fantasy.
Cambridge has the finances and the political will to do this right, and to do it now. Let Cambridge show that it can be done, and then maybe the region will get behind it.
To try to convince anyone that MA has the ability or even desire to deliver a quality transit system flies in the face of decades of evidence and will condemn Cambridge residents to decades of awful service.
I certainly appreciate this is well-intentioned but unfortunately, the devil is always in the details and I’d like to see more careful thought from someone hoping to serve on city council.
First, this is not a new idea, e.g. POR 2022 #147: “develop a pilot program in which the city would purchase several EV or Hybrid shuttle buses or other vehicles that would operate free of charge on a much more frequent schedule on our major commercial corridors of Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge Street” (passed almost unanimously). See also POR 2023 #145 regarding “a pilot program providing subsidized, on-demand transit to low-income residents, people with disabilities and seniors […] to service the region in ways that supplement the MBTA system.”
Second, the MBTA’s problems are on a much bigger scale than what a single city can solve. It is very frustrating but it is also the reality. And cities trying to get around this by throwing money with strings attached at the MBTA to get it to prioritize fixes/improvements in “their” portion of the system opens up a massive can of worms re: equity.
Third, the primary causes of infrequent and irregular bus service are 1) a shortage of drivers (for the reasons James Zall pointed out above), and 2) buses get stuck in the same traffic as the rest of the cars. It is absolutely NOT due to buses being too big/not agile enough for Cambridge (Somerville is a different story due to its very steep and narrow streets, but there are already ongoing efforts there to pilot north-south microtransit). Should the city try to compete with the MBTA to hire bus drivers? That seems counterproductive. As Slaw said, road/traffic infrastructure changes to benefit buses ARE things within the city’s control that will yield much more immediate and tangible benefits than starting up a redundant/competing bus service. In fact, we’ve already seen this in action on Mass Ave near MIT and north Cambridge.
Finally, Porter to Kendall is actually a pretty nice cycling route, especially with the recent infrastructure upgrades to Inman Square and Hampshire Street (the latter being a Cycling Safety Ordinance-mandated project). 15-20 minutes at most, roughly the same amount of time as it takes in a car (sometimes much less depending on traffic) and eminently doable even in the winter. Mr. Muchnik shouldn’t assume that bike commuting is a miserable last resort for his friend ;)
Yikes, I just saw from Mr. Muchnik’s comment on another article that his transportation platform actually says “remove the bus lanes.” Incredibly short-sighted.