MBTA WOES WARNING, LAST CHANCE FOR BAKER
Time is past for still more excuses
New slogan for the Baker campaign: “Worse than New Jersey!”
What an embarrassment. Massachusetts displaces the Garden State as having the worst commuter transit system in the nation, and all under Gov. Charlie Baker’s watch.
The Republican governor rode into office promising to fix the MBTA — even taking the reins after the stormy winter of 2015 led to horrendous delays and breakdowns.
The problem is once you take it over, you own it. And for the last three years the T hasn’t gotten much better. More T commuter trains broke down last year than any other rail system, and it wasn’t even close. New Jersey Transit sustained more than 100 less breakdowns than the MBTA in 2016, a 50 percent improvement over the previous year.
“Boston’s stuck!” gloated NJ.com, noting that the “mark of embarrassment” of having the worst train system passed from New Jersey to the Bay State. And this from a state where Chris Christie is governor.
Baker doesn’t deserve all the blame for the broken down trains — he inherited an old system with old equipment — but he could have been tougher on the commuter rail’s private operator Keolis, and moved with more urgency to demand better service now.
“You can’t fix this overnight — this is a long-term problem,” Baker said yesterday. “I believe we’re doing the things we need to do to turn it around.”
Baker aides note that the T is due to spend nearly $4 billion on core system improvements, and that should lead to newer trains and locomotives, and fewer breakdowns.
The problem is in politics you don’t get credit for looking at the long term. Commuters want and deserve a better system now, and Baker’s been in office nearly three years. You can bet that if the T was noticeably improved, Baker would take credit for that.
Democrats of course are using the new data to blast Baker, but political zingers won’t make the T any better, either.
What the governor needs to do is use his bully pulpit to put pressure on contractors and the T, and personally assure the public he’s doing all he can to improve service. Maybe ride the commuter rail once in a while to see what the rest of us have to endure.
Baker did a good job initially taking over the MBTA, and used his outrage over delays and breakdowns to demand the system perform better.
Now that he’s been in office three years, he’s changed his tone.
“This is the sort of thing that takes a while,” he said.
Like, how long? Three years? Five? Eight?
Commuters — and voters — don’t want to hear any more excuses.