DELAYED ARRIVAL
Report says contract issues, project plans to blame for MBTA issues
The MBTA’s effort to make progress on its capital improvement plan and recover from derailments, system failures and deferred maintenance is going to continue to lag behind benchmarks unless the agency changes the way it hires out contracts and manages projects, according to a recent report.
“The number one reason for reliability problems with the MBTA is the fact that the T has not been able to spend the money available to it from the state and federal government, resulting in a serious reduction in quality,” said Gregory Sullivan, executive director of the Pioneer Institute and co-author of the report “The MBTA’s Capital Spending Crisis.”
“They’re straight jacketed by state laws,” he said.
The study, released Tuesday, argues that the MBTA’s strict procurement methods have prevented it from hiring the contractors needed to complete the major projects it’s budgeted for, including renovations to the red and orange lines.
A good example, Sullivan said, is the current effort to repair signal equipment on the Red Line following a derailment in June. The T on Monday said those repairs will last into October.
But Sullivan said there’s a pending project to replace the entire signal system on the Red and Orange Lines that hasn’t been done because of labor issues.
“The MBTA has on their books the complete overhaul of their Red Line and Orange Line system, but instead what’s happening now is that they’re going back and fixing 60-yearold equipment one step at a time, which takes months,” Sullivan said. “The MBTA needs more people with experience in capital delivery.”
MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said “the administration has included several initiatives like those suggested by the report to cut red tape and get projects done faster in its recently filed Transportation Bond Bill, and looks forward to working with the Legislature to pass these proposals to accelerate infrastructure project delivery at the T.”
Amid growing frustrations with the MBTA’s reliability, even some critics of Pioneer Institute have come out in support of the findings.
“I don’t often agree with Pioneer, but I think this report is largely well done,” said former Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Jim Aloisi. “I think they’re right. The T has a project management crisis and is particularly shorthanded when it comes to hiring the talent it needs to up its game.”
The MBTA reported in May that it was on track to spend only $775 million of its allotted $850 million on the capital plan.
Sullivan and report co-author Ian Ollis said this disparity is in part because state laws require the T to prequalify contractors and subcontractors that have already been prequalified from another state body in order to hire them.
“There are two pages of itemized steps that the MBTA has to go through to enter a contract. Because they’re required to follow these archaic, expensive and delaying procurement rules, they have a great deal of difficulty in actually spending the money assigned to them,” Sullivan said.
“We’re calling on letting the MBTA use the same procurement methods that every other state uses.”