Seems the Governor isn’t pleased about today’s MBTA shutdown:
ov. Charlie Baker — frustrated by yet another MBTA systemwide collapse — wants transit officials to come clean on what went wrong amid a series of record-shattering storms and how they plan to fix it when they huddle in a post-winter “debrief” that the Republican hopes will clear up a glut of unanswered questions, aides say.
“Whatever (the plan) is, it isn’t working,” a Baker aide told the Herald last night.
“He is looking for the T to provide a plan, an operating plan, for the next year. And the next two years. And how the service will keep running, because clearly it failed here,” the aide said. “Right now everybody is focused on restoring service to basic operational levels. The governor is going to be looking for a plan to avoid the losses that they’ve seen.”
After a day marked by more delays and stalled trains, the T suspended all rail service today, stranding thousands of workers who rely on public transportation as the state digs out from a third major storm in two weeks — and prepares for perhaps another one come Thursday.
Baker declared a state of emergency, his second since the end of January, and urged all nonemergency state workers who live or work in Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex or Norfolk counties to stay home today in what he termed a “partial” state snow day. State courts in those counties will also be shut down, officials said.
…Baker earlier in the day lit up embattled MBTA general manager Beverly Scott, saying the T’s performance was “not acceptable” and accusing officials of making a “series of representations … over the course of the last few weeks (that) have not borne out.”
“It’s pretty clear that they need a new operating plan,” Baker said.
Since the first blizzard the trains have not been running reliably, and above-freezing temperatures are not in the extended forecast, but more snow is coming. The fact that today was one of the nicer days we’ve seen in the last several weeks, yet the trains weren’t running, and the entire city of Boston was crippled, this was not an encouraging thing.
The weather has been bad, but it really hasn’t been THAT bad, except that there have been two big storms less than a week apart, with several smaller ones, all without a day above freezing.
Hopefully the Governor and the powers that be will get to the bottom of this, and we won’t have future winters like this.
I really shouldn’t think paranoid thoughts like this, but is there any sort of chance that the trains are down because there is an (R) in the big chair, and somebody wants to make sure he looks bad? Because I know enough union guys to be able to calmly say that such a thing is possible. Just sayin’.
I think the political maxim of “never ascribe malice to a situation that can explained by incompetence”. If anything this could make Governor Baker (who was a fairly weak candidate IMHO) look a LOT better in the public eye.
I’m not trying to be cavalier about the weather and the severity here but the weather isn’t that far out of the of norm is it?
I realize you are getting a few more inches of snow at one time then normal but still shouldn’t there be already plans in place for dealing with it?
I mean it isn’t like you live in Dallas and suddenly got snow; it happens quite often up there. I think it is safe to say Boston is going to get snow every year and some are going to be worse than others.
Of course it is probably all the fault of us demon conservatives that are stopping progress on Global Warming, eh.
You’re not cavalier at all. Sure the FREQUENCY of these events is a bit tighter than normal, but in 2010 we got MORE snow, and only in a slightly more spaced out cadence. It was more like a storm every 7 days rather than 5, and unlike this stuff which is light fluffy stuff, this was the heavy shit that was a nightmare to move and posed a much greater risk for roofs collapsing.
I think Governor Baker is right in looking at management, not the weather.
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