Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Every winter I re-learn the same painful lesson

that at the least hint of snow, the MBTA's Red Line quickly descends into a witless fiasco.
Case in point tonight where a "disabled train at Alewife" compelled the use of shuttle buses between Harvard, Porter, Davis and Alewife with the usual patently "cross Cambridge crawl" thrown in for good measure.
Hell I threw in the towel in Harvard Square, grabbed a cab with some guy from a financial advisory firm and hacked it to Alewife.
To think I once tooled around Andropov's Moscow on the subway with nary a worry about getting to my destination on time.
Alas the Red Line is concerned you can count on exactly nothing after a snow storm.
Granted this was a derailment and thank God no one was hurt. Nonetheless similar scenes of absolute maddening paralysis have been going every winter for over five years now.
has anyone reeled to their feet in the State House in outrage and high dudgeon?
No, them folks is all on Christmas break, God help us.
The MBTA is underfunded, understaffed, outmoded and outgunned, period end of story.
Fixing what is wrong goes beyond spending more money or hiring better people or busting the unions or crushing the kulaks. No, It starts with a change in ethos and by that I mean that the interests of those that commute by highway can never supercede the interests of those that commute by bus or rail. We spent untold billions on the fabled Big Dig lets make fixing the MBTA at least as big and as lasting a priority.
Any politician that gets that and has a positive program to move this ball forward has my vote.
1.) Equality of interests
2.) Restoring the MBTA to the level of efficiency associated with the Moscow Metro circa 1983....Cuz right now, the Red Line would be an embarrassment even to the communists.

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