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When these three transportation policy wonks talk, the MBTA listens


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#1 CNJRoss

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Posted 16 October 2017 - 06:23 PM

Commonwealth Magazine, Boston, MA 10/10/17:
 

Shadow transit agency

When these three transportation policy wonks talk, the MBTA listens

 

 

LOOKING AT THESE THREE GUYS, you wonder what they have in common. Marc Ebuña is a 30-year-old information technology worker who dresses fashionably, lives in Jamaica Plain, and sports a Fitbit. Ari Ofsevit is a 33-year-old graduate student studying engineering and city planning at MIT; he lives in Cambridge, bicycles nearly everywhere, and seems oblivious to fashion. Andy Monat is the grownup of the group, a 40-year-old software developer from Melrose who owns two cars and at press time was about to become a father.

 

What unites the three of them is a fascination with data and transportation. They have found a way, in their spare time, to advocate for change at the MBTA in a radically new way. Instead of testifying before the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board or knocking on doors at the State House, Ofsevit, Monat, Ebuña, and a handful of other like-minded individuals from a group called TransitMatters make their case using analysis, logic, and data—usually the MBTA’s own data.

 

This loose confederation of self-described nerds, launched initially in 2009, has become almost a shadow transit agency. They don’t just advocate for pet projects and policies; they actually roll up their sleeves and dig into the data. That’s what sets them apart; they know what they’re talking about.

 

When the MBTA completed the design for a new Auburndale commuter rail station in Newton earlier this year, TransmitMatters gave it a failing grade. In a piece for CommonWealth, Monat wrote that the T was rebuilding the station in the worst possible way, by making it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act in a way that would degrade service and hinder the future potential of the Worcester Line. The T ended up scrapping the nearly $1.3 million design and is now trying to figure out what to do next.

 

SNIP

 

Perhaps the most interesting exchange between the T and TransitMatters was the debate a year ago over how the transit system shuts down at night. Ebuña, Ofsevit, and Monat, using T data and some personal sleuthing, discovered that a well-meaning system designed to prevent any passenger from being stranded was wasting a lot of time and money, as much as $3.8 million a year by their estimates. They said the cause of all of this waste was the decision to put subway lines and the buses that connect to them on hold, often for close to a half hour, waiting for the system’s last Green Line train from Heath Street to arrive at Park Street Station.

 

Jeffrey Gonneville, the T’s chief operating officer and now its deputy general manager, could hardly contain himself when TransitMatters laid out its concerns in an article in CommonWealth. He fired back that the article was full of errors, particularly the assertion about the Green Line train. He also said the cost estimates were way off base. “The shutdown is a deliberate, impressive, and well-synchronized process, which is managed by dispatchers each evening,” he said.

 

Nearly three months later, however, Gonneville informed the Fiscal and Management Control Board that he was moving up the departure time of that last Green Line train from Heath Street by 10 minutes to “allow for a more prompt release of other connecting trains from the downtown core.” He also acknowledged that the last train from Heath Street typically carried only one passenger on weekdays.

 

SNIP

 

I interviewed Ebuña, Ofsevit, and Monat at CommonWealth’s offices. What follows is an edited transcript of our two-hour discussion.

 

More here.






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