State Goes in Debt, Leaders Lose Their Damn Minds!

Wow! 

In an effort to save money, state senators are proposing to create a new transportation uberagency that would combine the powers of two highway agencies and the MBTA. Supposedly, efficiencies achieved by the merger would save billions of dollars. Ha!

You know what the merger is really going to save? Time. Now instead of grumbling about how bad each agency is at doing its job, we'll be able to point our collective fingers at one agency. How convenient!

Seriously, though, does Massachusetts need another quasi-public agency of mass proportions (pun intended, yuk, yuk) to sap our souls and be inefficient on a statewide scale? Isn't that part of the problem we have with the agencies currently in existence? I'm all for saving money by eliminating redundancies. But I hope conditions are put in place to increase accountability, reward good performance, and penalize poor performance. Hopefully contracts with the unions will also be renegotiated to allow for flexibility in developing creative solutions to old problems. For example, isn't part of the reason the T doesn't run later because it would cost too much to pay drivers and subway operators overtime after 1am? I know there's the maintenance reason as well, but I've never really bought into that.

It's an interesting proposal to say the least. What will be more interesting is seeing how the unions fight this.

Note: This article may move from breaking news to regular news by the time you read it. If so, I'll fix the link once it's moved.

Comments

[Can-Can]

Like you, I wonder at the wisdom of creating an uber-agency. There are personnel costs (redundancies are eliminated but so is special expertise. Power and influence is concentrated to fewer people (as opposed to being spread across agencies).
The T used to run all night - a few decades ago. We need a better T which will enable an already increasing ridership to continue to grow as well as to make it so that those of us who depend on the T can depend on it to get us where we're going on time. The uneveness of service across the system is crazy.