A teenage male was shot on an MBTA bus in Dorchester in broad daylight just before 4 pm today.
The shooter was believed to be outside the bus firing in, and details are still few at this point.
The shooting happened the day after the New York-based Guardian Angels came to Boston to patrol Dorchester, which has been plagued by violence of late.
Massachusetts faces a $19 billion deficit over the next 20 years to maintain the state’s transportation infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and the MBTA, according to the Boston Herald.
”Each of us was surprised at how dire the situation is,” said Stephen Silveira, the panel chair, who added that even with the financial pressure, the state must find a way to continue to grow.
”It would be unrealistic to think that we wouldn’t do any expansion or enhancement projects over the next 20 years,” he said.
It certainly doesn’t take a formal study for someone to realize that the MBTA needs to upgrade it’s infrastructure. It’s frightening to think that even with the fare increase, the agency will remain in a deficit. That is, until the leadership starts pushing for another fare increase that Massachusetts’ commuters just can’t afford.
Construction workers removing an old 2,500 gallon underground gas tank at the corner of Stuart St and Clarendon St caused a strong odor of gas, temporarily shutting down Amtrak and Commuter Rail service through the Back Bay station, according to the Boston Herald.
Trains passing through the station between 9:15-11:15 am did not stop to pick up passengers, according to an MBTA spokesman. Boston Fire Department officials began investigating the smell at 7 am.
Service on the Orange Line was not affected.
The Boston Herald reported today that Boston Mayor Menino wants a crackdown on T violence after the Herald uncovered that riders at stops like Forest Hills and Ruggles on on the Orange Line, and Ashmont on the Red Line are the most likely to be victims of violence on the T.
Highlight’s from the Herald’s investigation:
All told last year, some 972 major crimes – assaults, rapes, robberies, car thefts and larcenies – were reported to MBTA police, down from 1,000 in 2005, according to T statistics reviewed by the Herald.
Forest Hills station recorded the highest number of incidents among Boston T stops: 43. Ruggles in Roxbury had 34 serious crimes occur, including 21 robberies. The Dudley bus terminal logged 31 major crimes, including 16 robberies. Ashmont was also a hotbed of criminal activity, with 24 reported.
Not surprisingly, the Deputy Chief of the MBTA downplayed the danger.
MBTA Deputy Chief John Martino said the crime reported on public transportation is “infinitesimal” when considering the T logged more than 337 million passenger rides last year.
“You have a less than half of 1 percent chance of being victimized by crime on the MBTA,” Martino said. “The crime we do have is primarily youth-on-youth. A lot of the people we carry are young people.”
Everyone who rides mass transit is at risk. It’s time the MBTA acknowledges that more police enforcement is necessary for a safer system. It should be common sense.
Mac Daniel wrote in his blog today that riders of the Rockport and Worcester lines will face delays in the coming days through March 28th.
The Massachusetts Highway Department is removing a bridge abutment and retaining wall between Beverly and Salem, causing 12 to 15 minute delays between the 2 stations.
The Worcester line will be delayed 30 minutes between the hours of 9 am-4 pm for CSX trackwork (CSX owns the trackage on the Worcester line).
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, those of us who have not personally seen the wreckage from an accident between a Green Line Train and a car can now see for ourselves.
Click here for a link to a video showing the wreckage of a shiny Lexus RX 300 that attempted to cut off the B-line on Comm Ave near the Harvard Ave T stop. Ironically, there is a Herb Chambers Lexus dealership virtually across the street from the scene.
The MBTA announced they will add extra Red Line service on Sunday to accomodate the expected surge in ridership for the St. Patricks Day parade in South Boston. The MBTA will also add extra MBTA police officers to help with crowd control and safety.
Because of the parade route, service on several bus lines will be affected during the parade.
Route #9 (City Point – Copley), and the Route #11 (City Point – Downtown) will CEASEservice until the parade is finished at approximately 4:30 p.m.
The rest of the service changes can be found here
The Gloucester Times reports that a maintenance program on the Gloucester line of the MBTA commuter rail has been waking some Beverly residents up at night.
A rail grinding machine is running along the line in the early morning hours, designed to scrape the rails to help keep them in good condition. The project is outsourced to a contractor, and that contractor apparently is unaware that Beverly has been designated a “quiet zone,” meaning trains can only blow their horns during an emergency.
The MBTA has a representative on board with the contractor, and the contractor reports not being made aware of the local rule. The MBTA did not return the Times’ calls for comment.
The Boston Globe is reporting that despite the fare hike that took effect in January, the MBTA will need to tap into it’s emergency funds in order to balance the budget for the next fiscal year, the third year in a row it has done so.
Further complicating matters, the MBTA needs to negotiate new contracts with its unions, something that hasn’t even been taken into account yet.
On the positive side, operating revenue has increased to $35 million thanks to the January fare hike.
The MBTA’s debt service is expected to balloon to $436 million for fiscal year 2009.
Several years ago, the MBTA was switched to a funding formula that provides it with a portion of the state sales tax, but tax revenue declined, which caused the MBTA to lose substantial funding.
GCN.com (Government Computer news) is reporting that the MBTA will have received their 2.4 millionth CharlieCard by March 31st.
An additional 1.1 million cards are expected to be shipped.
According to Manny Menard, business development manager at Gemalto, the company that supplies the cards to the MBTA, Gemalto pre-encodes the chips so that MBTA officials can distribute them to customers immediately.
CharlieCards arrive at the transportation authority already encoded so they can be immediately distributed. Menard said having Gemalto handle the encoding saves money for transit agencies that would otherwise have to do the encoding themselves. He said the practice of vendors encoding transit smart cards is not yet typical in the industry. “The project is groundbreaking in that sense,” Menard said.
It’s good that the MBTA can be groundbreaking with AFC, but it’s time to make up ground in the service reliability department.
