Damaged Amtrak #102 modeled at Springfield MA Show

Spotted at the Springfield MA mega-train show, Amtrak #102, which was damaged in an October 2015 derailment in Northfield VT.  

(cell phone photo by Wayne Hart)

The real locomotive can be seen HERE

The Maine Eastern Railroad will cease all operations on December 31, 2015

According to the Maine Eastern RR website: 

The Maine Eastern Railroad will cease all operations on December 31, 2015. The Central Maine & Quebec Railway will assume operations of the Rockland Branch on January 1, 2016.
 
The Maine Eastern Railroad (reporting mark MERR) is a short line freight railroad that operates in coastal Maine between Brunswick and Rockland on the state-owned Rockland Branch rail line. The Maine Eastern is a business name of the Morristown & Erie Railway of New Jersey, which acquired operating rights for the Rockland Branch in November of 2003.

The Maine Eastern provides year-round freight service, serving customers such as Dragon Cement and Bath Iron Works and interchanging with Pan Am Railways in Brunswick.

The Maine Eastern also offers seasonal excursion service, sharing a platform with the Amtrak Downeaster in Brunswick.

Tricks, Not Treats from T - Howie Carr

Tricks, Not Treats from T - by Howie Carr

At least they’re not bringing back “Dr.” Beverly Scott – but give the hacks at the MBTA time. It isn’t even Halloween yet.
 
So after the complete breakdown of mass-transit service in Boston last winter, the hacks have decided how to solve their problem, in the traditional way: by throwing more money at the featherbedding unions, by raising the fares and parking fees of all the same commuters they robbed blind less than nine months ago.
 
Thank you sir, may I have another?................................................. READ WHOLE ARTICLE

Several Hurt After Amtrak Derailment in Vermont

'Down we went': Several hurt after Amtrak derailment in central Vermont | Fox News

Rock Slide Derails Amtrak Train in 'Freak of Nature,' Leaving at Least 7 Hurt | NECN

Amtrak Blog - amtrak-vermonter-train-55-at-roxbury-vt

http://www.wcvb.com/news/amtrak-train-derails-in-vermont/35659842

http://www.wcvb.com/news/images-amtrak-train-derails-in-northfield/35661992

Amtrak Downeaster in Recovery Mode After Dismal Year

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald, Tom Bell)


For the first time in four months, Downeaster trains returned to normal schedules Saturday, signaling what supporters hope will be a new era following the service’s dreadful performance over the past 15 months.

“The great New England passenger rail nightmare is over!” exclaimed TrainRiders/Northeast, a pro-rail citizen group, on its Facebook page.

A nightmare it was.

When the rail service’s books closed June 30, it reported an annual on-time performance of only 30 percent – less than half the Amtrak national average of 71 percent. In May, the Downeaster’s worst month, not a single train arrived on time. In June, fewer than 8 percent arrived on time. In addition, 13 percent of trains – 488 trains in all – never made it out of the station in fiscal year 2015 because their trips were canceled, mostly due to construction.

Two bridge repair projects in Massachusetts last spring and this year’s harsh winter caused numerous delays and cancellations, but most of the woes were due to a massive tie-replacement project that took months longer to complete than anticipated.

Passengers responded by finding other ways to travel. In all, the service had nearly 100,000 fewer riders than the 536,524 in the previous fiscal year, an 18.2 percent drop.

One former fan is Kristina Egan, who lives in Freeport and travels two to three days a week to Massachusetts.

Before the construction began, Egan rode the Downeaster all the time because she enjoys its smooth ride and roomy seats. But after missing several meetings in Massachusetts, she switched to the Concord Coach Lines bus.

“I can’t afford to miss an important meeting because I like the train better than the bus,” said Egan, who heads Transportation for Massachusetts, a group that advocates for transit funding.

Another is Anthony Zeli of Portland, a longtime fan of trains who now rides the Concord bus to Boston if he needs to get somewhere on time. The train, he said, is only suitable for a “lazy and enjoyable weekend trip.”

A CREDIBILITY PROBLEM
Winning back disgruntled rail passengers is now the goal for the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which operates the Downeaster. Once touted as a national model for how regional rail lines should be operated, the service is in recovery mode. The rail authority plans to lure back passengers by stepping up its advertising efforts, which had been put on the shelf during the construction project, and launching promotional fares, such as a 25 percent discount for travel on the midday trains, which were the most disrupted by the construction.

In the end though, marketing specialists say, what matters to the public is performance.
Amtrak and the rail authority have a credibility problem, said Karen DeMitto of Portland, who depends on public transportation because she does not own a car.

She said Amtrak employees who staffed its toll-free line didn’t seem to know what was happening with the service whenever she called to ask if a train was running. She said rail authority officials, in communications with the public, consistently underestimated how long the construction project would last.

“It was always, ‘Maybe next week it will be fixed,’ ” she said. “I was trying to get to Brunswick for the last seven weeks. Every week they said next week might be better, but it wasn’t.”

Any time a transit agency is experiencing major problems, it needs to tell the public what the problems are, why they are occurring and when they will be fixed, said Kenneth Hitchner, a former spokesman for New Jersey Transit who now manages public relations for Creative Marketing Alliance, a firm in New Jersey.

“When you are selling a service, it’s always about managing expectations,” he said.

But the delays and cancellations are symptoms of a deeper problem, said Dennis Bailey, who owns a public relations firm in Portland. The entire Amtrak system is plagued with decaying infrastructure because of inadequate funding, said Bailey, who last year worked for a Brunswick group that opposed the rail authority’s plans to construct a layover facility in Brunswick.

“They are not going to spin their way out of it,” he said. “There are some real issues they are going to have to resolve to match their PR.”

SINGLE-TRACK BLUES
It wasn’t always like this. For years, the Downeaster was seen as a model for expanding rail service elsewhere in the country. Its customer satisfaction rates, ridership growth and on-time performance were regularly among the highest in the Amtrak system.

The Downeaster’s woes began in April 2014, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began to rehabilitate three railroad bridges spanning the Merrimack River in Haverhill, including a bridge the Downeaster uses.

Then, in May of that year, rail inspectors determined that harsh winter weather and heavy snow melt had destabilized the ground under about 27 noncontiguous miles of track, mostly between Portland and the New Hampshire border. Because the Downeaster operates on a single track, trains were canceled or delayed to give the crews time to make repairs.

Last winter’s harsh weather caused numerous delays and cancellations. In February, a southbound train was stranded in a remote area of North Berwick because of an engine problem. The train eventually arrived in Boston more than six hours late.

The weather delays were compounded by a project to replace 30,000 rail ties on the 78-mile line that Pan Am Railways owns between Portland and the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border. The rail authority bought the ties for $2.3 million, and Pan Am paid for the equipment and labor to install them.

Pan Am replaced 8,000 ties last year. This year, however, the “tie gang” – the Pan Am crew that removes the old ties and replaces them with new ones – didn’t begin work until late May. The project was delayed by a number of factors. Some heavy equipment Pan Am needed for the project was delivered late by the manufacturer. Amtrak tried to send heavy equipment to Maine, but the shipment was delayed by an Amtrak derailment on May 12 in Philadelphia.

Now that the tie-replacement project is finished, the rail authority plans to increase its marketing effort. It has $520,000 to spend, including $40,000 carried over from last year’s budget.

The authority plans to use television, print and search-engine advertising. The message will be the same as in recent years, which is to highlight the “high quality, high value” experience of the rider, said Natalie Bogart, marketing director of the rail authority.

She said the authority won’t be talking about how it will overcome its recent poor on-time performance because a large segment of the target audience never rode the train before or encountered a problem.

“There are a lot of people who have been disrupted,” she said, “but a lot of people didn’t know anything happened.”

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the rail authority, said she’s confident she can get those who have abandoned the train to give it another chance.

“We are going to be more reliable than we have been in a long time,” she said. “It will take some time, but we will have to earn that reputation back.”

Promotions are a nice gesture, but passengers will return if they trust the service, said Wayne Davis, who heads TrainRiders/Northeast, which successfully lobbied the state in the early 1990s to establish the train service.

“I think just delivering people on time is the most important thing we can do,” he said.
Egan, who now rides the bus to Massachusetts, said she will be looking at the service’s performance carefully before deciding to take the train again.

“I need to see a couple of weeks of close-to-perfect performance and an explanation of why all the delays happened over this past year and how they are not going to happen over the next year,” she said.

MBTA Union Vows Fight Over Baker’s Plan for Agency

(SOURCE:  Boston Globe - By David Scharfenberg)

The MBTA’s largest employee union is vowing to sue the state, or petition the federal government to cut off millions of dollars in aid for the agency, if state lawmakers approve a key provision of Governor Charlie Baker’s T overhaul plan.

Union officials argue the proposal, which would give a new Baker-appointed board final approval of labor contracts, runs afoul of a federal law designed to protect the collective bargaining rights of the nation’s public transit employees.

Specifically, the governor’s board would be able to reject the binding ruling of a neutral arbitrator, an arrangement used for decades to decide MBTA contract disputes.

James M. O’Brien, president of the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589, said he does not relish the idea of choking off federal transportation funds. But the governor’s plan, he said, amounts to a reckless and fundamentally unfair shift in the bargaining process.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said, of Baker’s push. “You’re [risking] hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.”

State official lobbies for changes at MBTA

Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack asked lawmakers for a range of changes at the MBTA.

Baker administration officials play down the risk. They note the courts have given states wide latitude to alter public transit labor policy and they argue their proposed change is a modest, procedural one rather than a substantial blow to collective bargaining.

Tim Buckley, a spokesman for the governor, said the administration “is confident that the limited changes that we have proposed” will be approved by the federal government. And he hinted that the state, after passage of the law, could simply rewrite it if the federal government moved to withhold funds and the courts upheld the move.

“The administration will not forfeit any available federal dollars under any circumstances,” he said.

The conflict, if it comes to a head, would be the latest in a string of high-stakes fights over workers’ rights and federal funding for mass transit — some breaking for labor and some for management.

Wisconsin lawmakers, fearing losing millions in federal funding, exempted certain transit workers from Governor Scott Walker’s high-profile push to roll back public employees’ collective bargaining rights four years ago.

But in California, a federal judge ruled in February that US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez had gone too far in cutting off funds for transit agencies in that state after the Legislature passed a pension reform law that trimmed benefits for transit employees, among others.

The disputes here and elsewhere turn on a transportation law signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 that launched an era of substantial federal funding for the nation’s transit system.

One section of the legislation requires the US labor secretary to certify that a public transit agency is protecting its employees’ collective bargaining rights before the federal government disburses funds.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and its unions came to a 20-page agreement in 1974 meant to satisfy the requirements of the law. The secretary has repeatedly cited it, in the decades since, to authorize federal grants for the agency.

The agreement, among other things, mandates that labor disputes should be settled by arbitration procedures set out in any “then-applicable collective bargaining agreement.”

The current Carmen’s agreement mandates binding arbitration when the union and the T come to an impasse in contract negotiations — allowing a neutral arbitrator to impose changes in wages and benefits.

Baker’s legislation, now before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation, would give a new MBTA fiscal and management control board the right to approve or deny any arbitrator’s award.

Douglas Taylor, a lawyer representing the Carmen’s union, said the move would make the arbitration no longer binding, giving veto power to management and fundamentally altering the balance of power between the T and its workers.

“Collective bargaining means co-determination,” he said. “Co-determination means that both sides have a say. . . . Binding arbitration accomplishes that. It does it in an imperfect way. . . . But at least each side’s got an equal shot.”

Baker officials maintain they are not doing away with binding arbitration but merely adding another step to the process. They point out that, under state law, city councils, town councils, and town meetings have the right to vote up or down on arbitrators’ awards for police and fire contracts.

Harold Lichten, a labor lawyer who represents unions, said the police and fire system works “relatively well.” But he said there is a difference between giving a representative body such as a city council veto power and handing that authority to an arm of the executive branch.

“I think by giving the governor veto power, it really does render fairly meaningless the whole process,” said Lichten, who has represented a union of mid-level managers at the T.

Joseph E. Slater, a professor at the University of Toledo College of Law who has written about public sector labor law, said in an e-mail that he has “never heard of a body that is that directly involved in day-to-day managing having the power to reject a contract ordered by an . . . arbitrator.”

A spokesman for the US Department of Labor declined to comment on the debate in Massachusetts.

Supporters of Baker’s proposal say binding arbitration has long favored the T’s unions. In their view, the changes would help rein in costs.

“There is no chance that the state government will be able to bring T costs under control unless they address this question of binding arbitration,” said Gregory Sullivan, research director for the conservative-leaning Pioneer Institute, who testified before the Legislature in favor of the measure.

Sullivan and administration officials add that the courts have given states broad discretion to alter transit labor policy. But Taylor said effectively eliminating binding arbitration — particularly for a union that does not have the right to strike — would be such a blow to collective bargaining that the courts would be compelled to side with the union.

And whatever the legality of the move, he noted, the union could go to the US secretary of labor and attempt to block federal grants for the T, arguing the state is not protecting workers’ collective bargaining rights.

The federal Labor Department does not always side with the unions. In the 1980s it sided with the state in a dispute over management rights such as the power to hire part-time workers. But when T unions objected to a 2009 state attempt to change workers’ health care plan, federal officials sided with labor and directed both sides to negotiate a resolution.

Proposal For Propane Tanks Sparks Debate in South Portland ME

(SOURCE:  KeepMeCurrent.com, By Kate Irish Collins)

Whether the City Council should take action on a proposed new liquid propane distribution facility before an application for the project has even been officially submitted is at the center of a debate in South Portland.

But other questions surrounding a preliminary plan to allow the NGL Supply Terminals Co. to move from Portland to the Rigby Rail Yard, off Route 1, are being asked, as well, including whether interpretation of the city’s code of ordinances should be left up to residents or paid city staff.

Mayor Linda Cohen told the Current she believes the council should not intervene and that “staff should be allowed to do what they always do – follow their normal procedures” when it comes to determining whether a liquid propane operation at the rail yard adheres to the city’s ordinances.
“At this point, there is not even a complete application before the Planning Board. If and when there is, the public process will begin,” she said.

Councilor Brad Fox disagrees. He said that it’s up to councilors to ensure that the laws of South Portland are followed by elected officials and staff alike. 

“It’s my job as a councilor to ensure the health, safety and general welfare of the people of South Portland (and) I take that responsibility very seriously,” he said. “I think that the people of South Portland expect their elected officials to pay attention to things that may (do) harm and to obey the law.”

Fox has asked the City Council to provide oversight of NGL Supply Terminals Co.’s potential move to South Portland.

As of the Current’s Tuesday deadline, it’s unclear if the company wants to move its operations to the Rigby Yard, which would include construction of six, 60,000-gallon, above-ground tanks to hold liquid propane that would come in by rail and then be transferred to delivery trucks.

The Planning Board held an initial workshop with officials from NGL in late February, and Tex Haeuser, South Portland’s director of planning, said his office has not received anything new from NGL since then.

In addition to the new storage tanks, NGL was also proposing construction of an 1,800-square-foot office building, with associated parking, as well as new security fencing.

NGL has not responded to the Current’s requests for comment, nor have officials with Pan Am Railways, which owns the Rigby Yard.

According to the Maine Historical Society, the Rigby Yard was the base of the Maine Central Railroad, and the location of the interchange with the Boston and Maine line. It was built in 1923 on the site of a former horseracing track and is commonly referred to as the largest rail yard facility in New England.

Questions about whether the NGL proposal meets South Portland’s zoning standards were first raised by resident Eben Rose, who wrote an opinion column in the April 9 issue of the Current in which he argued the plan should have been “dead on arrival.” Instead, he said, NGL was allowed to make its pitch to the Planning Board while Pat Doucette, the city’s code enforcement officer, and Sally Daggett, the city attorney, “deliberately kept” board members in the dark about a city ordinance that prohibits any project that would store gas in excess of 10,000 cubic feet.

But in a memo to City Manager Jim Gailey, dated April 15, Haeuser said he and Doucette both originally felt that the NGL proposal is a permitted use at the Rigby Yard. In the memo, he argued planning staff did not at first think the provision of code cited by Rose applied, since the product being stored would be “primarily in a liquid state.”

However, after further review, which he said was conducted in part because of the questions raised by Rose, Haeuser said planning staff determined in early April that the NGL plan was incomplete and encouraged company officials to consider a variety of alternatives.

Those alternatives, according to Haeuser’s memo, include seeking a zoning amendment or requesting a waiver from the City Council on the current above-ground storage tank capacity rules. He also told Gailey that the planning staff has encouraged Rose to pursue an administrative appeal “as a way to settle the issues being discussed,” which Rose has not yet done.

And, in a memo to Gailey, which is dated March 11, Doucette said she “carefully” considered the city code and initially did not agree with Rose’s interpretation of the law.

But, in his guest column in the Current earlier this month, Rose said one of the reasons he’s been persistent in raising the issue of whether city staff interpreted the code correctly is because “no vision delivered by a Comprehensive Plan or rising through a committee amounts to much if our frontline defenders of the code ignore it.”

Since then, Rose has told the Current that another of his concerns is for the city not to waste staff time and resources “considering prohibited proposals.”

He added that since, in his view, the NGL proposal is actually prohibited by two sections of the code, “they should have been turned away at the door.”

“If NGL wants this project, they first need to try to change these established zoning laws through the council,” Rose said, adding, “the council enacts laws codified in our code of ordinances. It is not staff’s place to invent new code or to make concerted efforts to work around them.”

Like Fox, Rose said his most immediate concern is for health and safety, if the NGL proposal moves forward.

He argued that “even the best adherence to safety codes and inspection still are not 100 percent effective,” and said that even if the risk of a liquid propane spill or explosion is small, it’s still “a risk that does not presently exist.”

Fox said he decided to seek council action after being contacted by Rose and being convinced, after a careful reading, that NGL’s proposed project “is clearly not permitted by two sections of the city code.”

“The language in the code is straightforward. This has been the law in South Portland since 1995,” said Fox. “There is no dispute that liquid natural gas is a petroleum-based product.” 

He added, “Our codes protect our citizens and I want our city staff to follow the code of ordinances as they are written. Twenty years ago, the citizens of this city lobbied the council to limit new tanks for petroleum-based products. The council adopted section 27-1517 and staff is failing to apply it.”

In addition, Fox said, “City staff can’t ignore provisions of the zoning ordinance to the detriment of the public welfare. (That’s why) it is important for the council to provide clear guidance about our expectations.”

Like Rose, Fox said he viewed the workshop and staff time spent on the NGL proposal as a “waste of scarce public resources,” which is why he asked Cohen for the council to step in.

In a recent email to Cohen, he wrote, “I believe councilors should be able to get information about how it happened. I also believe there are times when city councilors must give policy guidance to staff.”

NHDOT to Upgrade Five Portsmouth NH Rail Crossings

(SOURCE:  Seacoastonline.com By Jeff McMenemy)

PORTSMOUTH – The state Department of Transportation is launching a $1 million project to upgrade five railroad crossings in the city.

City officials requested the upgrades in 2014 while Sea-3, a propane storage and distribution facility in Newington, was going through a review process to expand their facility. The Newington Planning Board approved the expansion, but the city appealed the decision to Superior Court. No date has yet been set for that appeal.

Eric Eby, parking and transportation engineer for the city, told members of the Parking and Safety Committee Thursday that the DOT will put out a request for proposals on the project sometime in April.

“The city’s share will be $100,000, or 10 percent for the project,” Eby said at the Thursday morning meeting in City Hall. 

Numerous area officials and residents fought the proposed expansion, citing the substantial increase of propane carrying rail cars that would result from the project, and worries about the condition of Pan Am’s tracks.

The railroad crossings will be upgraded at Barberry Lane, Maplewood Avenue, Green Street, Michael Succi Drive and Gosling Road, Eby said.

After the RFPs are responded to, the DOT will “select a contractor and get working on the project,” Eby said.

Meanwhile, Portsmouth attorney Alec McEachern, who represents Sea-3, recently filed a motion to dismiss the city’s appeals of the facility’s expansion, claiming Portsmouth “lacks standing to appeal the relevant decisions by the town of Newington’s Planning Board,” because the city is not an abutter to the propane facility. McEachern also argues the only impact to Portsmouth of the proposed expansion of Sea-3 is to “increase rail traffic and decrease ship traffic.”

He also filed a motion to intervene in the case, which was filed against the town of Newington. 

Portsmouth staff attorney Jane Ferrini argues in the city’s objection to Sea-3’s motion to dismiss that the court shouldn’t consider the motion because Sea-3 is not yet a party to the appeal. Ferrini argues if the court does allow Sea-3 to intervene “this court may be opening the door for several corporations and associations to request to intervene in the underlying matter, such as … Pan Am, Norfolk Southern Railway and the Propane Gas Association of New England.”

But Ferrini says if the court does allow Sea-3 to intervene, it objects to Sea-3’s motion to dismiss because Portsmouth and three other towns received notice about the proposed expansion after Newington determined the project was a “development of regional interest.”
 Ferrini also contends the city is not “attempting to deprive Sea-3 of its federal” railroad rights, but rather, the city wants a “safety/hazard study of the site and Sea-3’s use of Pan Am railway.”
 
Sea-3 is seeking to build “five additional rail unloading berths and associated handling equipment at its existing” facility, McEachern said in a recent filing with the state’s Site Review Committee. This will allow the company to receive via rail and stockpile excess propane to be used during winter months.

Refurbished Green Line Trolleys Arrive at MBTA

(SOURCE:  Boston Globe - By Steve Annear/March 18, 2015)

The first of 86 refurbished Green Line trolleys hits the tracks next month, officials said, promising a roomier ride and more reliable service after a season of strenuous weather events.

MassDOT officials announced Wednesday that the cars, which underwent significant repairs at a plant in New York, have begun arriving in Boston for preliminary testing.

“This is a great first step toward improving service on the Green Line,” said interim MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola in a statement.

The first newly polished trolley will be in service next month.


By next winter — just in time for the snowy season —43 refurbished cars will be online. All 86 of the trolleys in the project will be ready for passenger service by the end of 2016.

The initiative includes upgrades to the vehicles’ HVAC systems, power supplies, lighting, cab equipment, and seating.

MBTA officials said Alstom Transportation, the company picked to oversee the $104 million project in 2012, is also overhauling the roof, exterior paint and body, and door and brake equipment on each trolley.

Fire by Pan Am's Deerfield MA Yard Draws Regional Response

(SOURCE:  MassLive 3/6/15)

DEERFIELD - Firefighters from Franklin and Hampshire Counties and as far away as Brattleboro, Vermont, are on the scene of a Deerfield fire where an industrial building on McClelland Road has been burning for hours.

According to a statement issued by Deerfield Police Chief John Paciorek Jr., the fire was reported at 3:21 a.m. and the first responders to arrive on scene reported a working fire.

According to the emergency services web site Fireground 360, Deerfield firefighters were called to the site of a former grain mill at McClelland Farm Road at about 3 a.m.

Assistance through mutual aid was quickly sought and departments from Amherst, Belchertown, Whately, Montague, Greenfield, Gill, Sunderland, Conway and Brattleboro responded. In all some 20 departments have dispatched assistance.

Paciorek said that in addition, departments from Vermont and southern New Hampshire are assisting.

Tanker trucks are being used to shuttle water to the site, which is just south of Greenfield near Railroad Yard Road.

Paciorek said the property has no water supply and water is being hauled in from Greenfield.

According to WWLP, the fire is contained to the top floor of the four-story metal structure.
Assistant Amherst Fire Chief Donald McCay tells the station that firefighters have concerns that the fire could spread to a smaller building where fertilizer is stored. McCay said the fire is far enough away where that concern in minimized.

Investigators with the state Fire Marshall's Office, the Massachusetts State Police and the Deerfield police are on scene and looking to determine the cause, Paciorek said.

Greenfield police announced that due to the fire, Cheapside Street in Greenfield is closed from from Deerfield Street to Hope Street.

MORE:  Owner of 'Deerfield Innovators Mill': Fire likely caused by cutting torch; not a major setback for planned renovation

New MBTA Chief Frank DePaola Takes Charge of Agency

(SOURCE:  Boston Globe)

This is the mess that Frank DePaola walked into on his first day as the new head of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority:

■ The T recently revealed it would need to spend about $6.7 billion to repair and upgrade its trains, rails, and stations to be in good working order.
■ The commuter rail system, walloped by the winter, is still operating on a reduced schedule after weeks of late or canceled trains.
■ And an angry public is demanding refunds for a disastrous month of interrupted service.
But if DePaola was overwhelmed by the what ails the T on Wednesday, his first day as interim general manager, he didn’t let on.

MBTA sets upgrade costs at $6.7b

The board that oversees the T also expressed skepticism about issuing refunds for poor service, saying repair and upgrades take priority.

Instead, he struck a matter-of-fact note when he said in an interview: “I mean, of course, it’s a challenge.”

DePaola, who took over the T after Beverly A. Scott last month abruptly announced plans to step down, has served as the state transportation department’s highway administrator. He says that experience will help him lead the T next time it is socked by a big snowstorm.
DePaola started on the day Governor Charlie Baker also released his budget for the next fiscal year, which includes $1.172 billion for the T’s operating budget.

On Wednesday, a small group of public transportation advocates held a rally on Beacon Hill to demand even more state funding for the T.

“We need to make sure our Legislature does not forget that transportation has to be at the top of our priority list even when the snow melts,” said Kristina Egan, the executive director of Transportation for Massachusetts, who passed along to Baker a petition with 12,000 signatures.

DePaola refrained from criticizing the amount allotted to the T.

“It’s a step in the direction of recognizing the T needs further investment,” he said.
Several members of the board that oversees the MBTA said on Tuesday that investment, rather than refunds to mollify commuters, should be the immediate focus of spending. DePaola also said a refund scheme could be abused by customers who lied about buying passes.

Instead, DePaola said, he would prefer giving riders discounts on future fares, rather than refunds on their February passes.

Keolis Commuter Services, which operates the T’s commuter rail, is trying in its own way to regain customers.

A spokeswoman said the company took out ads in The Boston Globe and the Metro newspaper that feature a letter from the company’s new general manager, Gerald Francis, who apologizes for poor service.

MBTA Fines Company That Runs Commuter Rail System $434K for February Delays | NECN

MBTA Fines Company That Runs Commuter Rail System $434K for February Delays | NECN

Seashore Trolley Museum Snow Removal Donations Needed

Record snowfall in New England has effected all of us, and Seashore Trolley Museum up in Maine hasn't dodged any snow-bullets.  They are asking for donations to help pay for the massive snow removal bills they have had this winter.  The museum has posted snow photos on their Facebook page.   To donate, visit their website:  www.trolleymuseum.org

The New England Electric Railway Historical Society is an IRS 501(C) (3) not-for-profi t educational organization. All contributions are federally taxdeductible to the extent of the law.