MBTA Operator Keolis Hit With $1.6 Million Fine

(SOURCE:  Boston Globe - By Nicole Dungca) 

The MBTA fined its commuter rail operator nearly $1.6 million for subpar service in January and February that left thousands of passengers stranded.

Under its contract with Keolis Commuter Services, the MBTA can issue up to $868,850 in penalties every month for late or dirty trains, and other shortcomings.

After a series of snowstorms stretching over several months crippled the transit system, the commuter rail operation took more than six weeks to recover. The company restored full service on March 30, weeks after the last major snowfall.

Keolis officials declined to comment on the fines.

Company officials had tried to invoke a provision in its contract that would have allowed the company to avoid penalties for late trains and other deficiencies because of “severe weather.” The company’s general manager at the time, Thomas Mulligan, wrote to the MBTA that four major snowstorms had made it impossible for the company to provide regular service.

Joe Pesaturo, a T spokesman, said at the time that the MBTA had told Keolis that instead of asking for relief from the penalties, the commuter rail operator should be focusing on recovery.

But the MBTA eventually agreed with Keolis: Pesaturo on Friday said the MBTA has decided the company could not have performed up to par for several days because of the four snowstorms.

“The operating agreement includes exceptions for extraordinary events, and if the snowiest winter in the history of Boston doesn’t meet that criteria, then nothing will,” he wrote in an e-mail.

However, Pesaturo also said that the decision had no effect on the amount of the fines for late trains.

For January, the T fined Keolis $434,425 because of late trains, the maximum amount allowed under the contract. For other lapses, such as dirty trains and stations, the T fined Keolis $273,000.

For February, the T charged Keolis $434,425 in penalties for late trains, and $434,425 for other shortcomings.

Since Keolis took over as the commuter system’s operator last July, the T has assessed $4.07 million in penalties against the company.

Pesaturo said the tally for any fines from March will be available later this month.

About 80 percent of commuter rail trains ran on time last month, according to figures provided by the T. However, the figure does not include the percentage of trains that the company had canceled under a reduced schedule.

Because of complications from the severe weather, the company could not keep enough locomotives in service, so the T allowed Keolis to cancel 21 percent of its trains last month. Keolis officials said they occasionally added trains to these reduced schedules when locomotives became available.

State transportation library closed, to be replaced with digital archive

Call it the case of the missing library.

Boston, home of the oldest subway system in the country, has its fair share of transit historians and enthusiasts. For decades, they could visit a library on the second floor of the state Transportation Building in Boston to look up the minutiae of the history of subway lines, airplanes, or highway projects in Massachusetts.

Starting last summer, workers began packing up the materials from the library. But longtime fans had no idea where they were going.

“We just saw bookshelf after bookshelf disappearing,” said Stuart Spina, a 24-year-old MBTA and railway obsessive who has been going to the library regularly for a decade.

Spina assumed the Department of Transportation was going to redecorate the room. But when the books didn’t return after several months, he decided that the state agency had closed the library, Spina said.

On Friday, a Department of Transportation official said the historic materials were safely in storage. But he also confirmed that the library isn’t returning to the second floor.

“Ultimately, the contents of the library will be digitized and made publicly available,” said Michael Verseckes, a MassDOT spokesman.

The space was being “underutilized,” Verseckes said, so officials decided to make it into a training room. Verseckes said he didn’t know when the digital library would be open to the public.

Local transportation wonks will surely be upset over the library’s disappearance from the building.

An old, undated brochure cited a collection of 25,000 books and technical reports. It also had one reference that proved a particularly poignant harbinger of the library’s eventual fate, in trumpeting a high-tech gimmick called “On-line and CD-Rom searching of databases.”

In 2010, the library was renamed for the late George M. Sanborn, the longtime librarian who had become the state’s de facto dean of transit history.

Spina, who used to visit the library at least three times a week, said he hopes the documents will continue to be accessible.

“It was pretty cool to let people flip through 125-year-old documents,” he said. “It’s just not the same with a PDF.”

1,500 young riders to get discounts on T through trial-program lottery

Remember those spirited young protesters who got arrested last year in their quest for T youth discounts?

They’re finally getting their day.

Applications are open for a trial program that will offer 1,500 young people either $26 monthly passes or $7 weekly passes that offer unlimited rides on subway and bus lines.

The T offers similarly priced monthly and weekly passes to junior high and high school students, but those passes are valid only on weekdays. Standard monthly passes cost $75 and weekly passes are $19, with discounts also available for seniors and people with disabilities.

To enter a lottery for the new Youth Passes, T riders between the ages of 12 and 21, and who are residents of Boston, Chelsea, Malden, or Somerville, must apply by April 30.

In December, the T announced it would test out two new discount programs: the Youth Pass, and another partnership with local universities.

The pass program for college students is still being developed, said Pesaturo, the T spokesman.

The transit agency expects the programs to cost $696,000 in lost revenue and administrative expenses, he said.

Nicole Dungca can be reached at nicole.dungca@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ndungca.

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

Pan Am Faces $350,000 EPA Fine for Waterville ME Railyard Violations

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald)

WATERVILLE — Pan Am Railways is facing up to $375,000 in fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly violating the federal Clean Water Act at the company’s Waterville railyard.

In an administrative complaint filed against the company on Jan. 30, the EPA charged that Pan Am failed to comply with the terms of a state-issued stormwater permit and discharged water containing pollutants into the Kennebec River and failed to maintain and implement a control and prevention plan to mitigate possible oil spills at the facility.

Two Pan Am Railways engines idle Monday at the Waterville yard, where the U.S. EPA says the company is facing $375,000 in civil penalties for violating federal and state environmental regulations. 

The North Billerica, Mass.-based company’s 100-acre rail yard along College Avenue is used to refuel locomotives and repair, maintain and build locomotives and freight cars. According to company officials, it has a 110,000-gallon storage capacity for diesel, heating fuel, oil lubricant and waste oil. Nearly half the storage is in two 25,000-gallon diesel tanks.

In its complaint, the EPA contends that Pan Am’s stormwater pollution prevention plan was inadequate, and as a result, water discharged from seven different outfalls into the Kennebec River contained pollutants including chemical waste, biological materials, rock, sand and industrial waste.
EPA conducted annual inspections since 2011 with the last inspection on Aug. 22.

The company was required to comply with Maine’s “multi-sector general permit for industrial stormwater,” a statewide regulation that provides rules for operating industrial facilities.

Even though the permit is administered through the state, the federal EPA has jurisdiction in an enforcement action, said Maine Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Karl Wilkins.
According to EPA, Pan Am failed to describe all its control measures and best management practices to prevent polluted runoff, did not “perform good housekeeping procedures” — such as keeping debris piles outside without structural controls, oil-stained ground throughout the site, and oil sheens in catch-basins — failed to maintain and repair industrial equipment and systems and did not include a map with the sites of its structural control measures and stormwater conveyance system on its pollution prevention plan.

The complaint names Pan Am and two of its subsidiary railroads, the Maine Central and Springfield Terminal Railways.

“EPA is alleging that the storm water discharges were unauthorized because they were not in compliance with the terms of the permit,” said Jeff Kopf, the senior environmental counsel for EPA’s Boston office.

The spill prevention control plan that Pan Am had for the site, intended to mitigate the risk and effect of an oil spill, was also deficient, EPA alleges.

Pan Am “failed to adequately provide for measures which would prevent the discharge of oil from reaching the waters of the United States,” EPA states in its complaint.

Specifically, the company did not include a diagram with the specific location of each oil storage container or a description of the type of oil it contained in its plan, failed to maintain appropriate secondary containment for multiple oil containers, did not conduct appropriate inspections and failed to maintain inspection records among other violations.

The failure to “maintain and fully implement an adequate SPCC plan leaves a facility unprepared to deal with an oil spill and to prevent a spill from having potentially serious consequences,” EPA states in the complaint.

The EPA can assess a maximum fine of $187,500 for each count in the two-count complaint, but Pan Am may not end up paying that much to the agency, Kopf explained.

“They are put on notice about what the potential maximum liability might be” through the complaint, but a resolution to the case might include reduced fees, depending on informal settlement talks between EPA and the company, Kopf said. Settlement amounts are usually less than the maximum fine, he noted.

Pan Am has 30 days to respond to the complaint, but may be given a 30-day extension, Kopf said. It is unusual for settlement talks to go further than three months before the agency brings it to a formal hearing with an administrative judge, he added.

EPA officials have been working with Pan Am to resolve the issues since the initial inspection in 2011, and the company is nearer to compliance with environmental regulations, Kopf said.
“I wouldn’t say we’re the whole way there,” he noted.

The Waterville yard is one of the company’s major rail facilities. A similarly-sized yard in East Deering, Mass., is also facing enforcement for similar violations, Kopf said.

Cynthia Scarano, a Pan Am executive vice president, said the company expects to hold informal settlement talks with the EPA within the next week.

“We have requested an informal conference, and on completing the administrative hearing we will have further comment,” Scarano said.

“At this point, I’m not denying or admitting” violations alleged by the EPA, Scarano added.