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THE CARMEN’S UNION NEEDS A LITTLE HELP with public relations. When the MBTA pitches a softball and you not only swing and miss but also hit the batboy in the face, you need to think about whether you need some help connecting the bat to the ball.

This is pretty much what happened recently when a WCVB-TV report revealed that current antiquated scheduling practices result in some T workers being “paid to stay home.” The Pioneer Institute, as it is wont to do, cried “scandal!” and another twist of the knife undermined public confidence in the T. This mind-numbing story of wasteful spending was, by the T’s own admission, a consequence of how easy it is to game the outdated mid-20th-century, paper-based scheduling system. The Carmen’s Union had the chance to support a sensible solution, and maybe even make a pitch for investment toward the T’s $7+ billion state-of-good-repair gap, but with eyes glazed they swung and missed, basically saying that they would work with the T to adopt an electronic scheduling system if the T agreed to consider a four-day work week. This posture redefined the term tone-deaf.

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What are they thinking?

I could ask the same question of those who have continued a relentless drumbeat of attacks on MBTA workers. What are they thinking? Sure, beating up on state employees and public sector unions is a tried and true tactic of the “let’s cut taxes and reduce government” crowd. It’s worked like a charm in Wisconsin. But this rhetoric has its poisonous side, as it drives public anger and cynicism about government and the public sector, and those attitudes once set in stone are hard to reverse. Why alienate the very public who you want – and need – to support revenue programs that are required to solve for a $7 billion-plus funding gap that cannot be fully closed without net new revenue?

Rather than call for four-day work weeks, or regularly beat up on MBTA workers, all sides ought to be building a broad consensus to support a strategic, fair, and forward-looking reform and revenue program for the T. We’ve tried reform before revenue and reform without revenue, and they don’t work. What we ought to try is reform with revenue – and not just revenue at the margins, but the kind of robust revenue that will fix the T’s aging systems, enable strategic expansion projects, and establish an appropriate level of modal equity. In short, we should be building a consensus that supports both meaningful change and meaningful new revenue. We had an extraordinary opportunity moment to do this following last winter’s meltdown, but we failed to leverage it.

Because a broad consensus has not been built, we face a deluge of divisiveness: the divisive discussion of a fare increase that is not warranted by service improvements, and that exacerbates social and modal inequity; the divisive politics that says you can never raise the gas tax but you can always raise T fares; the divisive drip, drip, drip of information that cherry-picks issues to make T workers and unions look bad (and, yes, there’s lots of raw material to keep that going for a while). The result: T riders feel angry because they are once again being asked to pay more for the same unimproved service, and the general public probably wonders why they should support any large-scale program to modernize the T.

How about tearing up the old playbook – the one that relies upon ideological stubbornness on the part of both labor and management – with a collaborative approach that places T riders first. T riders who still wait in the rain at Mattapan Square because there isn’t an adequate shelter for the 28 bus, T riders who cannot get on a Red Line train or Silver Line bus because it is already packed like a sardine can when it arrives at their station, T riders who walk into an Orange Line station and are greeted by a sign announcing that the next train arrives in 20+ minutes, T riders who have to walk from Bowdoin Station to MGH with their child or elderly parent in tow because the Red and Blue lines do not connect – these riders are not served by the old playbook, by the ancient rivalries and ideologies, by the gamesmanship that feels satisfied when it wins the day in the Herald or Globe, losing sight of the reality that such victories are empty of meaning for the people they ought to be serving. Real reform would mean rejecting these old ways of doing business and building in their stead a broad consensus to support meaningful change.

A broad consensus would require a measure of equanimity and a commitment to innovation and collaboration that could be a national model for developing thoughtful and meaningful public policy. The pathway to rebuilding and modernizing the MBTA isn’t paved by good intentions, ancient rivalries, or stubborn ideologies. Good intentions mean nothing unless backed up by effective actions; ancient rivalries are self-indulgent expenditures of time and energy; and stubborn ideologies only push people apart, magnifying the fractious debate and preventing consensus. The pathway forward must be informed by facts, nurtured by good faith, and illuminated by innovation.

Facts are those stubborn things that many people try to avoid when they want to win the day with an emotional argument. Facts must inform how we move forward with rejuvenating the T, and we know that the largest fact that must be addressed, the fact that hangs in the air like a cloud over all else, is the gap of over $7 billion in state-of-good-repair funding. This enormous funding gap ought to be addressed as a top priority, with a plan that raises sufficient net new revenue over a relatively short period of time. An effective plan would not stop at simply raising the necessary revenue, but would include adopting mobility policies that are responsive to the shifting paradigms and demographics of our city and region.

Good faith is required in order to successfully accomplish any large and potentially groundbreaking effort. Old ways of thinking, protection of long held sinecures, adherence to long-held ideologies: these are all the enemies of good faith, and leaders on both sides must leave them at the door. There is clearly an urgent need to reform the T’s administrative and management structure, including ending the current binding arbitration policy that incentivizes bad attitudes and poor judgment. Changes of this magnitude require leaders on both sides who can emulate the statesmen portrayed in John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage: people who are willing and able to put their personal ambitions aside, and accept a measure of personal risk, in order to achieve something lasting and important. Do such people exist any more?

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Finally, there must be openness to innovation. The T’s recent re-hiring of David Block-Schachter, a talented and astute MIT trained technologist, is a strong step in the right direction. He and others should be given a large measure of leeway in thinking about and acting upon ways to harness the power of innovation to improve the T rider’s experience and the T’s administrative and management systems. But innovation should not be confined to adoption of new technologies. It should extend to how we think about service delivery, project management, and labor/management relationships. An innovation culture is about much more than adoption of the next new smartphone app – it is a commitment to thinking and acting outside the box in order to improve service, enhance resilience, and contain costs. Change does not have to come at the expense of unions or the workers they represent, but it does have to come at the expense of antiquated ways of managing and doing business.

We ought to be in this together. T riders, T union officials, T employees, and T managers should all be pulling on the rope in the same direction. Our common, shared objective should be building a modern reliable public transportation system that is responsive to our needs and worthy of our city and region. It shouldn’t have to be this hard.

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