IT’S A MANTRA spoken so often these days it could be a bumper sticker.
“The MBTA is open for business,” Brian Shortsleeve, the agency’s chief administrator and acting general manager, said in talking about unsolicited proposals for third-party vendors to operate T services.
Shortsleeve thinks it’s so important for people to know “the MBTA is open for business” that he repeated the line at least a half dozen times Monday in a meeting with reporters and during the regular meeting of the Fiscal and Management Control Board.
Shortsleeve and board member Monica Tibbits-Nutt were touting proposals by Bridj, the on-demand bus service, to provide late night rider service, and a separate offer by a company called Ameridial to take over the agency’s call center handling customer service inquiries and complaints. The projects came in response to the agency’s Innovation Proposal program that welcomes unsolicited submissions from the private sector to develop a business relationship or privatize a service within the T.
The Bridj proposal offers a pilot program to run 10 buses a night for five hours each at a cost of $85 an hour to the T, for a one-year contract price of $1.55 million. The service area and fares would have to be determined but the plan would require eight to 10 passengers per trip going to similar destinations. Riders would have to have a smartphone to use the Bridj app because Charlie Cards and Charlie Tickets could not be used.
Tibbits-Nutt says the attraction for partnering with Bridj would be to use the company’s data, metrics, and algorithms to monitor who uses the service, where the demand is, and what other companies would benefit from the service in order to have them contribute to the contract.
“We have no understanding of who wants this, what type of service they need, or where the service is needed,” she said in a meeting with reporters. “Bridj has been incredibly good at getting that information…We are really just guessing at where people want go.”
But at the board meeting both chairman Joseph Aiello and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Gonneville said much of that data could be available soon as a result of rider surveys stemming from talks with late-night service advocates and Boston officials. Aiello urged Gonneville to quicken the information gathering in order to compare the results with the Bridj proposal.
James Aloisi, a member of the advocacy group Transit Matters, which is part of the discussion with the T and city, says the Bridj proposal doesn’t make sense at this point because it’s something they could already do and others are doing. He also said the data-gathering is not that difficult.
“We already have on-demand service with Uber and Lyft,” said Aloisi, a regular contributor to CommonWealth. He added, “Any pilot is going to give you data. I don’t think there’s anything unique about this pilot.”
Under the Innovation Proposal program, the MBTA is not required to send out a Request for Proposal but can go back to the original submitter and ask for a more-detailed plan. Aiello said that approach may run counter to the board’s goal of transparency as well as ensuring the agency is getting the best deal for the money. The Bridj and Ameridial call center proposals are two of the first submissions the board has considered.
“These are the first things we’re getting and we don’t quite know how to deal with them,” said Aiello in cautioning fellow board members to go slow. “If we don’t put this up competitively, we’re never going to know if this is the best deal for us.”
Aloisi said there are other service providers such as Paul Revere Bus Company, which already runs service for the T in Winthrop, as well as Uber, Lyft, and other transportation network companies, that may want to bid on such a proposal.
“If I had an unsolicited proposal from Bridj, I’d be grateful to have it to get the benefit of a competitive procurement,” said Aloisi. “There are other companies who play in this sandbox. If we’re going to outsource, let’s get the most robust competition possible. The whole point of unsolicited proposals is to spark conversation.”
The Ameridial proposal would take over the T’s call center and, according to Shortsleeve, do it at one-fifth the cost or less. The MBTA’s call center currently employs 28 workers, including four managers and four supervisors. All employees except the director are union workers.
According to the proposal, which Shortsleeve said would be open to a multitude of potential vendors beyond Ameridial, the contract would be for approximately $800,000, plus another $1 million for a six-person MBTA management and complaint resolution center. That would be a 70 percent savings over the $3.6 million the agency currently spends on operating its call center.
Tibbits-Nutt dismissed concerns over the potential for confusion in having separate call centers for commuter rail operator Keolis; The Ride, which is already outsourced; and the T. She said outsourcing the service would allow the MBTA to focus on its prime mission, moving people.
“People don’t really know what the best way to communicate with us is now,” she said. “We have a lot of ways to take in communication; we are not good at communicating back. We are a transit agency, we are not a communications agency. We already have a disconnected system.”
Outsourcing the communication system of the MBTA is a bad idea. The MBTA is a service
business. From the general public perspective (customers), the expectation is that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be able to operate a system that the best in the world and committed to
innovation and improvement. We have the talent – even our construction workers are math savants (thanks Matt
Damon).
Are the trains & buses on time? Is there a safety concern? Are they clean? Are the drivers projecting the values of the city? (They are the front line ambassadors of all public servants and should be treated that way). And the
only way to achieve that goal is to become masters of the feedback loop provided by the riders & employees.
In short, pick up the phone (or app), listen and act.
Outsourcing the communications system to an Ohio based call center is a short-term solution that places a significant obstacle in the creation of the world-class transportation system. In addition, from a macro
economic perspective the money spent is exported to Ohio and looses any multiplier effect that is gained by high quality, union, jobs in Massachusetts. The fiscal control board should weigh the impact of sending a dollar to Ohio versus the impact of circulating $1.70 in the Massachusetts economy – just ask Matt D – he can do the math for you.
Why not ask the MBTA’s call center, the Mayors office of New Urban Mechanics, one of the business schools, one of the urban planning schools, or a management consulting firm to come up with comprehensive plan to overhaul the MBTA’s communications system in service of the core business of the MBTA.
Any plan to improve the communication system should include input from all the stakeholders: Call Center Employees, Riders, Drivers, Fare collectors, Conductors, MBTA Police, MBTA Maintenance and sanitation.
The result should be a communication system that is state of the art and constantly finding ways to improve service.
Imagine having one number to call, text or an app to use that would provide:
The best way to get there from here with to the second arrival times of
the next train/bus and the exact moment it will arrive at the destination.
Snap a photo of a hazard so it can be fixed right away. This would give the maintenance
department a million eyes on the street every day.
And hear from riders about what new routes would be useful – instead of
paying Bridj to gather that data.
One of the HBS Executive Education classes teaches the concept of the Value-Profit chain. The idea is that you create good jobs that employees can succeed at and feel like they’re making a difference. This creates a better
customer experience. Which improves profits, which can be then re-invested in business to constantly improve the experience. These days’ data is king. And the MBTA’s communication system is an opportunity for investment rather than divestment.
‘Open for business’ is short-hand for ‘Who wants to get a slice of the privatization pie?’
Gov Baker appointed Shortsleeve with the understanding that he would be aggressive in seeking and entertaining proposals to privatize portions of the enormous MBTA footprint. While I personally feel that the Bridj proposal would be beneficial, by no means do 10 small buses address the needs to be met.
The first piece of this issue is how it’s framed; calling it late-night service instead of what it really is, around the clock or 24 hour service. ‘Late-night’ carries the stigma that anyone who uses this service is either out late at night because they are partying or socializing past what most people consider reasonable hours, as if this should be a pretext for determining who is and isn’t deserving of public transit service.
The reality is that 24 hour public transit would separate Boston from other large cities that shut down their subway and bus systems at night. Not only does Boston have a heavily ridden subway system and the busiest light-rail system in the country; we’re in a climate that isn’t particularly friendly to buses and above-grade subway lines. We’re a community of highly educated individuals that want to take advantage of all this historic city has to offer.
So the issue remains, where do we draw the line as to what level of service can be considered wasteful, as the late-night pilot program was deemed to be, and what is considered a necessary use of taxpayer dollars? Apparently the FMCB believes that $a 17 million investment is more than reasonable for a service that expands weekend nightlife options for people around the city, but cutting a check for $66 million and forgiving contractually mandated penalties on Keolis is well worth it. I’m still waiting for an explanation on that one.
If the MBTA proclaimed a solid endorsement of a late-night service plan, one that has the capability to meet the demands of the thousands of late-shift workers and young adults whose schedules are not dictated by last call at Park St, the city would adjust itself to this new paradigm, and the benefits would be widespread. The young people of this city want to be able to safely travel from the downtown core to residential areas in Allston, Brighton, South Boston, Quincy, JP, Cambridge and Somerville. If you make them take a ride-sharing service each time they do that, the city is losing money to Lyft, Uber and Bridj. And now the city wants to give them even more money to do a job that the MBTA could and should already be doing.
We must not continue down the path of scrutinizing public transit as if it is a profitable endeavor. It’s not, it will never be and we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that any amount of privatization, fare increases or service cuts will fix the fundamental problems of the T.