Cubic has said the Boston contract is the most complicated they have ever had to deal with because the MBTA demands in-house auditing. When you consider Cubic has designed systems for London, New York, Chicago, and many other larger markets that boggles the mind.
"However, an observer of the T’s project pointed out that in New York City, the much-larger Metropolitan Transportation Authority was able to get its contactless payment system up and running faster and at a lower cost than the MBTA.
WCVB ran this story 21 months ago and it fell on deaf ears.
Cubic was able to upgrade Chicago and New York easily as the existing hardware was designed by them. However, trying to upgrade the Scheidt & Bachmann hardware has been a major challenge. Apparently converting the fare gates can be done easily but the collection boxes on streetcars and buses is another kettle of fish.
..and when I was growing up in Philly, all you had to worry about when riding the subway was getting mugged.
That is pretty amazing. Thank goodness no one was hurt!
Did you mean to say "there is no magic wand to fix things?"
That seems to be a common theme on the MBTA. The tunnels and stations built by the Boston Elevated some dating back to 1897 have held up well whereas stuff built in the 70s and 80s is falling apart. They overbuilt stuff in the old days not so much anymore.
It is what it is. The East Boston Tunnel (1904) Washington Street Tunnel (1908) and Cambridge Tunnel (1912) have all held up well.
but they delivered that for a few years
Even going back to the BERy years, by the 1920s they were already having financial difficulties as increasing car ownership was cutting into their business. One can see this in the order of the Type 5 streetcars with their wooden seats, bare bones interior, and antiquated controllers. Then things got worse with the 1930s Depression followed by WW2 when they had to scramble and provide increased service but manpower and replacement parts hard to come by due to the war demands so the system became increasingly worn out. Then postwar you had the explosion in auto ownership and people moving to the suburbs. The Commonwealth took over as the MTA but it was immediately financially hamstrung as there was not yet a culture of support for public transit. The culture of emphasis on highway building with mass transit a poor relation continued into the 1960s when things started to turn around when Governor Sargent cancelled the I95 extension into Boston (the right of way later became the Southwest transit corridor) but even then the emphasis was on new shiny extensions and stations, not so much on maintaining what they already had.
Wouldn’t be so bad if the T wasn’t slapped with Big Dig debt.
