The Red Line has more or less ground to a halt...

Something that was more or less predicted to me by a now departed State Senator some sixteen years ago. An aging fleet married to aging management practices that attend on an aging fleet and little money to fix the Big Problems...its a wonder any trains at all ran on Tuesday. The fact of the matter is, In A Crisis, terrorism, hurricane, snowstorm the MBTA almost always rises to the occasion no matter what it takes, the passengers are getting home. The next day...the short term focus dissipates and the original pathologies take hold...and then you may as well hire an oxcart you will make better time on your commute. Now...I'm not gonna bang the pots here and demand more taxes or fling blame at the leg or prior administrations...for once I'm gonna call for a "Come to Jesus Moment" at the State House that will in good faith revise the spending priorities for the MBTA, assign new monies, reform management practices and in general do what should have been done a decade ago. This isn't me wanting to make the MBTA a political football, IMHO it has been a political football since the outset of the Big Dig, and the results are plain at least to me as a daily Red Line Passenger. Public Transportation is one of those "core deliverables" (to lapse in Romneyspeak) that strongly condition the economic health of Boston, and an economically growing Boston is in general Good for the Commonwealth as a Whole. So lets dispense with the provincial mindset within and without the legislature and start making sensible decisions, delay just means bigger pain later on.