(Source: Boston Globe)

Boston MBTA’s General Manager Richard Davey was headed to Ashmont on the T’s Red Line for the unveiling of banners created by youth artists from Dorchester when he spotted the scofflaw attempting to climb over the fare gates at the lesser-used Winter Street entrance to Park Street.

He walked up the evader and confronted him for jumping over the turnstiles.  Caught by surprise and enveloped in shame, the  scofflaw retreats back. This is where it gets better.

“He kind of fumbled around, and he did not have the CharlieCard (aka the fare card) and had just a couple of bucks on him, so I actually offered to pay for him,” Davey said. “He declined and said he would get his own ticket.”

Oh well, at least the young man had the pride to pay for his own ticket after getting caught red handed.  Good job, Richard Davey.  MBTA should be proud to have a vigilant man at the top running the show.

(Source:  EnterpriseNews.com)

For more than a year, Gov. Deval Patrick has been promising a response to the state’s ever-worsening transportation woes. Friday he delivered a proposal that includes most of what the situation requires.

Patrick starts with reform, as he should. His plan would finally put the much-despised Mass. Turnpike Authority out of business, merging it, along with the MBTA, MassPort and the Registry of Motor Vehicles, into a single, more accountable, transportation agency.

Patrick also vows to do away with the administrative redundancy and unjustifiable perks that have grown over the decades in these transportation fiefdoms. The MBTA contract, for instance, allows union workers to retire after just 23 years on the job and immediately begin collecting healthy pensions, with the state providing health insurance for the rest of their lives. With the “T” burdened by more than $5 billion in debt, such excesses are inexcusable.