Flaws Undid Obama’s High-Speed Rail Plan in Florida - NYTimes.com

Flaws Undid Obama’s High-Speed Rail Plan in Florida - NYTimes.com

Brawl breaks out at Forest Hills T station

Alleged T pervs: One caught, one sought

Stranded Commuters

Boston Trolley Driver Had Sex Change, History of Speeding Infractions

Cellphone Ban After Boston Trolley Crash

Lonely job in desolate depot a punitive one, T worker says

Alleged perv accused of groping woman on T

Subway Musican singing - Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down

Ed Masuga
music sample

T cops nab alleged perv

By Eva Wolchover | Sunday, October 12, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

Transit Police have arrested a 21-year-old Quincy man accused of groping a male passenger on a southbound Red Line train between Boston and Quincy Sept. 16.

The Herald reported last week that the suspect - identified as Brandon Clarke, 21, of Quincy - allegedly sexually assaulted the 43-year-old victim and, when confronted, said, “Did you enjoy that?” The victim reported the crime to Transit Police, who matched his description of Clarke to footage on station video surveillance.

Detectives were unable to make an arrest until Friday because Clarke was out of state, Transit Police said. Clarke will be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court Tuesday on one count of indecent assault and battery.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1125035

Suspect arrested after brazen MBTA sex attack

Suspect arrested after brazen MBTA sex attack
By Jessica Van Sack | Thursday, October 16, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

A Somerville man is accused of sexually assaulting three women and exposing himself in a horrifying rush hour attack on a packed Red Line train, according to MBTA transit police.

Erald Pasholli, 28, allegedly spewed expletives at the three women when they boarded a train at Downtown Crossing on Tuesday afternoon, berated them and threatened rape before launching a brazen assault on the trio.

At one point, Pasholli tried to force one woman’s hand down his pants while groping a second woman’s breasts with his other hand, according to a police report. After one of the women slapped him in the face in self-defense as the train left North Quincy, cops say he allegedly unzipped his pants - and wasn’t wearing any underwear.

After receiving reports of a “large disturbance” on the Red Line, cops scoured several T stations in search of the suspect and were approached by “shocked and appalled” passengers who had witnessed the fiendish attack, police said.

Cops eventually located the train Pasholli was on, held it at Wollaston Station and arrested him at about 5:50 p.m. Passengers were “shocked and extremely frightened by his crazed behavior,” police said.

Pasholli pleaded not guilty in Quincy District Court yesterday to charges of open and gross lewdness, indecent assault and battery, assault and battery and disorderly conduct.

David Traub, spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating, said Pasholli was arraigned in August on domestic assault charges in another case and was on probation for other charges. He was held without bail for his alleged probation violations, Traub said.

The Herald reported last week that since the start of the MBTA’s anti-perv campaign April 12, emboldened riders have reported about double the number of sexual assaults compared to the previous year. Arrests of alleged predators also doubled from nine to 18 during that time.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1125861

Two teens stabbed in head on MBTA bus

By Mike Underwood | Tuesday, October 21, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com

Police said a man exposed himself to two teenage cousins on their way home from school and then stabbed the two women in a brazen daylight assault aboard an MBTA bus in Dorchester.

Transit police arrested Steven Phillips, 32, of Dorchester after the attack on the girls, aged 18 and 19, on the No. 23 bus at Washington and Morse streets just before 2 p.m. yesterday. A source said both are Dorchester High seniors.

“Before boarding the bus in Codman Square, the man exposed himself to the young women and there was the start of a verbal altercation between the parties that escalated while on the bus,” said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

Then the suspect pulled a knife and stabbed both women in the head, said MBTA Transit Police Acting Chief Paul MacMillan. The victims were treated for non-life threatening injuries at Boston Medical Center.

Phillips pleaded guilty to slicing a man’s face open on the No. 16 bus in 2002 and was given probation until January 2006, according to a law enforcement source.

In March 2007, Dwayne Graham, 18, was shot dead while riding on the No. 23 with a group of teens when another group started chasing and hitting the bus.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1126796

Police Probe Downtown Crossing Violence

BOSTON -- A spike in violence at one of Boston's busiest MBTA stops has police taking action.

Police told the Boston Herald that youth violence at the Downtown Crossing stop has reached a dangerous level.

Several agencies will meet Tuesday to decide how to combat the problem.

Monday, officers broke up several fights at the station. Police said 200 students were there.

Last week, police said gunshots were fired and two men were stabbed just before a busy commuter rush period.

***

Police: Teens Wield Guns, Knives In Brawl

T’s ‘grope patrol’ has pervs on the run

By Jessica Van Sack | Monday, October 6, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com



Photo by Matt Stone

Arrests of subway-stalking predators have skyrocketed, and emboldened riders have stepped forward to report twice as many sexual assaults since the T unleashed a “grope patrol” of undercover transit cops to pinch pervs trolling the commuter rails.

“It’s sometimes like shooting fish in a barrel, unfortunately,” said MBTA Transit Police Detective Brian Harer, a member of the undercover unit, at the Park Street T station last week.

Since the start of the MBTA’s anti-perv campaign April 12, police have received 69 reports of sex assaults on the T - compared to 37 in the same period last year. Arrests of alleged predators doubled from nine to 18 during that time. The total number of alleged pervs nabbed went from 12 to 21 during that time, including suspects summonsed to appear in court.

The Herald first disclosed the T’s groundbreaking campaign in a March 21 story that followed the T’s undercover female detective decoy. She posed as bait for pervs who wait for crowded trains and unsuspecting victims.

Paul MacMillan, acting chief of the MBTA Transit Police, said that while the crackdown was meant to target “rubbers and grabbers” who ride the subway, it ended up encouraging victims of all sexual assaults to come forward.

“What we’ve found through the awareness campaign is it’s made people more aware of other sex crimes that occur,” MacMillan said. “And that we take it very seriously. We will prosecute these people. We will not tolerate it.”

On Wednesday last week at rush hour, an undercover task force of detectives led by Sgt. Detective Michael Adamson deployed on the Green Line to stalk the stalkers. In just two hours, cops questioned a known sex offender, spotted a murder suspect and an alleged Chinatown drug dealer, witnessed a scuffle at the Downtown Crossing station - and kept a close eye on a man who stood strangely close to a young woman on a crowded train.

“He had every opportunity to walk away from her as the crowd thinned, but he didn’t,” said one detective who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of his work. Detectives eyed the man, in a tweed blazer and carrying a briefcase, as his hand drew closer to a young woman’s buttocks. She typed on her blackberry for several stops until Park Street.

“You could see her looking at both sides behind her like, ‘What are you doing,’ ” the detective said.

If the woman hadn’t sat down, detectives agreed, they probably would have reeled in another catch.

Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, which co-sponsored the T’s advertising campaign to report pervs, applauds the patrols.

“If colleges, churches and workplaces did this, it’s very exciting to think about what would happen,” she said. “We have such a high tolerance for sexual violence in our culture. What this campaign really says is that any level of that behavior is unacceptable.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1123679

Boston riders rail against MBTA

Boston riders rail against MBTA
By Marie Szaniszlo / Herald Exclusive | Friday, September 19, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo
Photo by Patrick Whittemore

Fifteen months after vowing to crack down on churlish employees, the MBTA is still being bombarded with thousands of complaints about subway and bus drivers doing everything from chatting on cell phones to cursing at riders, a Herald review shows.

One passenger on the Route 501 bus called the agency to complain that “the operator is constantly angry, always has an attitude and makes a lot of faces at people,” according to T records.

“Customer stated the (bus) operator saw someone running for the bus, he slowed down and then just pulled off.”

Douglas Armstrong, 48, of Roxbury recalled being berated by a Route 28 bus driver because he didn’t have the right fare.

“I said, ‘I have $5. Can I ask someone for change?’ ” Armstrong said Wednesday. “She said, ‘No, you’re supposed to have it when you get on. If you don’t, get the (expletive) off.’ ”

When another passenger gave him the change, Armstrong said, the driver told him, “ ‘Next time, (expletive), you have the right change when you get on my bus.’ ”

From April to August, the MBTA received 14,335 bus, subway and commuter rail complaints in all, up more than 13 percent from the same period last year, when the T began tracking complaints electronically.

Subway complaints climbed the most - 25.58 percent - followed by commuter rail (17.10 percent) and bus beefs (7.77 percent).

All told, riders registered 3,460 complaints about T bus drivers, 751 about subway workers and 521 about commuter rail employees.

To address obnoxious employees, the T said in June 2007 it had replaced its “Positive Performance Counseling Program” with an actual discipline policy.

Yesterday, spokesman Joe Pesaturo said offending employees get a written warning, followed by a progression of one-, three- and five-day unpaid suspensions, with a final warning on the third and, afterward, firing.

However, Pesaturo could not specify how many had been disciplined as a result of complaints, adding that the number of complaints compared to the number of T riders each day is “infinitesimal.”

The agency recorded 134,456,000 trips from April to July, up from the 129,968,000 trips in the same period last year.

“I would imagine the number of complaints would increase with the number of riders we’ve seen,” T boss Daniel A. Grabauskas said. “My goal is to maintain the increase in ridership and decrease the overall complaint volume.”

Asked this week if he had any complaints of his own, 39-year-old commuter Anderson Gray of Dorchester said, “Where do you want me to start?”

Gray recalled a recent incident in which a bus driver refused to lower a ramp for a disabled woman struggling to get on board.

Then on Wednesday, he said, he was on a half-full Route 23 bus when the driver picked him up and proceeded to bypass the next stop, leaving people there waving at her to no avail.

“Other drivers will be on their cell phone and almost miss a stop and slam on the brakes so you almost fall,” Gray said. “But when you call to report something, a lot of times all you get is a recording, or you’re on hold for so long, you hang up.”

Asked how the T could be improved, Jen Boyden, 23, of Arlington said, “Maybe an attitude adjustment.”

Boyden recalled a 45-minute delay last week on the Red Line. By the time the full train reached Kendall Station, she said, the conductor was “yelling at people” over the intercom.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1120069

T crises, controversies sully Mr. Fix-it image of Grabauskas

By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff | August 26, 2008

Daniel A. Grabauskas arrived at the MBTA as the guy who could fix the unfixable.

He had transformed the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles, a pit that held drivers virtually hostage for two or three hours when they renewed their licenses, into a place with Wal-Mart-style greeters at the door, a modern computer system, and 15-minute waiting times.

But three years later, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is far from fixed, and there are more political darts aimed at Grabauskas. He has earned praise from transportation activists for putting a focus on efficiency and access and has instituted customer service improvements such as the automated CharlieCard and the beginning of cellphone service on subways. But overwhelming debt, political infighting, and a recent series of controversies and crises at the T have tarnished his image.

In May, a trolley operator was killed in a jolting Green Line crash that highlighted the old equipment's susceptibility to human error. Soon after, Grabauskas fended off criticism for letting employees drive home state cars. This month, a federal lawsuit against a group of MIT students exposed how the T's electronic fare tickets could be reprogrammed to give free rides, leading one of the T's board members to say she had "lost all confidence" in the ability of Grabauskas to manage the agency.

"We're moving the ball in the right direction," he said. "But in this particular job, there is no end zone. You're either moving in the right direction, or you're moving in the wrong direction."

His team provided reams of lists and graphics, including a monthly system accountability book he initiated, to show where he is improving service and saving money. Canceled trips on buses and subways are down, and the fleets are running longer without breaking down, with fewer speed restrictions. Commuter rail, however, continues to run late more often than promised.

As Grabauskas grappled with the fare card public relations problem, he stumbled into another, when he granted nonunion employees a 9 percent pay increase days after warning that hefty fare increases may be necessary in 2010. The ill-timed raises led to a rebuke from the state's top transportation official and a reversal that displeased many of his managers, who have gone three years without a raise.

"That is one tough place," said Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a free market think tank, comparing the T to the Registry.

Increasingly, the confident face of public transportation in Boston has become a target, one of the last Republican holdovers in state government and, some allies contend, a scapegoat for a system struggling with decades of debt.

"There's a little surprise that he's not able to get things done like he did" at the Registry, said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who is generally a fan. But at the T, Grabauskas has less control, more factions, unions, boards, and internal politics to deal with, Menino said. "Somebody's always trying to undercut what he's doing."

Governor Deval Patrick's office declined to answer questions for this article, only issuing a statement through Secretary of Transportation Bernard Cohen asserting that the two men have a "constructive working relationship" while pointing to the need for the "MBTA board's continued vigilance."

But Cohen's public responses to the pay raises last week revealed what many see as growing antagonism from the administration. Cohen also serves as chairman of the nine-member MBTA board, which signed Grabauskas, who makes $255,000 a year, to a five-year contract in 2005.

Much of this discussion of debt and politics is academic to the system's hundreds of thousands of riders, who simply want to get to work on time, with some level of comfort.

Walk into a subway car, and everyone, whether they have heard of Grabauskas or not, can tell you about tardy service, late construction, crowded trains, or "boiling hot" stations.

"Some of the bus drivers are rude," said Michael Greg, a 53-year-old construction worker from Boston.

Grabauskas hears it all, even at dinner parties, though he says he also gets compliments on the CharlieCard and constructive suggestions about routes and schedules.

He points to his efforts at communications, such as newer sound systems and digital signs. He fortified the call center so operators answer more calls, speak more languages, and report back to him with more consistent feedback. Stations are generally cleaner, he said. Employee overtime costs are down.

Grabauskas is proudest of his efforts to settle a disability lawsuit and improve access on the T, something he said helps everyone get on and off buses and trains with more ease.

But some problems, such as the ongoing construction of the Kenmore station, leave many with the impression that the agency is unable to complete tasks. The station near Fenway Park is already at least 20 months overdue.

"That's kind of become legend," said Michael Dukakis, the former governor and frequent T rider, citing a string of construction delays.

Grabauskas, 45, looks as if he sleeps in a pressed shirt and necktie. He lives in Ipswich with his partner of nearly 20 years, Paul Keenan. Grabauskas drives to work, but takes the T when he travels around town. He jokes with friends that he will grow a bushy beard and open a garden center when he leaves public life.

His polished and assured presence in front of a camera has helped him accelerate through the public sector. Early in his career, when he ran the state's office of consumer affairs, he was on the nightly news exposing how lobstermen were padding the price of their catch by including the weight of the water.

He built a reputation as a manager there and was asked three times by former governor Paul Cellucci to fix the Registry before he accepted. He started by setting clear goals, putting managers to work on the front lines so they could understand motorists' problems, and turning over some staff, said Kimberly Hinden, his top deputy at the Registry, who later replaced him.

Then he persuaded the state to invest about $16 million to replace green-screen computers from the 1980s with a modern system called the Q-Matic that spit out customized tickets to customers, with estimated wait times.

The reputation from the Registry was not enough to elect him when he ran for state treasurer in 2002 against Timothy P. Cahill. So Grabauskas moved to transportation, appointed first as Governor Mitt Romney's secretary of transportation and then as general manager of the MBTA.

There, he learned quickly that $16 million didn't go far at the MBTA. The T's debt is more than $8 billion including interest payments, mostly because of expansion projects.

Record high ridership, the result of $4-per-gallon gas prices, has not been enough to compensate for the debt payments, the smaller-than-expected sales tax subsidy, and the rising cost of gas for buses.

His talk of substantial fare hikes earlier this month has put pressure on the agency to save money and avoid the appearance of wasting it. Grabauskas stood by his decision to let employees take home cars, arguing that they need to respond to emergencies and that the financial impact was relatively small. He held that managers deserved the pay raises after three years without one and were being compensated in line with new union wages.

State Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Methuen Democrat who leads the Transportation Committee, suggested criticism of these decisions has been driven by politics.

"Just because he was appointed by a Republican governor and he ran for treasurer against the current treasurer shouldn't prohibit him from doing his job," Baddour said.

Grabauskas is keenly aware that his time is running out, one way or another. He said he will probably work in the private or nonprofit sector next and doubts he will seek public office again.

"I've got about 20 months left here, at the most," he said. "That's when my contract expires."

The Patrick administration, which controls the MBTA board, could oust him immediately. But it would require a costly payout, nearly a half-million dollars, and would be politically difficult.

"They have to buy me out," said Grabauskas. "And I don't intend to quit."

Noah Bierman can be reached at nbierman@globe.com.