We have the technology - Why doesn't the MBTA use it?

Thursday night, we were returning home to Arlington from a Red Sox loss to the Kansas City Royals. I took out my iPhone and looked at a most wonderful app called Mass Transit to check the schedule for the 77 bus from Harvard to Arlington Heights. The bus was scheduled to depart at 11:03, and we were pulling into Harvard Station at 11:00, so it looked like the transit gods were in a better mood than the baseball gods.

As we exited the train, these excellent T digital displays (complete with clocks) were just flipping from 11:00 to 11:01, flipping at the same time as my cell phone. Piece of cake. A very short walk to the busway, hop on the bus, and we will be home to see the painful report on the local news of our choice.

However, as we walked through the turnstiles, we could see the 77 bus passing through the busway. The bus was gone before the T-clocks flipped to 11:02. The next bus was 11:16. We were now stuck with a 14 minute wait for a bus.

The 74 bus to Belmont came through the busway. It was scheduled to leave at 11:00, and I am sure the half-dozen people who came off the 11:00 Red Line train and boarded the bus were delighted that their bus was three minutes late.

This gave me some time to stand there and play with the Mass Transit app, and I quickly did a little math. The 77 bus runs at a 13 minute interval, but the Red Line runs at a 12 minute interval. The loudspeakers in the station announced an inbound train, and an Alewife bound train came through at about 11:12. The people on that train wandered up to the bus platform. At 11:17, a 77 bus appeared in the busway and the people on the platform filled the bus.

Here's my public policy question. If my iPhone can tell me the schedule, and the T technology can send an announcement that a train is entering the station, why can't we bring the two technologies together to coordinate the buses with the trains?

First, let's look at the 13 minute headway silliness on the 77 bus. If the trains run every 12 minutes, why do the buses run every 13 minutes? All this does is put the schedules so badly out of sync that some folks might be lucky and wait a minute or two for the bus, but others are condemned to a 12 minute wait.

If we put the bus on the same 12-minute headway, here's the wonderful thing we can do. We can calculate the time the outbound train is scheduled to arrive at the station, add three minutes for the walk to the platform, and time the buses to provide an easy and convenient transfer.

Meanwhile, up at the bus layover area, the same computer that sends the notification to the passengers on the platform could also send a signal to the bus driver. Train leaves the station, buses are called, and they pick up the passengers who just walked off the train.

For the buses with longer headways, the buses could leave on a multiple of 12 (or the interval between trains). With this kind of coordination, an Arlington passenger could actually calculate whether the best option would be to connect with a 77 at Harvard, an 86 at Davis, or a 79 or 350 at Alewife. A Burlington-bound rider could actually calculate which outbound Red Line train he needed to be on to connect to the 350 at Alewife. A new Green Line station at Route 16 in Medford would be much more useful if buses to Arlington and Medford were coordinated.

And so it goes for the rest of the system. Quincy, Forest Hills, Wellington, Wonderland, all could be more transit-friendly, and less dependent on parking garages, if the buses were aligned to the trains.

It doesn't seem to be a terribly difficult problem to solve. So why don't we actually do this?

Blue England

Have you ever been to Piscataquis County, Maine? It is one of the largest counties (in area) east of the Mississippi River. Baxter State Park and Moosehead Lake are in Piscataquis County. Despite its huge size, this county has less than half the population (17,235) of Arlington. Piscataquis County is the only county in the six New England states that was carried by John McCain. (Yes. That means Barack Obama carried every county in New Hampshire.) McCain won Piscataquis County by 355 votes, 4,785 4,430. Consider there are 67 counties in New England, and Barack Obama carried 66 of them. McCain carried a tiny county by 355 votes. Welcome to Blue England.

New England elects 22 members of the House of Representatvies. With the defeat of Christopher Shays in Connecticut, all 22 members will be Democrats. This is amazing, when you consider that it wasn't long ago when New England was the most reliably Republican region in the country. In 1932, New England provided four of the six states (ME, NH, VT, CT) voting for Herbert Hoover over FDR. (The other two states were PA and DE.)

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The rise of the Republicans as a predominantly socially-conservative and southern party conflicts with the socially-tolerant but frugal nature of New Englanders.

If the 2008 elections prove anything, good old New England common sense seems to be spreading. Not only are we solid blue, but the colors are running south and west. How far? Here's two examples.

If you have ever driven south on I-95 toward Florida, you know the signs for South of the Border start appearing after you pass Washington. This famous tourist stop is just south of the North Carolina-South Carolina border. According to Google Maps, it is 816 miles, more than 13 hours of driving time, south of Arlington. If President-Elect Obama maintains his lead in North Carolina, South of the Border will be at the bottom of the first exit on I-95 in the first red state you encounter on your southbound trip.

If south isn't your preferred direction, you can head west on I-90. Head west and you will be driving through beautiful blue Obama states until you reach Brandon, SD. It's the first town in the first red state on that westbound trip. It's 1,545 miles and about 24 hours west of Arlington.

It's nice to know the next president, and the majorities of both houses of Congress, share our values. I look forward to some good old-fashioned Blue England common sense reflected in our new government.

Making history

This is an emotional and historic day. I keep looking back to 1968, the last time our nation was on a terribly wrong track, and it seems that we lost lots of hope for America with the loss of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Today, I can feel that hope, that the dreams of the past were merely dreams deferred.

My electoral vote predictions

The Cohen-Langhart Effect

The polls show Barack Obama leading by a large margin in Virginia, and is flirting with a lead in North Carolina.

What's going on here? The Democrats have nominated a pair of liberals, neither of them are southerners. These states have large military populations and a history of voting for Republicans in presidential elections. North Carolina elected Jesse Helms to the United States Senate in 1972, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 1996.

It may seem counterintuitive, by my hypothesis is that the military population is a significant key in this shift. Despite John McCain's military service, and his outreach to military voters, could there be some other effect that is moving this population toward Obama?

Could there be a Cohen-Langhart effect?



It may seem counterintuitive, by my hypothesis is that the military population is a significant key in this shift. Despite John McCain's military service, and his outreach to military voters, could there be some other effect that is moving this population toward Obama?

On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ordering "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin."

As a result, we have a military that has become a the most colorblind meritocracy in the nation. It's the norm to live in an environment where rank, not color, defines hierarchy, where people routinely work and live with people from diverse backgrounds, and where looking up the chain of command involves people of many colors.



Racial lines have faded in the military to the point where rates of interracial marriage are significantly higher in the military than in the population at large. At the conclusion of the Clinton administration, this included Defense Secretary William Cohen and "First Lady of the Pentagon" Janet Langhart.

Barack Obama is a candidate to become Commander in Chief, and the military looks at a son of an African father and white mother and sees nothing unusual. While he doesn't look like any of the dead presidents, he does look like someone who belongs up the military chain of command.

When we count the votes, look at individual precincts and exit polls, I suspect we are going to find that Barack Obama will do very well among a military population that has traditionally been GOP-friendly.

Yes on 3: Dogs against corporate welfare

An editorial in the New Bedford Standard-Times presents the argument that I believe is central to the discussion of Question 3. Greyhound racing is an industry that is sinking deeper into the corporate welfare system, and this ballot question is a way to end the suffering of dogs and Massachusetts taxpayers.

Two greyhound tracks remain open: Raynham Park, right here in Bristol County, and Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere.

Money gambled at the tracks has declined substantially in recent years, dropping 37 percent in Raynham and 65 percent in Revere between 2002 and 2007. Officials from both tracks have said they will go out of business soon without state intervention, and they are asking for slot machines to shore up their revenue.

The editorial continues:

Raynham Park owner George Carney's own testimony at a legislative hearing last year revealed how tracks would fare without state help: "I'm telling you there's no money left in the racing. If you want to keep us going, you've got to give us the slots," the Boston Globe quoted him saying.

So without slot parlors, the dog tracks would fail. And why bail them out?

If I want to watch greyhound races, I'll sit alongside the Mass Pike.

The ultimate undecided voter

A car parked in the center of Lowell, Massachusetts, is sending mixed messages about the 2008 presidential race. This Camry, parked across the street from Lowell High School, has a McCain bumper sticker AND an Obama bumper sticker.