LIKE A WELL-OILED messaging machine, Maura Healey has had a one-word mantra to frame her early days as governor: competitiveness. It’s become her version of the stern advice given in the 1967 movie “The Graduate” to Benjamin Braddock, who was told the watchword for his future was “plastics.”
We regret any inconvenience this may cause, but Healey’s laser-focus on the state’s economic vitality is not likely to get traction until she finds a way out of the slow-zone quicksand that seems to be swallowing up the entire MBTA system.
Prior to the blockbuster news late last night of a system-wide speed restriction limiting trains to 10 to 25 mph across the T’s entire four subway lines, the Boston Herald reported yesterday that the T added more “slow zones” in February to the sluggish system that was already bogging riders down in interminable commutes.
It’s beginning to make the T’s “snowmageddon” collapse during Charlie Baker’s early days in office look like a walk in the park.
How does it all translate for one beleaguered Red Line rider (me)?
In the before-times, my ride from Ashmont to Park Street (which includes the Red Line stretch that prompted yesterday’s sudden system-wide concerns) took 20 minutes from the time the doors closed in Dorchester until they opened downtown. It could vary by a minute or so, but the actual travel time without counting the wait at the station was remarkably consistent over many years.
Yesterday, my ride into town clocked in at 26 minutes. I didn’t know how good I had it. The return home: 34 minutes.
That’s 20 minutes more on what used to be a 40-minute round-trip, or a 50 percent increase in commuting time. Over a five-day week – if anyone were contemplating such a work schedule in the new hybrid reality of many workplaces – that would be an extra 100 minutes. Over a 48-week year, it comes out to 80 extra hours, or two full work weeks, spent riding the rails.
My return home seems to have been caught in the temporary system-wide speed restrictions imposed last night. Without them, the “new normal” slow zones would add 60 minutes to a five-day commute, or more than a full work week over the course of a year.
”We can’t lead tomorrow if we settle for what’s good enough today,” Healey said in her January inaugural address. “To keep attracting the best workers in the world, our economy has to compete.”
It was the animating idea behind the set of tax reform proposals she filed last week and stumped for the following day to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
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Executive Editor, CommonWealth
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
And she zeroed in on competitiveness again during an appearance at a meeting of Associated Industries of Massachusetts. “The path to economic competitiveness goes straight through our businesses and our workforce. At this critical moment, we need to do more to give employers and workers the ability to grow and thrive,” Healey posted on Instagram.
When she mentions economic competitiveness, Healey invariably makes clear that the status quo isn’t cutting it. She surely has the T, among other things, in mind.
No one can blame her for the abysmal state of the regional transit system. Everyone expects her to get it back on track.
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