Morning Metro: Lots of Transportation Links and a Pic of Piedmont Park circa 1895
Decatur Metro | September 25, 2012
- MARTA CEO Beverly Scott to head up Boston’s MBTA [Saporta Report]
- MARTA spends $50 million too much [AJC]
- …and audit suggests new sources of revenue for MARTA [ABC]
- Photo of Piedmont Park during the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition [Atl History Center]
- Atlanta Streetcar rendering released [ATL Urbanist]
- “The driverless car is coming. And we should be glad it is.” [WSJ]
Rendering courtesy of the Atlanta Streetcar’s Facebook page
Latest from Decaturish
The ABC slapped an interesting title on that MARTA article in that it focused on new revenue sources. The AJC reported on the same audit with the headline (in part) “MARTA spends too much.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/transportation/marta-needs-to-privatize-functions-revamp-employee/nSKwS/
Shockingly, many of the bloated costs are in health care and pensions.
Oh man, that’s a much better article. Will link to that one above as well.
I think this one’s even better:
http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2012/09/25/audit-marta-should-privatize-some-services-tinker-with-employees-benefits-possibly-sell-naming-rights-to-stations
Dammit. Wheatley is going to have my head!
I like that KPMG “floated the idea” of charging non-DeKalb and Fulton residents for parking, though I imagine that would be difficult to implement and enforce. I also like the idea of being able to pay for reserved parking.
I’m a MARTA supporter, but I certainly believe there are areas that they could be more efficient in. Privatize custodial work; stations can’t be any dirtier than they are now. Charge for parking. Charge a premium for single rides from airport (in other words, if a passenger buys a one-way trip at the airport station, charge more for it).
Pension and health costs are a problem for many organizations and are going to have to be resolved, but there are no easy answers there.
Employee absenteeism costs MARTA $11 million a year. Somebody please explain to me why people who don’t bother to show up for work are able to stay employed.
The explanation is simple – they work for MARTA. No private company, no matter how small or large, would tolerate excessive absenteeism (except maybe for a limited time in isolated cases based on unusual/unfortunate circumstances). Why do you think the employees of MARTA are opposed to privitization?
Excessive absenteeism should not be tolerated. But all employees deserve paid sick leave as a human right. As usual, the USA is one of the few “advanced” democracy with out mandatory sick leave for private sector employees. As for paid sick leave in the public sector, it is one of the few remaining benefits for public workers, who are generally underpaid compared to comparable private sector jobs. The documentation of any public benefit from privitization is really mixed, except for the profits that flow to the private owners.
The way the report reads (page 36, the file is on the MARTA website), it looks like there’s absenteeism as in going completely AWOL, not calling in sick or using vacation days.
In the mid-70s GM’s Lakewood Plant had a “problem” with absenteeism that meant a small army of college kids assembled their top of the line Pontiac products on Fridays and Mondays. There was a joke that no one should purchase their products manufactured on either of these days. My point, besides pointing out the irony of our labor market, is that someone is always waiting for that “job” that someone else takes for granted. Time for MARTA to do what GM did at Lakewood…improve or close shop.
It is a “human right” to get paid for not working? Didn’t get that Book of Rights….
The articles did not give details on this, but it may be that MARTA is too generous with sick/personal days allowed. Demoralized employees, who haven’t had a raise in five years, may be maxing them out to compensate.
They may not have received cash raises, but I will bet that their compensation has gone up when benefits are included. The audit suggests that the employees are being paid above-market wages/benefits despite the fact that a wage freeze has been in place.
And let;s not forget that these employees are largely unionized. Firing a union member — even one who is not showing up for work — is not cheap or easy.
So after digging into the report, it looks like MARTA is average when it comes to paid time off. Unpaid leave is the problem.
But the biggest issue is health care costs and next is pensions.
related — http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/07/160748725/episode-400-what-two-pasta-factories-tell-us-about-the-italian-economy
“Barilla execs told Nicola Calandrea, the manager of the Foggia plant, that they would close the factory unless he brought the absenteeism rate down.”
I cannot speak to MARTA as a whole but I can say that I have met some fine MARTA train employees over the years who have given me some nice service, especially compared to my experience with NYC subway workers. I’m thinking especially of train drivers who I’ve seen show special courtesy to elderly or otherwise needy passengers. I’ve also had a good experience with MARTA police the few times I’ve needed them–there’s not enough of them but that’s not their fault. This is in contrast to my experience in NYC where subway staff were enclosed in bullet-proof booths and wouldn’t even talk to you if you tired to talk to them about an urgent situation.
Just saying that some MARTA workers do show up for work and do give good service and are deserving of respect.
+1 for not hopping on the anti-public-worker bandwagon.
I’ve had mixed experiences with the bus drivers, but the good experiences are awesome — in once case, the driver went out of her way to help a disabled passenger among a group of our friends, even making a stop where there was no official bus stop at all.
Who’s disrespecting MARTA employees who go to work and do their jobs? I’m not, nor do I have a problem with granting employees paid sick leave and vacation time. But no organization should tolerate the kind of absenteeism that is being reported here (if I understand the report correctly). And IMO, one thing that makes it difficult to address this admittedly difficult issue is that so many people have a knee-jerk defensive reaction the minute anybody criticizes a public organization. (Same thing often happens the minute one utters a word against deadwood in the education system.) Of course, many MARTA employees are conscientious, hard-working, courteous, diligent, and display every other behavior anyone would want in an employee, colleague or supervisor. That is not the issue, and in fact, it’s disrespectful of those people to tolerate the opposite.
Well stated.
“And IMO, one thing that makes it difficult to address this admittedly difficult issue is that so many people have a knee-jerk defensive reaction the minute anybody criticizes a public organization. (Same thing often happens the minute one utters a word against deadwood in the education system.)”
I agree that the “knee-jerk reaction” occurs too often, but I think there is a tendency to be defensive about public organizations because they are so often used as political footballs. MARTA is especially prone to this because, unlike public education, relatively few people use it and–let’s face it–most of those people are poor and/or minorities. The fact that most of MARTA’s workforce is black adds to the heightened sensitivity. People can claim that doesn’t play a role in perceptions of MARTA, but it’s naive to believe that it doesn’t. So, when there are real problems that need to be addressed, it’s difficult to have a logical, honest conversation because of the mistrust and and antagonisms that already exist.
I get all of that. But isn’t it incumbent upon any of us with the wherewithal to recognize it, to get past knee-jerk reactions and generalization and try to have a conversation? I don’t agree with those who claim public employees are on the dole and unions are evil. At the same time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to criticize any organization for tolerating absenteeism to the tune of $11 million/year. Just because the majorities of the employee base and customer base are black does not mean the criticism is rooted in racism.
BTW, I also understand that absenteeism is not the biggest hemorrhage, strictly in dollar terms. But IMO it represents a serious problem because of what it suggests about the caliber of HR management and overall administrative effectiveness in the organization. The pension and health benefits problems are enormously complicated, in part by factors beyond the direct control of MARTA or any other organization (public or private). It seems to me that internal management defects should be a much easier dragon to slay.
I thought that the statement “The explanation is simple – they work for MARTA.” was a bit of a broad brush. Just because someone works for MARTA does not mean that they are absent a lot, give poor service, or otherwise abuse the system. Just trying for a bit of balance. My hat is off to some of the MARTA workers I’ve gotten to know.
I agree with you 100% about that. I had overlooked that comment earlier and didn’t realize your response was prompted by it.
I wasn’t making any comments or implications about the employees. I was referring to the employer and making the point that only a public agency with little or no accountability for fiscal responsibility would tolerate such behavior. If this was IBM or the Brick Store, this wouldn’t be happening. The employees who weren’t showing up would be ex-employees.
Um, I am having some horrible interactions with Apple right now, including being on hold for an hour and a half waiting to return a call from the “Genius Bar”, only to get disconnected (accidentally?) so I am not so hot on private customer service right now! And I worked for IBM for ~6-7 summers and can tell you STORIES…..
I want to live in your world. In my world, sub-par customer service experienced just in the past several months (ranging from moderately aggravating to appallingly bad) includes AT&T, Iogear, my locally owned bank (multiple occasions), Samsung, Best Buy, two different locally owned & operated restaurants (so surly at one, for the second consecutive visit, that I cancelled my beverage order and left). Very positive experiences I’ve had that I can recall off the top of my head — the kind that make you think, “Wow, that person is really on the ball and/or extra patient and courteous — include MARTA station and Dekalb Co. water dept.
One of the more interesting nuggets in the MARTA audit involved customer service. The auditors suggested that MARTA was answering customer calls too quickly, thus encouraging more calls. Guess that’s another lesson they need to learn from the private sector.
Apple, for all its faults, isn’t begging the state government for cash to fund its operations.
It would if it needed to sell the iPhone5 for $100 to achieve its objective of serving the general public.
+ 1
‘Just saying that some MARTA workers do show up for work and do give good service and are deserving of respect.”
Agreed. You couldn’t pay me enough to drive a bus, especially in this city full of idiot drivers.
As with many organizations, the bloat is undoubtedly to be found at the administrative/office level of MARTA. A lot of those jobs could probably be outsourced.
After having skimmed the audit, I was struck by the fact that the comparisons with peer organizations regarding spending were quite detailed, while the revenue comparisons were limited. Is that typical for this type of audit?
Walk a couple blocks to the maintenance yard at Avondale and you will see some very hard working people using obsolete 1970s equipment to do a thankless job that politicians make fun of and refuse to fund appropriately.
I enjoyed the driverless car article. I’ve followed the progress of the technology since before the old DARPA challenges.
I might have voted for the recent transportation sales tax if, rather than funding a jumbled list of more of the same kinds of stuff we already have, it had funded grants, and other initiatives that could turn metro Atlanta into a technology hub focused on smarter transportation, from driverless cars, to the kinds of signal and traffic management
infrastructure that would turn our already existing roads and rail into something much, much better.
Having lived in Boston for 20 years, I send my congratulations and condolences to Ms. Beverly Scott.
I hope she likes seafood, because at least there’s that.
…and the ocean, such as it is.
…and the proximity to mountains.
…and the best original music scene in the world.
Other than that, though, it’s a cold, hard, nasty place.
I love the little train at the Municipal Market. If only the TSplost had been easily understood little projects like that instead of the conglom of all things behemoth… but oh well.