Today’s just about a week away from Patriot’s Day here in Boston and the running of the Boston Marathon. Catching up with what’s been going on in Boston and the region’s public transit goings in today’s news round up we see a couple of updates on infrastructure projects and
South Coast Rail to Fall River and New Bedford advances
MassDOT will be hosting community meetings this week (Fall River on Wednesday and New Bedford on Thursday) on 25% designs for four of the Bridge Replacements along the right-of-way for the South Coast Rail project. It’s exciting to hear about some of the upcoming upgrades starting to move beyond conceptualization and into design and engineering stages. It means that construction and implementation of concept is that much closer.
Arborway Maintenance Facility will be a open patch for a while longer
The MBTA has had plans for a facility at 500 Arborway to allow for Compressed Natural Gas busses to have a maintenance and storage yard for almost 2 decades. A temporary facility exists, which is visible to the north and west of the proposed building site at 500 Arborway. Environmental assessments were done in 2002(ish?) and with appropriate state sign-off already completed. So, what is MBTA up to with the land? It seems that the MBTA was able to find some money to request a contract to demolish the brick office building that exists there. This makes me wish that the MBTA would be able to reuse the building some how. I have an unnatural affinity and love for red brick which also shows up on Pinterest often.
Employee Relations
The region’s Janitors Union is up in arms over a potential performance-based contract. MassDOT is currently engaged in a multi-year effort at developing performance-based metrics and a management style that focuses on performance over traditional measures of purchasing goods and services. This janitorial contract will be an interesting test case to see if the local unions can be won over to this particular management style or if the relationship between management and labor will continue to be on the adversarial side of things.
THE RIDE – GLSS is reawarded their contract
Greater Lynn Senior Services continues with their contract to provide services in their geographic territory along the North Shore.
Andrew Reker 