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William Brownsberger, the elected official, is a powerful Beacon Hill leader, someone who helps shape policy debates and laws as the Senate’s president pro tempore.
Will Brownsberger, the blogger, digs into policy too, and his writing about the limitations of expanding the commuter rail system caught the eye of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and an MBTA board member ahead of a key vote the board took on Monday.
Brownsberger, a Democrat who is known for getting around on his bicycle and served on a committee that studied commuter rail transformation options for more than a year, penned a 2,500-word post last week explaining what he believes is a key problem in the study: it assumed frequency of service would increase uniformly across the entire commuter rail network.
“This across-the-board approach would make sense if all of the lines had the same potential to attract riders,” he wrote. “However, the detailed data from the modeling show that many more new riders will be attracted by increased service on some lines than on others…. Adding service that will be under-used makes no sense from any perspective, including an environmental perspective – running large rail coaches empty is very wasteful.”
The MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board had been presented with a range of options, ranging from a $1.7 billion plan to boost diesel train frequency to the $28.9 billion “full transformation” plan several of Brownsberger’s committee colleagues had recommended.
Brownsberger warned, however, that choosing that transformation would not be a “progressive vision” because of his belief that some electric trains on an every-15-minutes schedule would not find enough demand.
Although the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board settled into a “5.5” type plan somewhere between Alternative 5 – which only foresaw subway-like service on certain lines out to Route 128 – and and the “full transformation” Alternative 6, Brownsberger’s arguments appeared to land.
Brian Shortsleeve, an FMCB member and former MBTA general manager, referenced Brownsberger’s arguments several times during the board’s Monday meeting and said the senator “made some excellent points last week.”
Shortsleeve urged the board to ensure whatever plan they embraced would focus on where ridership would increase the most, rather than aiming for service on 15- or 20-minute intervals on every line, for instance.
“I hope as part of today we can articulate some principles but really charge the team with developing a set of options that we can look at, hopefully soon, that maximize the ridership returns based on the amount of investment,” Shortsleeve said. “I think Sen. Brownsberger’s concepts around that return are critical and need to be part of any resolutions we pass today.”
His fellow board members were on the same page: the resolutions they ultimately adopted do not embrace verbatim one of the Rail Vision Advisory Committee’s six plans, but rather urge T staff to work toward 15- or 20-minute gaps between trains “on its most dense corridors” and a “largely electrified” system.
Brownsberger told the News Service on Tuesday that the board’s vote was “the right way to go” and that outright embracing one of the six alternatives that were studied would have “not be doing something intelligent.”
“The densest stuff is where you do have the highest bang for the buck,” Brownsberger said. “You have people that want to get on the train. That’s true for any kind of transit service, bus or anything else, you put it where it’s going to work.”
After that vote, Baker cited Brownsberger’s blog – twice – while answering questions about the commuter rail, calling it a “thoughtful” piece that he would recommend “to anybody.”
“There are three big issues associated with electrification,” Baker told reporters Monday afternoon. “One is, do we have enough power in the grid to actually electrify the system? Number two, are some of the initiatives we’re doing to clean the grid – in other words to use hydro and wind and other sources that are clean – going to be there? Are we going to get an environmental benefit from electrifying the system? And the third is you’ve got to make decisions around electrification consistent with where the ridership is going to be.”
Brownsberger and the governor had not spoken about the topic, according to the senator, who said he appreciates the interest in his arguments from those for whom he has “great respect.”
Baker added: “I think what I would say is I think the piece that Senator Brownsberger wrote about the future of commuter rail was a pretty solid statement on how people ought to be thinking about this.”
