MBTA Routinely and Secretly Cancelled Bus and Subway Trips For Years, And Admits Lying About It

The Boston Herald channeled The Onion today while reporting a true story that is literally jaw-dropping: for years, the MBTA has been routinely and secretly cancelling bus and subway trips that are on their schedules, and admits to lying to the public about the practice:

Top MBTA officials acknowledge that for years the agency has been secretly cutting thousands of bus and train trips from published schedules to lower costs - a practice that has left legions of customers waiting for rides that arrived late or not at all.

T General Manager Daniel Grabauskas told the Herald he has moved swiftly to end what he called “hidden service cuts” on bus and subway lines throughout the system. But he said customers have been lied to for years so the T could claim to operate at a level of service it was not delivering.

“We were not telling the truth to our customers before when we were not delivering the service that was scheduled,” Grabasukas said in an interview. “But we began to remedy that when I came on two years ago, and I know we’ve improved service.”...

“I had one very (senior-level) person say to me, ‘We knew we were dropping bus trips, so we’d go to the communities where we were dropping trips out of garages - and we would lie to people,’ ” Grabauskas said.

Grabauskas appears to be channeling the Straight-Talk Express now that John McCain has thrown himself under the bus.

For everyone who stands at a bus stop in foul weather waiting for a scheduled bus that never seemed to show up, you may now know the reason. For those who called the MBTA customer service number to try and figure out where the bus was -- or if a bus was actually running the scheduled route -- and got the run-around from the customer service agent or the garage's dispatcher, you may now know the reason.

You just can't make this stuff up.

For those who may not remember, MBTA General Manager Grabauskas doesn't ride the T himself because "it tends not to be convenient to me."

Via UniversalHub, which includes links to other bloggers' amazement and outrage at the MBTA General Manager's admission.