Pretty much proving what we already knew: they are all $elf-$erving $cum. The black churches are no different.
"Alleged shakedown of Keolis facing federal probe" by Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist January 23, 2015
For years, the Revs. Eugene F. Rivers 3d and Bruce Wall were high-profile peacemakers in Boston’s most troubled neighborhoods, and trusted counselors to two mayors. Sure, they had their adversaries, but they had never been connected to anything untoward.
That changed last year, when the ministers carried out what was largely seen as an attempted shakedown of French transportation giant Keolis for $105,000 during the company’s successful bid for a $1.8 billion commuter rail contract. It was a ham-fisted effort, one I revealed in a column last April.
At the time, the story was simply bizarre, but it may become far more serious. The US attorney’s office is now investigating the incident, and a federal grand jury is weighing whether the scheme amounted to attempted extortion, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
That's a crime.
As I wrote at the time, the pair submitted a bogus “invoice” for providing consulting services on diversity issues — work the pair had not delivered. Rivers presented the bill at a meeting with Keolis spokeswoman Leslie Aun. According to Aun, Rivers claimed the ministers could cause Keolis a lot of trouble if their payment demands were not swiftly met. The tone of the meeting, she said, seemed more than vaguely threatening.
“He started talking to me about how he was ‘below the radar,’ how he was ‘secret ops,’ ” Aun said in an interview last year. “He made it very clear that if we didn’t deliver on what he believed to be our commitment, he was going to make our lives very difficult. He knew members of the media, particularly in France, and it was going to be bad. He had the power to do all this behind-the-scenes stuff.”
So that is where the ties to Nazis came from, huh?
After the meeting, Aun notified Keolis lobbyist Michael J. McCormack, with whom she had attended two earlier meetings with the group. McCormack immediately e-mailed Wall to say that Keolis had never made any agreement to pay the ministers for consulting services, and had no intention of making any payments. Keolis was eventually awarded the commuter rail contract and now operates the service.
The ministers, at the time, said their invoice strategy was simply an effort to force Keolis to commit to a diverse workplace if they won the contract. Keolis officials met with them twice to discuss diversity, but have insisted that there was never any discussion of paying the ministers for anything.
So they admit that the charged shakedown did in fact occur.
************
In an interview last April, Wall described the invoice as an attempt to force Keolis to the bargaining table. He said Keolis had stopped communicating with his group, and the invoice was an attempt to show that he and Rivers would not simply go away. “We never really expected that they would pay us,” he said....
Yeah, what's the big deal?
Both essentially admitted that they billed Keolis for money they weren’t owed, and they appear to have threatened consequences if the company didn’t pay up. That looks pretty close to the textbook definition of attempted extortion.
On the other hand, they might be saved by their sheer ineptitude. No money changed hands, and no harm was done — except to the ministers’ own reputations. It’s conceivable that the federal government will conclude that it has better cases to try.
Yeah, no harm, no foul! Incredible! Would the mouthpiece media or government take that attitude if it were you or me?
Ever since the whole invoice episode became public, Rivers and Wall have mostly been shunned by the powerbrokers who once courted them. That has to be a painful reversal of fortune. Whether their punishment has only begun is a matter now being determined behind closed doors.
Yeah, they have already suffered enough!
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So how are the lines running?
"MBTA fines commuter rail operator $1.6 million; Ontime performance, cleanliness still issues" by Nicole Dungca, Globe Staff January 23, 2015
The company that runs the state’s commuter rail service has been ordered to pay $1.6 million in penalties for poor performance in November and December, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority announced Friday.
The new fines bring the total levied against Keolis to $2.4 million in the seven months it has been running the commuter rail, a sign of the company’s slow progress in living up to some of the promises made when it took over operation in July, including a pledge to increase on-time performance.
About half of the fines levied by the MBTA have been for late trains in October, November, and December. The other half were for problems including cleanliness, staffing, and fare collection.
The company, through a spokesman, vowed to improve....
They were left a damn mess. Feel sorry for them.
Paul Regan, the executive director of the independent MBTA Advisory Board, said the T’s aging equipment undermines the new company’s efforts to provide reliable service.
“The longer they have to wait for reliable vehicles, the more unfair it is that they’re penalized for having to use equipment that they thought was going to be replaced,” Regan said.
The T is now dealing with significant mechanical issues with the new locomotives that have been ordered at a cost of $222 million. The Globe this week reported that the T’s 40 new commuter rail locomotives have been sidelined by flaws, and so far, just eight have been repaired.
What?
On Friday, neither the T nor the MBTA spoke at length about the reasons behind the performance ratings and penalties, but Keolis has previously tied some of its performance issues to the equipment provided by the T.
“It’s very challenging, so the new equipment would be a relief to a lot of the situations that we face today,” Thomas M. Mulligan, the general manager of Keolis, told the MassDOT board of directors at a November meeting.
At one point, he likened the current mechanical issues, with some of the locomotives dating back to the 1970s, to “trying to keep an old car together.”
Where did all the money go all these years?
Related:
"South Korean manufacturer Hyundai Rotem has filed a federal lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, accusing the agency of conducting a “flawed and unlawful” bidding process when it recommended awarding a $566.6 million contract to build new Red and Orange line cars to a Chinese company."
Last guy.
*****************
When the MBTA chose Keolis for the largest operating contract in state history, the T’s general manager, Beverly A. Scott, called it a contract with “no excuses” for benchmarks such as on-time performance. MBCR had drawn criticism for a contract that awarded bonuses to the company despite poor service.
Ronald J. Hartman, the former rail division chief executive of Veolia Transportation, the largest shareholder of MBCR, said Friday that Keolis agreed to a stringent contract.
“It’s tough, and they promised a lot of stuff, and they never delivered,” Hartman said.
They must be steamed.
Under the eight-year contract, Keolis is fined at least $250 for every train that is later than five minutes, or at least $500 for late trains during peak hours. A train later than 40 minutes can cost Keolis $2,500, or $5,000 during peak hours.
The contract requirements are wide-ranging, and include provisions such as providing enough staff per every 300 customers and making sure seats have been wiped down. A problem with a toilet system, for example, costs Keolis $750, according to the contract.
The MBTA detailed the reasons for the penalties Friday....
Looking like a CASH GRAB to me.
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Bet they are regretting they bid and won the contract now.
"Flaws sideline MBTA’s new commuter rail locomotives; Commuter rail vehicles costing $222m need repairs on bearings" by Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff January 21, 2015
The 40 new commuter rail locomotives delivered to the MBTA late last year at a cost of $222 million have all been sidelined to have their traction motor bearings replaced after the manufacturer discovered last summer that at least some of the bearings are faulty.
The major repairs are the latest roadblock in a years-long effort by the MBTA to acquire a fleet of new locomotives to revitalize its rail service, which has had chronic difficulty with on-time performance.
About 130,000 people a day use the commuter rail, and transit specialists have long said ridership would jump sharply if the service were reliable.
Told it was surging for months if not years now, so WTF?
So far, just eight of the locomotives have been repaired. The work will delay the debut of the full complement of locomotives until late this year.
The MBTA knew about the defective bearings last August, but chose to make no public disclosure until the Globe learned about the problems last week.
That certainly gives one confidence that the institutions are telling us the truth.
The decision to remain silent followed criticism of the MBTA for another troubled acquisition. The transit system spent $190 million for 75 new commuter rail passenger cars, which were delivered 30 months late by the South Korean manufacturer Hyundai Rotem and so trouble-prone many of their parts have had to be replaced.
You can have some breakfast while you wait.
Joe Pesaturo, an MBTA spokesman, said last week that the eight locomotives that have been repaired are in service.
But according to records reviewed by the Globe on Monday, just four were in service Friday and Monday. The other four had been taken out of service for maintenance problems unrelated to the bearings, according to the records.
Sigh. Did he lie, and does it matter?
Last November, when the Globe asked about 11 of the locomotives that had just been delivered, Pesaturo said they were “undergoing testing.’’
Asked last Friday why he failed to disclose that the traction motor bearings needed replacement, he said: “The traction motor bearing replacement had not yet begun on the 11 locomotives in question.’’
Do you reporters ever feel like your not being given a straight answer?
Also in November, the MBTA fined the rail system’s operator, Keolis, more than $400,000 for falling short of on-time performance standards. Yet commuter rail analysts say those benchmarks are not attainable without the new locomotives whose defects the MBTA decided not to disclose.
They are really caught in a Catch-22, and so much for the T cutting the new guy some slack.
Technically, all 40 of the locomotives were delivered by the end of 2014 by the principal manufacturer, Motive Power Inc. of Boise, Idaho. But 20 were sent directly to Altoona, Pa., to have the traction motor bearings replaced. The rest are having the work done at a Providence and Worcester Railroad maintenance facility in Worcester.
The delays matter to daily commuters, and to Keolis, the French railway company that began operating the rail system in July and has an eight-year contract with the MBTA. The 40 locomotives are supposed to replace unreliable locomotives, many of which have been in service since the late 1970s.
What took so long getting them replaced?
For commuters, it has been a very long wait. After a false start that began in 2008, the MBTA contracted with Motive Power in 2010 for the first 20 of the 40 locomotives. The delivery date was supposed to be 2013. After the order was expanded, the delivery date was moved back a year. When Keolis took over the service, it anticipated having the new equipment in service by the end of 2014. On Friday, Pesaturo said all of the locomotives are now expected to be in service by late this year.
When the MBTA fined Keolis for not meeting on-time performance goals, Eric Asselin, the executive vice president of Keolis North America, attributed the anemic performance to the aged and unreliable locomotive fleet. He said the new equipment will be needed to resolve on-time issues.
Asselin’s complaint is borne out by the MBTA’s own statistics. The transit authority sets a goal for its commuter rail locomotives to travel an average of 10,200 miles between mechanical failures. In October, the month for which the fines were levied, that number nose-dived to 3,193 miles, less than half what it was the previous month.
Half of all local commuter rail delays are caused by substandard locomotives, according to transit officials.
Mac Daniel, a spokesman for Keolis, declined on Monday to answer questions about the recent impact of the delayed deliveries.
The new locomotives are diesel-electric hybrids. Each has a 4,600-horsepower diesel engine that powers four electric traction motors that drive the wheels. The engines and motors were manufactured by General Electric.
Oh, they are the ones who built the crap!
The high-precision ball bearings reduce friction and make possible the smooth rotation of the axles that are driven by the electric motors.
In e-mails, Pesaturo initially said the locomotives did not require post-delivery modifications to make them operable. He said they only needed to have the bearings replaced “as a precaution to ensure that the traction motor bearings last for their design life.’’
The bearings, he said, were not improperly installed, but some were damaged when they were shipped from Pennsylvania to Idaho in a way that could diminish the life of the bearings. They are being replaced at no cost to the transit authority, according to Pesaturo.
Pesaturo, who refused to talk to a Globe reporter, said in one of several e-mail responses that the MBTA saw no need to disclose the defective bearings since the repairs are being done at no cost to the MBTA, the locomotives were manufactured on schedule, and they were “operational” when they left Idaho.
Jonathan Klein, a former chief mechanical officer for Amtrak who has long experience in contracts for new commuter rail equipment, said he is heartened that Motive Power and GE discovered the problem and are replacing the bearings.
Even so, Klein said, “something is fundamentally screwed-up with a contract to pay nearly a quarter billion dollars for locomotives that immediately go into storage for repairs.’’
That seems to be the AmeriKan $y$tem these days.
Klein said the transit system has a “dismal history” with its purchases of new commuter rail and rapid transit equipment.
Moreover, he said, “keeping quiet about this and pretending that nothing major happened is questionable contract management when your new fleet won’t operate. You owe it to riders and crews to let them know there is a major problem and you are working on it.’’
The bearings aside, one mechanical specialist raised concerns about the reliability of the locomotives.
Joseph A. English, a long-time foreman who is also the union representative for commuter rail mechanical supervisors at the MBTA and at Amtrak, said there have been ongoing service issues with the new locomotives. Many of the problems, he said, stem from failures in the system’s software that impede communications with the passenger cars.
Are you flipping kidding?!
Long-term, English said, the mechanics who work on the locomotives fear “there will be ongoing reliability issues.’’
And this month's fine?
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"Budget squeeze may imperil late-night MBTA service" by Gintautas Dumcius, State House News Service January 21, 2015
The future of the program extending late-night operation of MBTA trains and buses could be in jeopardy as state transportation officials look for ways to address a huge midyear state budget shortfall and to plan for next fiscal year’s budget.
Related: As Deval Leaves....
He didn't go by T.
The $13 million, year-long pilot program started in March 2014, extending service by 90 minutes on MBTA lines and 15 bus routes on Friday and Saturday nights until at least 2:30 a.m. The operation has drawn 850,000 riders since its inception, according to the MBTA.
“The service has been run so far as a pilot and we were always going to come back to the board with the result of that pilot, both utilization by passengers and financial performance,” said Acting Transportation Secretary Frank DePaola, after a meeting of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s board of directors. “So I think it’s too early to say it’s on the chopping block, but in the light of our current state budgetary issues, we do have to be fiscally prudent.”
Fiscal 2015 starts in July. At the board meeting, DePaola noted Governor Charlie Baker’s estimate, revealed Tuesday, that the current state budget deficit was $765 million. MassDOT will have to look for $25 million in spending reductions for fiscal 2015, DePaola said.
“I’d say it’s more of an important discussion for building our [fiscal 2016] budgets,” DePaola told the News Service.
Asked whether the late-night service was meeting financial expectations, MBTA general manager Beverly Scott said the agency will soon provide the board with a report.
Scott said preliminary data show that about 20 percent of the late-night riders were using the service for work commutes and about two-thirds of the riders already have passes.
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Related: Keep late-night MBTA on track
Where is the money coming from?
Two women injured in Orange Line shooting
Maybe you should call a cab:
"Popular ride-hailing app Uber has raised $1.6 billion in a deal with Goldman Sachs wealth management clients. Goldman Sachs spokeswoman Andrea Raphael says the financing comes in the form of a bond that can later be converted into stock when Uber goes public. Last month, San Francisco-based Uber raised $1.2 billion in financing that valued the company at $40 billion. That puts it in the ballpark of public companies such as DirecTV and Kraft Foods."
Did you know Uber is Jewish owned?
Maybe you should ride a bike:
"With grant money, Fortified Bike plans a hangout for Boston’s bike community" by Scott Kirsner
Boston startup Fortified Bicycle just nabbed a $150,000 grant through the Mission Main Street Grants program run by JP Morgan Chase & Co., and it plans to use the money to build out a new office on the edge of Chinatown that it hopes will become a gathering place for Boston’s bike community.
Now we $ee who is behind that agenda.
Fortified Bicycle, previously known as Gotham Bicycle Defense Industries, has launched several theft-resistant bike lights, and is now designing a complete bicycle for urban cyclists, along with other accessories like cargo racks. The company raised $800,000 from investors last year after running several successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, and it also participated in the 2014 Techstars Boston accelerator program.
With the grant, Fortified CEO Slava Menn says he plans to rent a 2,500-square foot “hacker/workshop” space, likely on Kingston Street, and create not just offices for his company, but “a community space for Boston biking,” he says. Menn says he has been discussing the project with City of Boston “bike czar” Nicole Freedman....
Does AmeriKa really need czars?
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Only one way left left to go:
"The boy was only 7 or so, seemingly young enough to walk down the street without running into trouble. But he was wearing Nike Air Force I sneakers. And that was enough to make him the target of four young men, one of whom had a gun, police say. Fortunately for the boy, a good Samaritan came to his rescue Tuesday afternoon, driving the group away as they tried to steal his shoes."
I suppose it could have been worse.
NDUs:
"A Boston Uber driver was indicted Thursday on charges of kidnapping and raping a female passenger in December, according to authorities. Alejandro Done, 46, is charged with kidnapping, three counts of aggravated rape, and two counts of assault and battery, the office of Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan said. Done allegedly found the victim as she was waiting on Tremont Street for a pre-arranged ride-hailing driver on Dec. 6. Authorities said Done allegedly drove to a location that the victim was unfamiliar with, locked the car doors, struck and choked the victim, and sexually assaulted her."
Also see:
Smoke-filled Red Line train causes panic
What's the fine going to be?
2 men arrested over shooting at Forest Hills station
I'm sure there is some sort of fine due.
If someone died, send the reverends over for la$t rites.
