(The following article by Mac Daniel was posted on the Boston Globe website on August 25.)
BOSTON — The head of the consortium that runs the MBTA’s commuter rail system has resigned under withering criticism about late trains and chronic poor service, which worsened after the Big Dig tunnel closings sent more commuters to trains.
Paul Lundberg, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, was responsible for the management and operation of the commuter rail system and its 1,750 employees.
After meeting with the consortium’s top officials on Wednesday, Lundberg submitted his resignation around 6 p.m., officials said. Lundberg did not return phone calls yesterday.
Lundberg was immediately replaced by James F. O’Leary, former general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and also president of Alternate Concepts Inc., one of the commuter rail consortium’s partners.
Lundberg, who had led the consortium since it signed a five-year, $1.07 billion contract with the T in 2003, was under increasing pressure from both T and top consortium officials to improve service.
While the consortium was generally credited with making improvements since taking over commuter rail from Amtrak, there had been periodic complaints and service breakdowns, especially during the summer and winter.
Then, in the past six weeks, the consortium also had to deal with thousands of additional passengers after a fatal Big Dig ceiling collapse on July 10. It was a summer filled with canceled trips, coaches with faulty air conditioners, and, on many days, hundreds of angry passengers stranded on station platforms.
Last month, Daniel A. Grabauskas, now the T’s general manager, summoned Lundberg and other commuter rail officials to a meeting where they were given a scathing review and ordered to improve service immediately.
But Olivier Brousse, chairman of the consortium’s board of directors, said the former general manager was not forced out.
“We made an agreement to part ways,” said Brousse, chairman of consortium partner Veolia Transportation North America, who flew to Boston from Paris for Wednesday’s meeting.
He said the consortium was also bringing in transportation specialists from its three companies to assist O’Leary and his team with a host of problems, including equipment shortages and faulty air conditioning.
The consortium faces future pressures, including completing a slow-moving $23.5 million program to refurbish the T’s ailing commuter rail fleet and helping to open the Greenbush commuter rail line on the South Shore by next summer, Brousse said.
When the Greenbush line opens, the number of coaches required for rush-hour service will jump from 333 to 357, and the number of locomotives from 56 to 60. Without major improvements in maintenance, T and consortium officials fear that service will suffer.
“The coming months are going to be particularly challenging for MBCR,” Brousse said. “We believe that the reputation of the three groups is at stake. We are determined to prove that we can do better than Amtrak, and that’s what we intend to do.”
O’Leary said yesterday that he had already met with senior staff and that more discussions with employees will follow. “We want to try to work with the staff here to restore the confidence of the passengers,” he said.
O’Leary has been president of Boston-based ACI for 16 years. The company also oversees and operates Paul Revere Bus Company and Puerto Rico’s first rapid transit system.
T officials said Lundberg’s departure may also be an effort by the consortium to bolster its reputation nationwide as a potential bidder as the federal government and Congress consider privatizing portions of Amtrak’s rail system, especially in the lucrative Northeast corridor.
When the consortium was awarded the contract to run commuter rail, many rail watchers saw it as a chance for the company to prove it could run a railroad and compete for more contracts.
The T’s commuter rail system is the fifth largest commuter rail network in the United States, serving 40 million passengers a year in nearly 80 cities and towns in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The consortium is a partnership of Veolia Transportation North America Inc., the transportation division of Veolia Environment, which is Europe’s largest passenger transportation company; Bombardier Transportation, which makes passenger rail vehicles; and Alternate Concepts, a Boston-based transportation operations and consulting firm with expertise in the design, operation, and maintenance of rail transit systems.
Lundberg left a week after MBTA officials said the consortium met short-term goals set in last month’s meeting by increasing the number of on-time trains and decreasing the number of coaches without air conditioning.
Grabauskas, who has threatened to put the commuter rail contract back out for bid if there are widespread problems, said improvements would have to continue into the fall, when commuter rail is traditionally slowed by leaves on tracks and suffers a lack of heat in coaches.
Consortium officials said they achieved the goals by doubling overtime pay for the past month, canceling manager vacations, and finding ways to speed repairs.
“The MBTA commuter rail customers and I expect good quality service, and what I am focused on are the results of their efforts,” Grabauskas said yesterday. “I expressed to them that obviously there was a great deal of disappointment, and that I was most interested in seeing them do what they believe to be necessary to achieve the results that our customers expect.”