Recent decisions by the DOT: 1- Award commuter rail car contract to an unproven supplier who is now years behind on delivery. 2- Hire a new head of the MBTA without even knowing that a recently completed audit of MARTA during her tenure showed lax financial and labor management skills on her part.  Are these examples of accountability Davies is proud of? The governor is an astute, smooth politician.  But he is one lousy executive manager.  

How much of the projected cost is due to the requirement to hire public union labor? Put the project out to bid, and it will probably be able to be done for 60% of the projected cost.

Fix the existing infratructure.  Raise about $500M in new revenue.  But $2B in projects we can't afford is just down right dumb in this economy.

$11 Billion in taxpayer money saved in consolidations, reforms, and structuring in the last 6 years. This administration has done the work of protecting taxpayer dollars. It's never perfect, but it's better than anyone else has ever done. If MA wants to remain competitive, see its economy grow, see its population grow, then it needs to invest in its infrastructure. Transportation and education are at the top of that list of how MA attracts dollars. We are long overdue for a proposal like this.

We need to fix and maintaing the transportation infrastructure. We don't need a rail line to Springfield or the Cape.

Put tolls on the expressway....people who enjoy the benefits of the big dig should have to pay for it.

Cost cutters have been working on the Transportation dept. for years. What they considered austerity was they just wouldn't pay the bill, resulting in borrowing at interest. Now an administration which wants to pay the bill looks bad because they don't want to kick the can down the road one more time.

Sorry, Yvonne, but you are giving an Ozzie interpretation of this tax and spend effort at Dukakis II by the Taxashoosetts unbeloved Demohack in chief. He is not trying to, as your headline writer put it, "fix transit". Deeval wants to be known in the history books as Patrick the choochoo builder. Newly built rail lines from Boston to Hyannis (to play golf at Wianno or Hyannisport and swim at Craigville), beautiful downtown Pittsfield to New York City (this must be to carry all those music-deprived Noo Yawkers to Tangledbush), and South Station to Taunton (for the Mohawk gambling palace), Fall River (for the battleship, Massachusetts) and New Bedford (if the fishing fleet is still in business). What a legacy, for a poor boy from Chicago, say what? Deeval has a secondary dream - his own version of the Long Island Railroad to carry executives from Hyannis and Plymouth and Springfield to Boston like New York executives take the LIRR from the Hamptons and Riverhead into THE City. By the time Deeval's choochoo sets are built, he will be long gone... to Washington to show how brilliant he is to the nation or back to Chicago where he can hide his brilliance from the wrath of the Taxashoosetts taxpayers (or at least those who remain, unable to afford even a move north to New Hampshire). There... a prediction of Deeval the self-magnified's future. Lets hope Chicago wants him back.

As someone who crams into a dirty, crowded, not-frequent-enough Orange Line train each morning and evening (and I'm lucky, I could be on the Green Line), I agree with Yvonne. We do need professional, accountable management in transportation and I have serious misgivings about the new T director. But our transportation infrastructure simply needs more funding, period. And we can no longer afford to keep taking it out of health care or higher ed. I also think the structure of the tax changes make sense, even though the higher income tax will take a bigger bite out of my own paycheck than, say, a gas tax would have. Lower the sales tax which is the most regressive tax of all. I'm not a huge Patrick fan but I believe he got it right this time. Let's see if the legislature can get its act together and make this stuff happen.

Can you imagine giving these clowns even more money? Absurd.

This makes sense, but Ms. Abraham said that the Lawrence Mayor's Chief of Staff was responsible for some mis-behavior involving a fire truck to the Dominican Republic. But this was not the current Chief of Staff. Ms. Abraham owes him an apology in writing.

While being a very strong supporter of public transport and many other public efforts, I'm also disgusted by the blatant waste, fraud and abuse in this state.

Go to any state funded construction site and notice how many workers and police detail officers are standing around drinking coffee and watching the one or two people actually working. Now take a look at how private construction sites are run.

There's always going to be vehement resistance to more public funding of anything while our government can be justly referred to on national television as "Baton Rouge on the Charles".

Of course I'm not thrilled with higher taxes like everyone else. But...IF...and it's a big IF...the money goes for new trains on the Red Line, updated signals at JFK, fixing Quincy Center station so I don't have dirty rain water pouring down on my head when I walk up the stairs from the platform...if it went towards restoring the Night Owl service...if I saw bridges and highways actually being repaired and updated...then I could support this. However, as mentioned in an earlier Globe article, the pressure from all sides to grab at this money when it comes in, will be intense. If this money goes to give teachers "long overdue raises"...if it goes to "stabilize pension funding"...if it goes to brand new commuter rail services to places that we just can NOT afford to link up right now (no, sorry, I don't want to pay for Commuter Rail to New Bedford) and I'm still having to cover my head with a newspaper when riding the escalator at Quincy Center...then there should be Hell raised about it...

Ok. Let me get this straight.   The T is a mess because it is massively underfunded.    Ha ha ha ha ha ha

The most important thing is to stop the bleeding first.

Got to pry most of the hacks and thuggers out .....  sort of like de-lousing...

Let's not forget the recent maneuver by the State Police, who reduced their own payroll costs by transferring troopers to Mass Pike and Mass Port duty, where their salaries would be paid for by those agencies. It was a cost-cutting move by the State Police, but at the expense of our Transportation budgets On a micro-scale, that's exactly the kind of shell-game that's gotten Massachusetts into the mess it's in. When the Big Dig costs were spiralling out of control, they were shifted to the Mass Pike. When the Mass Pike could no longer afford to pay the bills, the Department of Transportation was created to shift the costs there. And on and on, the shell game continued; while those in positions of power looked the other way. The problem with all of these proposals is that the proponents have lost all credibility with the public. And until that credibility is restored, this will be a very hard sell, indeed.

Really Yvonne? You really think that taxpayers trust our corrupt politicians to do the right thing when they are handed over a billion dollars from the already strapped taxpayers? AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN! When government waste, corruption and mismanagement (not even MENTIONING PC police hiring policies) are at least ACKNOWLEGED by our "public servants", then and ONLY then will taxpayers consider forking over more of their hard earned tax dollars. But as they say (especially after the last election) "when pigs fly"

All of us, not just some of us, should have to sacrifice something for the over all well being of our Commonwealth's transportation system. We need a balanced approach. We are either all in this together or we are not.

I would be happy if I could understand any human voices on any speaker in the transit system. The Washington D.C. Metro folks seem to know how to announce train and bus stops.

25% of the designated increase for this stuff will be lucky to get there. The rest will end up in somebody's pockets.