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Audit faults MBTA for CharlieCard misuse by transit ambassadors • Rhode Island Current
BOSTON — The MBTA knew as early as 2019 that some of its transit ambassadors were using agency-issued CharlieCards for personal use, but the transit authority has failed to address the problem, according to a new state audit.
The ambassadors, who work for a private contractor that operates under the name Block By Block, help passengers buy tickets and navigate stations and also serve as the T’s eyes and ears monitoring safety hazards and maintenance needs inside the subway system.
“The MBTA should hold Block By Block accountable for inappropriate use of these cards,” said the report from Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office.
The report also found that the T could not verify that ambassadors were fully trained before assuming their posts and that spot checks of station infrastructure (elevators, escalators, and other equipment) were not being conducted at agreed-upon twice-per-hour intervals.
The audit — covering the two-year period from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2022 – was released on Sunday, which is unusual. A spokesman for the auditor’s office said the audit was released over the weekend to reduce overlap with another audit or audits scheduled to be released this week.
According to the audit, the problem of ambassadors abusing T passes first surfaced in April 2019, when the MBTA decided to replace CharlieCards assigned to specific stations with passes assigned to individual transit ambassadors.
In a communication at the time to transit ambassadors and Block By Block, the T said the change was needed because there had been a significant increase in what it called “courtesy taps” with the CharlieCards and not all taps were being reported. The communication also reiterated that the CharlieCards were to be used for work only and their use would be closely monitored.
Three months later, the MBTA shifted gears and went back to the system of assigning cards to stations and not individuals, in part because high turnover of transit ambassadors made it difficult to track card usage.
Nevertheless, the audit said, the three-month experiment “revealed signs of misuse of the courtesy taps (e.g., BBB employees letting people in for free and cards being used at locations not covered by those employees).”
At the end of the two-year audit period on December 31, 2022, the problem had not gone away. The audit said the station-based cards were used for more than 2.5 million taps over the two years, but only 669,547, or 27 percent, were reported by transit ambassadors along with specific reasons for the taps.
“Failure to properly record courtesy taps, at a rate of $2.40 per transaction, increases the risk for significant lost revenue,” the audit said. “Our analysis also identified 83,990 instances where these fare access cards were used at different MBTA locations than the ones where the cards were assigned. In 445 of these instances, the fare access cards were used on an MBTA bus, indicating a high probability that the card was used for personal use.”
Transit ambassadors reported that they used their passes to let riders into the subway system in many instances because of problems with passenger gates, faulty fare passes, and mixups involving riders unfamiliar with the system.
But the cards were also used to let in members of the military (48,038 taps), customers experiencing homelessness (75,532 taps), customers who didn’t have enough money for the fare (92,492 taps), and for station checks (113,295).
The audit included a response from the MBTA, which disputed the suggestion that ambassadors were tapping in customers and costing the T significant fare revenue.. The T said many of the taps not reported by ambassadors were related to infrastructure checks, mostly for elevator inspections. The agency also said the CharlieCards are secured in station booths and instances where passes are being used “at an abnormally high rate” are investigated by the T’s fraud department.
The audit, however, said the T’s deputy director of fraud detection and analytics revealed that his team does not monitor courtesy taps. The audit also said on-site monitoring of ambassadors indicated the passes are not confined to a station booth but typically carried by the ambassadors themselves.
The audit urged the T to set a specific threshold for courtesy taps that, if exceeded, would trigger an investigation.
“It is also important to investigate instances that exceed the established threshold or when station-assigned fare access cards are used at locations other than where they are assigned,” the audit said. “For example, as part of our data analysis, we noted that on December 31, 2022, one station-assigned fare access card was used 40 times at the Orient Heights station when it was assigned to the Wood Island station. The use of this pass 40 times in one day in a station where it was not assigned—and certainly not secured in the station booth—and the MBTA’s response to this issue indicates a lack of monitoring and control and a lack of awareness by MBTA management about how its operations are being conducted.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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New East Bay Bike Path bridges are open and ready for bikes
What’s it like to ride over the new East Bay Bike Path bridges? We sent a reporter to try them out.
I’ve long thought bike paths are among Rhode Island’s premier attractions, up there with the beaches, the mansions and the bay.
We like to knock government, but credit where it’s due, the state has done an amazing job building out an incredible pedaling network.
It’s clearly a priority.
At least I thought it was.
But they’ve just dropped the ball on what should have been a beautiful new stretch.
The plan was to finish a mile-long connector from the East Providence end of the Henderson Bridge all the way to the East Bay Bike Path.
There was even $25 million set aside to get it done.
Except WPRI recently reported that it’s now been canceled.
The main fault lies with the Trump administration, which is no friend of bike paths, and moved to kill that $25 million.
But it gets complicated, as government funding always does.
To try to rescue that money, the state DOT reportedly worked with the administration to refunnel it into a road project. Specifically, the $25 million will now be spent helping upgrade the mile-long highway between the Henderson Bridge and North Broadway in East Providence, turning it into a more pleasant boulevard.
That totally sounds worthy.
But it’s insane to throw away the bike path plan.
Especially for a particular reason in this case.
They’d already put a ton of money into starting it.
When state planners designed the new Henderson Bridge between the East Side and East Providence, they included a bike path.
It’s a beauty – well protected from traffic by a barrier, a great asset for safely riding over the Seekonk River.
The plan was to continue it another mile or so along East Providence’s Waterfront Drive, ultimately connecting with the East Bay Bike Path, which runs all the way to Bristol. Which, by the way, is one of the nicest bike paths you’ll find anywhere.
But alas, that connector plan has been canceled.
So the expensive stretch over the Henderson Bridge to East Providence is now a bike path to nowhere. Once the bridge ends, the path on it continues a few hundred yards or so and then, just … ends.
Too bad.
We were so close.
Most of the stories on the issue have been about the complex negotiation to rescue the $25 million by rerouting it to that nearby highway-to-boulevard project. But I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of that bureaucratic process here because it loses sight of the heart of this story.
Which is that an amazing new addition to one of the nation’s best state bike path systems has just been scrapped.
You can knock the Rhode Island government for blowing a lot of things.
The PawSox.
The Washington Bridge.
But they’ve done great with bike paths.
And especially, linking many of them together.
Example: not too many years ago, Providence bikers had to risk dicey traffic on the East Side to get to the more pleasant paths in India Point Park and on the 195 bridge to the East Bay Path.
But the state fixed that by adding an amazing connector that starts behind the Salvation Army building and beautifully winds along the water of the Seekonk River for a mile or so.
That makes a huge difference – and no doubt has avoided some bike-car accidents.
We were close to a comparable stretch on the other side of the river – that’s what the $25 million would have done.
But it’s now apparently dead.
Online commenters aren’t happy about it.
On a Reddit string, “Toadscoper” accused the state of being “complicit” with the feds in rerouting the money from bikes to cars.
And there was this fascinating post from FineLobster 5322, who apparently is a disappointed planner who worked on the project: “Mind you money has already been spent on phase one so rejecting it at this point is wasting money and also against the public interest … but what do I know? I only worked on the project as an engineer … I didn’t get into this to build more highways. I do it … to give back to communities and give them more access to their environment.”
Wow. One can imagine the state planning team is devastated. That’s not a small consideration. Good people go into government to make life better in Rhode Island, and it’s a bad play to take the spirit out of the job by first assigning a great human-scale project and then, after a ton of work, trashing it.
A poster named Homosapiens simply said, “We just accept this?”
Hopefully not.
The first stretch of the path over the Henderson Bridge is done, money already sunk.
What a shame to leave that as a path to nowhere.
It doesn’t have to happen.
Between Governor McKee and our Washington delegation, there’s got to be a way to get this done.
There’s got to be.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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