February 23, 2011
by Richard Weir, Boston Herald

T riders were fired up yesterday over a plan announced by the MBTA to ax the backbone of its “Customer Bill of Rights” — the guaranteed refund to passengers whose trips are delayed by more than 30 minutes.

“It’s not fair for riders. If you buy something in a store and you’re not happy with the product, you have a right to a refund for what you’ve bought,” said Rene Mardones, a community organizer with the Roxbury-based T Riders Union.

[...]

The MBTA — which is currently running $12 million in the red, its chief financial officer reported yesterday, not including overtime for snow removal this winter — adopted a Bill of Rights 10 years ago that pledges to “honor” five basic rights.

At the top of the list is: “Your right to on-time service,” it reads. “If your service is delayed more than thirty minutes, your ride is on us. We guarantee it,” it states.

[...]

Davey said the policy is susceptible to fraud since it’s difficult to prove if a rider was indeed on a delayed train or not. But more importantly, he said he would rather take the money that the T spends annually reimbursing riders for late trains and use it instead to update LED signs in subway stations so that customers can get to-the-minute countdown messages on when their next train will be arriving — a project whose $1 million price the T cannot currently afford.

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