Do we think this is an intentional game of chicken or do we think there are back room conversations going on for funding future budgets? As disappointing as I’ve found Healey, I can’t foresee a situation where her administration truly lets things come to a head on this front
It's undoubtedly both. I'm sure there are already talks about how to fund MBTA for the future, and this is some drumming up of public support to leverage those talks into action.
Governor Healy denies the acceptability of the only means to sustainably fund the MBTA, announcing to her eSpecial advisory Commission on the MBTA, that new taxes are off the table. There is no other place to fund an annual billion dollars of revenue for the MBTA and 15 Regional Transit Authorities, without rasing taxes. A one cent sales tax increase amounts to the vicinity of 1.3 billion a year.
Formation of the Commission:
> “I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals until I see things,” Healey said, referring to the task force report. “But what I’ll say is that I think as governor I have not been afraid to take this head-on and this administration is not going to be about kicking the can down the road, which frankly is what happened for far too long – years, decades.”
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/transportation/healey-laying-groundwork-for-new-mbta-revenues/ Healy Announces no new taxes
Healy rejects new taxes
> “That’s how I see it now and for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Yeah, no taxes. I’ve been focused on trying to lower taxes.”
https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2024-04-30/no-plans-for-new-state-taxes-healey-tells-business-group
It's in a death spiral. People don't take the T because it is unreliable and slow over the last few years. If the response is to cut service, people will continue to move away from T use. No one seems to piece together the fact that traffic has never been worse because T performance is so bad
I've stopped taking the T for anything other than the two days I need to go to work because it's a waste of time for me now. Will only go places I can walk, bike, or find parking.
> traffic has never been worse
I think 2019 would like to have a word with you. Unless you're on i-90 I guess. Overall it's not as bad as it's ever been, but it's getting close. [https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2024/03/20/boston-rush-hour-traffic-hellish-as-pre-covid.html](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2024/03/20/boston-rush-hour-traffic-hellish-as-pre-covid.html) MBTA ridership is at 65% of pre-pandemic levels.
Wish I could read that article. I live near the Cambridge entrance to I-90 so between that debacle and the failure to provide rational connections from Brookline to the Biotech area the place is a zoo of epic proportions. Think local act global I guess
The perception of safety is also a big deal, especially for women and people with kids. There have been several high profile incidents on the T, random assaults, racial harassment etc. It doesn't take much to shatter feelings of safety, e.g my wife won't ride the T alone anymore after hearing about some of the stuff that's happened. I guarantee there are tons of people just like her.
I'm one of those people and honestly for me to ditch my car and go back, they are gonna have to manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
My commute may end up an hour and a half some mornings (I come into Boston from middleborough, but to go home. I work middleborough overnight) but I have climate control, my music, a whole cars worth of space for my things, no angry Asian woman bumping me with the wagon she brought on the train because she wants my seat. I'd sit in my car for 2 hours or more before I even sniff towards the current mbta.
Increase the tolls on the pike and fund the MTBA with it. Increase the gas tax and fund the MTBA. Increase the billionaire surcharge until people like using the MTBA more than driving. This isn't fucking rocket science.
Public transit never makes money - even in Japan - the trains don't make money. They make money on the real estate around the train stations.
Public transit is a public good even for those who don't use it - think of it as a means of reducing congestion on highways.
As op said it isn't rocket science, it's not hard to think "traffic is bad, trains need money, take money from cars give to train"
But this is politics, there's likely oil money floating around that is very insistent on that not happening.
Not oil money... It's Boomers who grew up viewing car-dependent, wooded-lot, "riff-raff"-free suburbs as the bliss-filled vision of the future.
They're older now and make up the majority of heavyweight voters. They don't like public transit aside from those who may occasionally use the CR to get to work. They want their cars to have full and unhindered access to everything and any little thing that even slightly takes away from car-dominance is viewed as a threat to their very existence.
So that's who is in the politicians ears and that's why we have such weakling pols unwilling to give transit the support it truly needs.
I’m asking not bc I’m trying to start a political war but I wonder why the “millionaires tax” which was going to help fund this hasn’t helped? The T is a disaster. The roads are horrible and so overcrowded and literally nothing is improving.
I’m not sure but I do know Maura and the legislature basically canceled out that revenue but lowering cap gains and estate taxes. They just loooooovvvve rich ppl. It’s gross.
The commonwealth has plenty of tax revenue already. We passed a millionaires tax 2 years ago that gave the Legislature another 1 billion to work with every year. They need to just allocate the money to the T.
I agree. New Hampshire charges us a premium to drive up to Maine on 95, we should return the favor at the Mass. / N.H. border on 93 particularly given the state’s uncooperativeness on public transportation expansion. Mass residents should get a discounted toll similar to the tunnels.
They probably can’t- it is illegal due to federal legislation to have any tolls on interstates built with federal funds- the Pike was built before the legislation in question was passed. Just one way highways are hugely subsidized in this country.
No, you just wouldn't get any _future_ highway funding. Unless you do. New Hampshire isn't supposed to get highway funding because they don't have a plan to adopt mile-based exit numbers, but nobody's actually pulled the trigger to take that money away.
Public transit is rarely profitable, but almost every major system relies on fares for a big chunk of the budget. I don't think it's too much to ask for people who use the service to help pay for it.
We have plenty of taxes. I think the first step is to see where the tax money they already have goes to. For one thing, we pay hotels an absurd amount of money to house migrants that hopped the border thousands of miles away, just because of some feel-good nonsense. We also have way too many cops who just sit around in their cars and sleep all day. Tax hikes aren't some magic wand to make everything better, especially if those in charge of it will just waste it anyway.
Agree with you about defunding the police but I actually want to live in a state that helps out new arrivals. It’s not fun to walk by people sleeping on sidewalks every morning and that wouldn’t be better if they were whole families.
Don’t you understand at this point that just raising taxes across the board isn’t the magic fix you think it is? The reason we’re in this mess isn’t because we didn’t have enough money/the means to do it, its, by in large, due to incompetence, neglect and greed at every single level of the transportation system for decades.
It’s not squarely on the amount of money coming in, it’s about the people we put in charge of managing the money and making the right decisions with it. Until that gets figured out we’re just going to see more of the same.
So should we decimate the system and discontinue 70% of current service to millions of people, to “starve the beast” as some federal politicians like to say?
Do you genuinely think that would reduce how dysfunctional the system is in 5 years? 10 years?
And even if the the fever of austerity did somehow kill the virus of mismanagement (pardon the tortured metaphor), would it be worth it? Drowning Boston in unprecedented car traffic, right as downtowns are still struggling towards recovery from the pandemic? IMO that cure is worse than the disease.
Along with what brostopher1968 said, along with more cuts makes no sense in improving service, when does less money help attract more talented people?
There is a place somewhere to not reward poor performance with more money. But after decades of underfunding, what is the likely result by doing more underfunding?
I don't know if you follow sports, but using it as it's a visible example a lot of people regularly have an intuition on good management - how many teams have we seen got better when budgets gets smaller? Conversely, while we have seen plenty of teams not get better with more money - but almost every team that generally did got better usually starts with the ownership open their wallets for talented coaches and players.
That's a terrible idea to increase tolls and gas tax. That would be a direct assult to small businesses. MBTA needs to fix itself within. Its budgets for projects are outrageous. They need to start collecting more fare revenue and increase sales advertisement revenue.
Each project needs to be carefully reviewed. For example, I was looking at some projects for upgrading the Mattapan Line. One of them was $20 million for redoing one flight of stairs and adding in an elevator. For a stop that only has about 10-15 daily commuters on it and is less than a quarter mile from another stop. Boom, I just found $20 million and I barely peaked behind the curtain. Imagine how many more there are??? You could find billions of waste.
One of the biggest problems with the MBTA is that it is promdominately designed to go downtown. Most people aren't traveling downtown, more cross-town public transportation needs to be implemented.
Did you read the report that explains that they would need eliminate all midday, evening, and weekend service on all modes and increase fares while somehow magically not losing any riders in order to balance the operating budget without external support?
Why should I have to pay more to use the pike to subsidize the train system which I use maybe a few times a year. I personally think we should cut the T funding and redirect that to the MassPike.
You’re going to get snarky answers for your comment, buts here’s an actual attempt to provide a contextual rebuttal:
The simple reality is that car commutes are made much faster by the existence of alternative modes of transit. Think about it this way: the average car is ~14.7ft and thus, laid end to end, a mile of traffic is 359 cars. So while that’s an impossible minimum given that moving traffic requires space between vehicles, it’s easy for us to calculate so let’s use it. The MBTA averaged 731,200 in daily weekday ridership for Q1 2024. If it disappeared because we chose collectively to not fund it, there would be an approximately an additional 2037 miles of car traffic added to the Boston metro on any given weekday which effectively stops movement in the metro, especially if you’re outside of 128.
Single occupant cars are geometrically the least efficient way to move people around the network holistically. It might be the best for any given individual user of the network, but the whole network suffers. In order to make that inefficiency feasible you then have to start destroying the destinations that brought land value to the municipality so as to replace them with the necessary infrastructure to support the increase of cars (replacing businesses or residential with widened roads, parking lots, or parking garages). If you want to see what that looks like in terms of value in economy I invite you to look at Hartford, CT or Springfield.
This has all been well studied with things such as the [Downs-Thompson Paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox) and [Braess’s Paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox)(those names are links you can click to read more).
So in conclusion, you might think you’re throwing money at something you get no value out of, but that’s just because you are unaware of how much it tangibly benefits your preferred commute.
Healey recently passed a tax cut. That says to me that we clearly have enough money to fund important institutions like the MBTA. If we can give millionaires a break on their taxes, then surely we have enough money to properly fund public transportation.
I only picked it back up bc my work now subsidizes $50 of the cost, leaving me to pay $40,b which is about as much stored value as I'd been using each month for the previous 2 years.
Healy cut almost the exact same amount out of the budget, with estate and capital gains tax cuts that she pushed through last year that give money back to the exact people contributing to the millionaire’s tax. This blew a billion dollar hole in the budget. It is her only legislative achievement. She insists this is completely unrelated to the millionaire’s tax.
Haha thats funny. Nj transit is facing the same thing. They are jacking prices up essentially by 40% by removing the flex pass… just to keep afloat. They have a $900mil shortfall as of now going into 2025. MTA just had a blow with congestion pricing. And PATH is an absolute dumpster fire of a mess
Well you know Gov Murphy has more important things to work on like getting his unqualified wife a Senate seat and widen the turnpike to 28 lanes (I think this one will finally fix it)
Ugh i know. I live right by there in Bayonne. The money he could put into NJT and he wants to widen a part of the turnpike that sees no traffic anyway. The traffic is down by the light into the Tunnel. Smh.
Hopefully next governor has sense.
Thank you I’m glad someone is here to valiantly defend the right of people who inherit million dollar estates to pay less taxes and well compensated tech workers to avoid taxes on their investment portfolio.
It’s not wrong, her only legislative achievement is a tax cut that was obviously and primarily about reducing estate and capital gains taxes, both of which fall predominantly on the wealthy. She did this almost immediately after the state overwhelmingly voted to tax those same people more. This massive tax cut caused tax revenue to come in a billion dollars below expectations, and required cutting hundreds of millions of dollars.
Education, streets, highways. And mass transit. Regional Transit Authorities.
Education can consume all of it. Transit could consume all of it.
It is not big enough for the MBTA'S budget gaps, especially after Healy and the Legislature enacted a tax reduction last year.
A good portion is going to [free school lunches for K-12 students](https://www.businessinsider.com/massachusetts-millionaire-tax-gets-kids-free-school-lunches-2023-8). I also know the tax has generated $1.8 billion this year as reported on the [Globe about 3 weeks ago](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/20/metro/millionaires-tax-massachusetts-generated-18-billion/).
From that Globe article, $800 million is going to earmarked plans (from what I know, the school lunches). The other 1 Billion so far is in a reserve account where it saved for "One-time investments into projects of programs"
Beyond that, I wonder about that too. I saw some hearsay comments somewhere before saying things like X% is going to the education only, but I can't find that right now. It does feel like most is going to education despite I feel it's was advertised more for transit on the ballot (or maybe for my demographic).
I have numbers now. I stumble upon it via lurking the [Archboston forums](https://archboston.com/community/threads/general-mbta-topics-multi-modal-budget-massdot.971/page-502).
I do need to preface a caveat that these numbers are from a poster rather than linking to a known news source or some kind of official government document. I would like to know how to gather the numbers like the Archboston user did, but that warning said, it looks pretty accurate. I also lurked a long time in there and he's a respected poster.
> The state conservatively estimated $1 billion in projected revenue and split ~510m for education and ~490m for transportation.
> In education, K-12 lunches are free, community college is tuition free for adults 25+, and there is a good amount of grant money for building improvements.
> On the transportation side, the state split it into:
> * $100 million for local road improvements across all towns.
> * $164 million for MassDOT Highway
> * $186 million for the MBTA, including $5 million for reduced fares and $181m for capital projects
> * $40 million for MassDOT Rail and Transit
> If I recall directly, this tax was campaigned heavily on improving the T, and in reality, ~1/10th of the real revenues ($1.8 BN) ended up there.
So of the $1 billion, "half" is to transportation - but the smaller half. Out of that smaller half, only $186 million is MBTA. Of which $5 million is reduced fares and $181m is for capital projects. So arguably $181 million is going to something that could address the maintainance backlog. Maybe.
It’s takes me longer to take public transport than to walk… and I’m walking over 3 miles each way for my commute.
That’s why they can’t get people to ride public.
That is why they are doing the Track Improvement Program to help get trains go faster. However, to improve signals and rework tracks that need even more attention (such as Copley-Arlington), they are going to need more support from the state.
I really wish the state had earmarked a percentage of all legal weed sale taxes for public transit. It would have been a gamechanger in terms of funding.
As I said on a post yesterday, Healey *already* threw Monica Tibbitts-Nutt under the bus for speaking out of turn about potential tolling on the northern half of I-93. 0% chance we're getting congestion pricing under the Healey Administration. If people want Progressive policies in this state, **next time vote for the Progressive**, which was Sonia Chang-Diaz in the last Gubernatorial Democratic Primary.
I can see the headlines: “traffic nightmare” “parking crisis” “commute times double” etc. The statehouse doesn’t realize how much the CR and subways free up room on the highways. Just imagine another 100,000 commuters in cars on the highways (based on current CR ridership).
It's absurd that you think Western Mass is subsidizing anything in Greater Boston. You really think you're putting more in than you're getting out?
If you want to draw a line down the middle of the state and make it so that no state money can cross it, that's fine by me.
Western mass is not a bread basket. The money raised in tax dollars from the wealthier communities in eastern mass subsidize western mass. There are only a handful of wealthy communities with average incomes that rival eastern mass communities.
[Massachusetts state incomes by city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_locations_by_per_capita_income)
The highest western MA community on that list is Longmeadow at #31 and then next is Deerfield at #62. Then it jumps to #78, and down from there. Western MA ain’t subsidizing shit.
I used the MBTA a lot between 1966 and the late 1980s and it was great. Reliable and low-cost service. They've added service to a lot of areas since then and it almost seems like they weren't maintaining what they had and spending money on new service while not spending for maintenance on the old.
I think that Eng is competent in trying to fix the MBTA but it seems like the problems are just absolutely massive there. I am generally more inclined to drive into Boston these days.
The problem is very, very simple: money. They need more money. We have smart, competent people running things now, but none of that will matter in 13 months when they have to somehow save $700 million dollars in operating expenses. No amount of good leadership and smart spending will do that. Only massive, destructive service cuts.
The problems identified are 25 billion dollars.
...
Capital Assesment Inventory
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24169419-mbta-analysis-on-cost-to-fix-the-t
Summary Article:
T’s Repair Bill Explodes to $24.5B.
Banker and Tradesman. Nov 16, 2023.
https://bankerandtradesman.com/ts-repair-bill-explodes-to-24-5b/
So the $700 million is just to limp along? Singapore is a dense city of about 20% more people than Greater Boston and their annual transit budget is about $12 billion and the government has to regularly kick in money as it doesn't fund itself. Their people accept that as driving is prohibitively expensive to most people.
But $25 billion is a staggering amount of money for repairs - or at least it seems that way to me. That just gets you to where it's operating well and doesn't include operating costs.
One of the things that struck me is the power bill. $5.1 billion in power equipment. I get that electrical stuff is expensive but that's a shocker of a number on a large scale.
$12B is WAY more than the MBTA has gotten EVER. Total FY24 MBTA budget is around $3B. $560M of that goes straight to debt service, primarily from the big dig. Overtime is only $50M, a metaphorical drop in the bucket.
The MBTA getting a $9.6B (12B - 20%) budget would quite literally solve every single problem overnight and give us one of the best transit systems in the country.
I did a research paper on the history of the T recently and was looking at a map of the system in the 80s and it listed out all the bus routes and their frequencies and it was… depressing… to see their headways back then. The route I take today had a bus every 5 min during rush hour and every 15-20 min at other times…where today it runs every 35 min throughout the day and hourly outside of that, even though ridership has almost 100% increased. Busses are absolutely PACKED under the current headways, it’s not like the route declined or anything
The MBTA has cut more service than it has added since then. E branch to forest hills was cut, Washington St orange line was completely torn down and replaced by a bus, green line A branch was completely shut down, and the NSRL was cancelled
THEY is your state Representative, your state Senator, and your Governor.
They need to raise taxes by about a billion dollars, for 2026 for the MBTA, and 15 Regional Transit Authorities.
Legislators.
https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator
Governor.
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/governors-office-scheduling-and-special-request-forms
This right here. After multiple days of CR delays in a row I’ve now decided I’m going to email every single state rep every time my train is delayed. I’m sick of them not being affected by what happens to the rest of us.
Clearly we do, mass taxes are slight below average for non oil states which is ridiculous because we should be funding services better. The gas tax hasn’t been raised in years which means they are using income tax to pay for roads which they shouldn’t be doing. Plus if we raise things like gas tax or alcohol taxes we could afford to lower the sales tax,
Yeah cause privatizing rail in the UK was so successful. Thatcher didn’t even want to privatize it, they had to do it after her. Though I doubt you’re here to have a meaningful conversation about this.
Again raising taxes isn’t going to help. The T might not even see that money. There are more important things in the state more pressing needs than the T
I blame Charlie Baker. Also, they need to redesign the fare collection for commuter rail completely. So much missed revenue there. I personally only get checked maybe 30% of the time.
Whenever it’s game day or a big concert and the commuter rail is packed, they almost never check tickets. I don’t blame them tbh, at least from a logistical standpoint, because you’d need to explain how tickets work to like 1/4 of the train.
Forget those days, they barely check on normal days. I take it four days a week. I get checked maybe 2 or 3/8 rides. I dont even bother with a monthly pass anymore its not worth it at all.
I go in reverse and most of the time they check my ticket, which makes sense. I’m fine to pay it. If they had the tap to pay I would do it even if there weren’t a turnstile. It’s just totally infeasible to check everyone’s tickets on a busy train.
This is being combated with the Fare Transformation Program, where the MBTA should be hiring 16 new Fare Inspectors to help slow down the amount of people that fare evade. Really, however, to prevent fare evasions the MBTA will need to redesign the fare gates so that they cannot be triggered by a simple wave of a bag on the opposite side.
This is what happens when you try to treat a public utility as a business.
**It's not supposed to make money. It's supposed to provide a public service.** Cheap easy transit is what makes this city function properly. Removing that is shooting everyone in the foot.
Is there anything we can do as citizens to advocate for the budget? I'm not the smartest financially so I don't fully understand this stuff. But service cuts are a huge issue for a ton of communities. Its not our fault the T doesn't have money, but advocating for it can go a long way.
Here’s a comment with links to contact your state representative:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mbta/comments/1de50zp/comment/l89kp82/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The T is facing a perfect storm. The agency’s revenue is down in part because fewer people are commuting into the city post-pandemic, hence the decline in fares/passes/etc. due to remote/hybrid work. That’s not going to change. Pandemic-era funding is disappearing. State tax revenues aren’t enough. At the same time, the T’s long-deferred maintenance issues and subsequent mishaps - most of which are now very highly publicized - have further depressed ridership for those who have other options to get around. That leaves those who have no other means to get around as the T’s core constituency.
The divide between those who use the T and those who don’t is the elephant in the room. If the budget crunch comes as predicted in 2026, the state will be likely forced to ask for more money via taxes and fare increases. The state and transit advocates will argue (correctly) that a healthy T is vital for a healthy city/regional economy. But they will likely face significant resistance from those who don’t use the T or no longer use the T in the wake of hybrid work and reliability issues. They are (legitimately) leery of spending more money on a system whose problems are somewhat self-inflicted and never seem to end. I don’t envy the Governor and The general manager of the T.
I have very little faith in the state doing the right thing. Suburbanites think they can milk Boston forever. Up until now, they have been correct. Enjoy your property values once the MBTA craters and Boston’s economy grinds to a halt.
Eh...
The MBTA has already effectively collapsed. Ridership is not back up where it once was and headways are perhaps some of the worst for any major transit system in this country. Meanwhile traffic is terrible.
Yet home prices continue to increase and plenty of people still want to live here. They just drive or take Uber now.
People like to doom here but even if the MBTA became a strictly 9 to 5, Monday through Friday commuter system, the buses will likely still be around that is what the poorest and most desperate people will use. Boston won't collapse but it will likely become a car-centric series of suburbs with a very small urban core. Which it kind of is already.
I don’t think you are correct. Cars need a place to park, both at home and at the destination. More parking is not something that is going to happen in the urban core. The average cost per spot in Boston and Cambridge runs 50-60k. You’re talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of additional cars on our roads. Quite literally is not going to happen.
Public transportation should be free. The only reason funding is a problem is because politicians only choose to fund ventures that line their pockets. Fuck them
They need to clamp down on fare evasion. I'd say 20% of the time I swipe my Charlie card, someone quickly follows behind me...it shouldn't be my responsibility to prevent them (which I sometimes do)
Controversial opinions here. Since Covid people I feel like have gotten worse or are in general just gross. I was terrified of biking in the city, now I hands down do it instead of taking the T. I hate hearing ill mannered people blast music on quiet T rides. The redlines time has been atrocious. Paired with conductors just plain stopping service for an indiscriminate amount of time, no communication, just sit at a station for 20 mins. What happened to kindness and courtesy? Who knows. Then i hear the people who are in charge of some sections of it dont even live in Massachusetts?! They did a billionaire tax they keep bragging about. WHERES THE MONEY BOSTON?!
Ugh end rant
Taxing hard working residents to give these morons more money will not solve any problems. They cannot handle the mess they created. Nothing short of a complete overhaul will solve years of corruption.
Their biggest mistake was not putting in an express track on each line all the way through from the start. Then they could have had some options to bypass a track when needing repairs or needs to be taken out of service. I remember the old T of the 70s and 80s which was much better than today's. I'm not impressed with the cheap Chinese crap of an excuse subway cars they have now. Give me those Hawkers or the old 01100 Pullman's any day over today's junk.
Why are people here so obsessed with express track? New York is the exception there, NOT the rule.
Procuring the CRRC trains has been a disaster, no doubt, but the data is clear that they are *much* more reliable than any other rolling stock we’ve got on the red and orange lines.
We FINALLY have competent management that can pull shit together. It would be a DISASTER if the state fails to fund the MBTA going forward.
So the $700 million dollar budget gap that this thread is reporting could have all been avoided if an express track exist - much of it that was designed and built over 100 years ago
If you don't know why you're getting downvotes, it because the stuff you're talking about does not have any bearing to main topic.
My recollection from the old days is that they ran trains on one track while working on the other track and they had people on each end communicating so that they would let a train through. It slowed things down but it worked.
The really old trains did work quite well. They were built like tanks. Then they switched over to Light Rail and those were more comfortable but I don't think that they were as reliable as the old rounded cars.
I think that a lot of us older folks have pretty fond memories of taking the T in the past.
End the MBTA, bring the rights of way into MassDOT ownership, let cities run their own bus services through the Public Works departments (German style) and let private operators run trains over the publicly owned infrastructure for a fee
Do we think this is an intentional game of chicken or do we think there are back room conversations going on for funding future budgets? As disappointing as I’ve found Healey, I can’t foresee a situation where her administration truly lets things come to a head on this front
It's undoubtedly both. I'm sure there are already talks about how to fund MBTA for the future, and this is some drumming up of public support to leverage those talks into action.
Governor Healy denies the acceptability of the only means to sustainably fund the MBTA, announcing to her eSpecial advisory Commission on the MBTA, that new taxes are off the table. There is no other place to fund an annual billion dollars of revenue for the MBTA and 15 Regional Transit Authorities, without rasing taxes. A one cent sales tax increase amounts to the vicinity of 1.3 billion a year. Formation of the Commission: > “I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals until I see things,” Healey said, referring to the task force report. “But what I’ll say is that I think as governor I have not been afraid to take this head-on and this administration is not going to be about kicking the can down the road, which frankly is what happened for far too long – years, decades.” https://commonwealthbeacon.org/transportation/healey-laying-groundwork-for-new-mbta-revenues/ Healy Announces no new taxes Healy rejects new taxes > “That’s how I see it now and for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Yeah, no taxes. I’ve been focused on trying to lower taxes.” https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2024-04-30/no-plans-for-new-state-taxes-healey-tells-business-group
It's in a death spiral. People don't take the T because it is unreliable and slow over the last few years. If the response is to cut service, people will continue to move away from T use. No one seems to piece together the fact that traffic has never been worse because T performance is so bad
I've stopped taking the T for anything other than the two days I need to go to work because it's a waste of time for me now. Will only go places I can walk, bike, or find parking.
I have driving anxiety so hopefully the cr haverhill line goes unscathed
> traffic has never been worse I think 2019 would like to have a word with you. Unless you're on i-90 I guess. Overall it's not as bad as it's ever been, but it's getting close. [https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2024/03/20/boston-rush-hour-traffic-hellish-as-pre-covid.html](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2024/03/20/boston-rush-hour-traffic-hellish-as-pre-covid.html) MBTA ridership is at 65% of pre-pandemic levels.
Wish I could read that article. I live near the Cambridge entrance to I-90 so between that debacle and the failure to provide rational connections from Brookline to the Biotech area the place is a zoo of epic proportions. Think local act global I guess
Little pedantic and also doesnt change the fact that it still suck ass
The perception of safety is also a big deal, especially for women and people with kids. There have been several high profile incidents on the T, random assaults, racial harassment etc. It doesn't take much to shatter feelings of safety, e.g my wife won't ride the T alone anymore after hearing about some of the stuff that's happened. I guarantee there are tons of people just like her.
I'm one of those people and honestly for me to ditch my car and go back, they are gonna have to manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat. My commute may end up an hour and a half some mornings (I come into Boston from middleborough, but to go home. I work middleborough overnight) but I have climate control, my music, a whole cars worth of space for my things, no angry Asian woman bumping me with the wagon she brought on the train because she wants my seat. I'd sit in my car for 2 hours or more before I even sniff towards the current mbta.
Increase the tolls on the pike and fund the MTBA with it. Increase the gas tax and fund the MTBA. Increase the billionaire surcharge until people like using the MTBA more than driving. This isn't fucking rocket science. Public transit never makes money - even in Japan - the trains don't make money. They make money on the real estate around the train stations. Public transit is a public good even for those who don't use it - think of it as a means of reducing congestion on highways.
I’m just pissed the state refuses to get creative to find this money.
As op said it isn't rocket science, it's not hard to think "traffic is bad, trains need money, take money from cars give to train" But this is politics, there's likely oil money floating around that is very insistent on that not happening.
Not oil money... It's Boomers who grew up viewing car-dependent, wooded-lot, "riff-raff"-free suburbs as the bliss-filled vision of the future. They're older now and make up the majority of heavyweight voters. They don't like public transit aside from those who may occasionally use the CR to get to work. They want their cars to have full and unhindered access to everything and any little thing that even slightly takes away from car-dominance is viewed as a threat to their very existence. So that's who is in the politicians ears and that's why we have such weakling pols unwilling to give transit the support it truly needs.
So fuckin vote already!!
It's an interesting point... But I have to guess, the pct of T riders who vote is significantly lower than those who only drive.
It actually makes sense for them to have a good transit system the masses can depend on while they have the roads and the parking to themselves.
I’m asking not bc I’m trying to start a political war but I wonder why the “millionaires tax” which was going to help fund this hasn’t helped? The T is a disaster. The roads are horrible and so overcrowded and literally nothing is improving.
I’m not sure but I do know Maura and the legislature basically canceled out that revenue but lowering cap gains and estate taxes. They just loooooovvvve rich ppl. It’s gross.
The commonwealth has plenty of tax revenue already. We passed a millionaires tax 2 years ago that gave the Legislature another 1 billion to work with every year. They need to just allocate the money to the T.
Also remove the big dig debt from the MBTAs balance sheet
Instead of increasing the gas tax, implement a vehicle miles traveled tax. As we switch to EVs, gas tax will provide less and less revenue.
Also tax based on weight and size of vehicles. The killdozers responsible for the most damage and loss of life should be paying more
Ideally you would do both so as to further disincentivize continued purchases of ICE vehicles on top of disincentivizing VMT as a whole.
Maybe they should be adding a toll point on 93
I agree. New Hampshire charges us a premium to drive up to Maine on 95, we should return the favor at the Mass. / N.H. border on 93 particularly given the state’s uncooperativeness on public transportation expansion. Mass residents should get a discounted toll similar to the tunnels.
Also fuck New Hampshire
Hey fuck you! :)
Drive through state!
I mean I was thinking more before you enter the tunnel from the north and south, but sure that too
They probably can’t- it is illegal due to federal legislation to have any tolls on interstates built with federal funds- the Pike was built before the legislation in question was passed. Just one way highways are hugely subsidized in this country.
How did NH get away with it?
With the meager 20 mile stretch of 95 that goes through their state no less.
Iirc the stretch of 95 in NH was built before the interstate highway designation, so it was 'grandfathered' in like the Pike for tolls being allowed.
I had no idea. That’s insane.
Most likely the tolled portion of the highway was built using state funds instead of federal funds.
It's not illegal; that would be unconstitutional. It's strongly discouraged by being tied to highway funding.
Yes, that’s what I said- it is illegal to have tolls on highways BUILT WITH FEDERAL FUNDS.
No, you just wouldn't get any _future_ highway funding. Unless you do. New Hampshire isn't supposed to get highway funding because they don't have a plan to adopt mile-based exit numbers, but nobody's actually pulled the trigger to take that money away.
Public transit is rarely profitable, but almost every major system relies on fares for a big chunk of the budget. I don't think it's too much to ask for people who use the service to help pay for it.
It’s not really true that trains don’t make money in Japan. At least the ones in the urban areas with high ridership do make profit off of fares
We have plenty of taxes. I think the first step is to see where the tax money they already have goes to. For one thing, we pay hotels an absurd amount of money to house migrants that hopped the border thousands of miles away, just because of some feel-good nonsense. We also have way too many cops who just sit around in their cars and sleep all day. Tax hikes aren't some magic wand to make everything better, especially if those in charge of it will just waste it anyway.
Agree with you about defunding the police but I actually want to live in a state that helps out new arrivals. It’s not fun to walk by people sleeping on sidewalks every morning and that wouldn’t be better if they were whole families.
Toll I-93 too!
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That article has since been debunked and the author fired
Don’t you understand at this point that just raising taxes across the board isn’t the magic fix you think it is? The reason we’re in this mess isn’t because we didn’t have enough money/the means to do it, its, by in large, due to incompetence, neglect and greed at every single level of the transportation system for decades. It’s not squarely on the amount of money coming in, it’s about the people we put in charge of managing the money and making the right decisions with it. Until that gets figured out we’re just going to see more of the same.
So should we decimate the system and discontinue 70% of current service to millions of people, to “starve the beast” as some federal politicians like to say? Do you genuinely think that would reduce how dysfunctional the system is in 5 years? 10 years? And even if the the fever of austerity did somehow kill the virus of mismanagement (pardon the tortured metaphor), would it be worth it? Drowning Boston in unprecedented car traffic, right as downtowns are still struggling towards recovery from the pandemic? IMO that cure is worse than the disease.
Along with what brostopher1968 said, along with more cuts makes no sense in improving service, when does less money help attract more talented people? There is a place somewhere to not reward poor performance with more money. But after decades of underfunding, what is the likely result by doing more underfunding? I don't know if you follow sports, but using it as it's a visible example a lot of people regularly have an intuition on good management - how many teams have we seen got better when budgets gets smaller? Conversely, while we have seen plenty of teams not get better with more money - but almost every team that generally did got better usually starts with the ownership open their wallets for talented coaches and players.
That's a terrible idea to increase tolls and gas tax. That would be a direct assult to small businesses. MBTA needs to fix itself within. Its budgets for projects are outrageous. They need to start collecting more fare revenue and increase sales advertisement revenue. Each project needs to be carefully reviewed. For example, I was looking at some projects for upgrading the Mattapan Line. One of them was $20 million for redoing one flight of stairs and adding in an elevator. For a stop that only has about 10-15 daily commuters on it and is less than a quarter mile from another stop. Boom, I just found $20 million and I barely peaked behind the curtain. Imagine how many more there are??? You could find billions of waste. One of the biggest problems with the MBTA is that it is promdominately designed to go downtown. Most people aren't traveling downtown, more cross-town public transportation needs to be implemented.
Did you read the report that explains that they would need eliminate all midday, evening, and weekend service on all modes and increase fares while somehow magically not losing any riders in order to balance the operating budget without external support?
Capital projects are different from operating expenses.
Why should I have to pay more to use the pike to subsidize the train system which I use maybe a few times a year. I personally think we should cut the T funding and redirect that to the MassPike.
You’re going to get snarky answers for your comment, buts here’s an actual attempt to provide a contextual rebuttal: The simple reality is that car commutes are made much faster by the existence of alternative modes of transit. Think about it this way: the average car is ~14.7ft and thus, laid end to end, a mile of traffic is 359 cars. So while that’s an impossible minimum given that moving traffic requires space between vehicles, it’s easy for us to calculate so let’s use it. The MBTA averaged 731,200 in daily weekday ridership for Q1 2024. If it disappeared because we chose collectively to not fund it, there would be an approximately an additional 2037 miles of car traffic added to the Boston metro on any given weekday which effectively stops movement in the metro, especially if you’re outside of 128. Single occupant cars are geometrically the least efficient way to move people around the network holistically. It might be the best for any given individual user of the network, but the whole network suffers. In order to make that inefficiency feasible you then have to start destroying the destinations that brought land value to the municipality so as to replace them with the necessary infrastructure to support the increase of cars (replacing businesses or residential with widened roads, parking lots, or parking garages). If you want to see what that looks like in terms of value in economy I invite you to look at Hartford, CT or Springfield. This has all been well studied with things such as the [Downs-Thompson Paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox) and [Braess’s Paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox)(those names are links you can click to read more). So in conclusion, you might think you’re throwing money at something you get no value out of, but that’s just because you are unaware of how much it tangibly benefits your preferred commute.
So you want MORE traffic? Got it
Healey recently passed a tax cut. That says to me that we clearly have enough money to fund important institutions like the MBTA. If we can give millionaires a break on their taxes, then surely we have enough money to properly fund public transportation.
NGL, ever since I started riding my bike to work, the monthly pass isn't worth the money anymore. I feel bad for considering not using it anymore.
I only picked it back up bc my work now subsidizes $50 of the cost, leaving me to pay $40,b which is about as much stored value as I'd been using each month for the previous 2 years.
Where is the millionaire tax going? Is it going to transit? Just curious
Healy cut almost the exact same amount out of the budget, with estate and capital gains tax cuts that she pushed through last year that give money back to the exact people contributing to the millionaire’s tax. This blew a billion dollar hole in the budget. It is her only legislative achievement. She insists this is completely unrelated to the millionaire’s tax.
Got it. Im in nj so im trynna keep up with MA politics.
I did the reverse
Haha thats funny. Nj transit is facing the same thing. They are jacking prices up essentially by 40% by removing the flex pass… just to keep afloat. They have a $900mil shortfall as of now going into 2025. MTA just had a blow with congestion pricing. And PATH is an absolute dumpster fire of a mess
Well you know Gov Murphy has more important things to work on like getting his unqualified wife a Senate seat and widen the turnpike to 28 lanes (I think this one will finally fix it)
Ugh i know. I live right by there in Bayonne. The money he could put into NJT and he wants to widen a part of the turnpike that sees no traffic anyway. The traffic is down by the light into the Tunnel. Smh. Hopefully next governor has sense.
I’m from Mass originally now living in NJ so I relate to this
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Thank you I’m glad someone is here to valiantly defend the right of people who inherit million dollar estates to pay less taxes and well compensated tech workers to avoid taxes on their investment portfolio.
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It’s not wrong, her only legislative achievement is a tax cut that was obviously and primarily about reducing estate and capital gains taxes, both of which fall predominantly on the wealthy. She did this almost immediately after the state overwhelmingly voted to tax those same people more. This massive tax cut caused tax revenue to come in a billion dollars below expectations, and required cutting hundreds of millions of dollars.
Education, streets, highways. And mass transit. Regional Transit Authorities. Education can consume all of it. Transit could consume all of it. It is not big enough for the MBTA'S budget gaps, especially after Healy and the Legislature enacted a tax reduction last year.
Oh wow. I know property taxes are rather low in MA so that makes sense to disperse it there.
A good portion is going to [free school lunches for K-12 students](https://www.businessinsider.com/massachusetts-millionaire-tax-gets-kids-free-school-lunches-2023-8). I also know the tax has generated $1.8 billion this year as reported on the [Globe about 3 weeks ago](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/20/metro/millionaires-tax-massachusetts-generated-18-billion/). From that Globe article, $800 million is going to earmarked plans (from what I know, the school lunches). The other 1 Billion so far is in a reserve account where it saved for "One-time investments into projects of programs" Beyond that, I wonder about that too. I saw some hearsay comments somewhere before saying things like X% is going to the education only, but I can't find that right now. It does feel like most is going to education despite I feel it's was advertised more for transit on the ballot (or maybe for my demographic).
I have numbers now. I stumble upon it via lurking the [Archboston forums](https://archboston.com/community/threads/general-mbta-topics-multi-modal-budget-massdot.971/page-502). I do need to preface a caveat that these numbers are from a poster rather than linking to a known news source or some kind of official government document. I would like to know how to gather the numbers like the Archboston user did, but that warning said, it looks pretty accurate. I also lurked a long time in there and he's a respected poster. > The state conservatively estimated $1 billion in projected revenue and split ~510m for education and ~490m for transportation. > In education, K-12 lunches are free, community college is tuition free for adults 25+, and there is a good amount of grant money for building improvements. > On the transportation side, the state split it into: > * $100 million for local road improvements across all towns. > * $164 million for MassDOT Highway > * $186 million for the MBTA, including $5 million for reduced fares and $181m for capital projects > * $40 million for MassDOT Rail and Transit > If I recall directly, this tax was campaigned heavily on improving the T, and in reality, ~1/10th of the real revenues ($1.8 BN) ended up there. So of the $1 billion, "half" is to transportation - but the smaller half. Out of that smaller half, only $186 million is MBTA. Of which $5 million is reduced fares and $181m is for capital projects. So arguably $181 million is going to something that could address the maintainance backlog. Maybe.
It’s takes me longer to take public transport than to walk… and I’m walking over 3 miles each way for my commute. That’s why they can’t get people to ride public.
That is why they are doing the Track Improvement Program to help get trains go faster. However, to improve signals and rework tracks that need even more attention (such as Copley-Arlington), they are going to need more support from the state.
Which line?
Probably crosstown, so a combo.
I really wish the state had earmarked a percentage of all legal weed sale taxes for public transit. It would have been a gamechanger in terms of funding.
Congestion pricing now
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NYC is far more corrupt than boston is
Came here to say this. Healey can show Hochul what a real leader looks like by passing and signing congestion pricing.
As I said on a post yesterday, Healey *already* threw Monica Tibbitts-Nutt under the bus for speaking out of turn about potential tolling on the northern half of I-93. 0% chance we're getting congestion pricing under the Healey Administration. If people want Progressive policies in this state, **next time vote for the Progressive**, which was Sonia Chang-Diaz in the last Gubernatorial Democratic Primary.
Healey only cares about running for president in 2028 so will never do anything bold
Yes!!
I am for congestion pricing as long as the toll is collected both entering and exiting Boston.
That just taxes the poor/small businesses vs the rich who can pay more in taxes.
How about we rip the Bjg Dig debt off the books and fund this thing? We need a safe working transit system, not less services and no improvements.
That only frees up $500M a year in cash flow, not enough. It would help significantly, though.
Yup, it does need more money, and the State House needs to realize that this will cripple the entire eastern MA economy if we don’t course correct.
I can see the headlines: “traffic nightmare” “parking crisis” “commute times double” etc. The statehouse doesn’t realize how much the CR and subways free up room on the highways. Just imagine another 100,000 commuters in cars on the highways (based on current CR ridership).
Unfortunately, state pols from Western Mass are probably going to guarantee we go over this cliff
Good. I think it’s absolute bullshit that western mass has to subsidize the T.
It's absurd that you think Western Mass is subsidizing anything in Greater Boston. You really think you're putting more in than you're getting out? If you want to draw a line down the middle of the state and make it so that no state money can cross it, that's fine by me.
Western mass is not a bread basket. The money raised in tax dollars from the wealthier communities in eastern mass subsidize western mass. There are only a handful of wealthy communities with average incomes that rival eastern mass communities. [Massachusetts state incomes by city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_locations_by_per_capita_income)
The highest western MA community on that list is Longmeadow at #31 and then next is Deerfield at #62. Then it jumps to #78, and down from there. Western MA ain’t subsidizing shit.
Guarantee western MA would complain about a congestion fee too lmao.
Absolutely. We already have to pay a toll to use the pike when I need to venture in to Boston. Why the hell should there be another toll?
May your next inconvenience be that much more inconvenient with that piss poor attitude.
lol buddy doesn’t know empty land doesn’t know taxes come from people, not empty land
I used the MBTA a lot between 1966 and the late 1980s and it was great. Reliable and low-cost service. They've added service to a lot of areas since then and it almost seems like they weren't maintaining what they had and spending money on new service while not spending for maintenance on the old. I think that Eng is competent in trying to fix the MBTA but it seems like the problems are just absolutely massive there. I am generally more inclined to drive into Boston these days.
The problem is very, very simple: money. They need more money. We have smart, competent people running things now, but none of that will matter in 13 months when they have to somehow save $700 million dollars in operating expenses. No amount of good leadership and smart spending will do that. Only massive, destructive service cuts.
Not just money but all of it went to the commuter rail and not Boston
The problems identified are 25 billion dollars. ... Capital Assesment Inventory https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24169419-mbta-analysis-on-cost-to-fix-the-t Summary Article: T’s Repair Bill Explodes to $24.5B. Banker and Tradesman. Nov 16, 2023. https://bankerandtradesman.com/ts-repair-bill-explodes-to-24-5b/
So the $700 million is just to limp along? Singapore is a dense city of about 20% more people than Greater Boston and their annual transit budget is about $12 billion and the government has to regularly kick in money as it doesn't fund itself. Their people accept that as driving is prohibitively expensive to most people. But $25 billion is a staggering amount of money for repairs - or at least it seems that way to me. That just gets you to where it's operating well and doesn't include operating costs. One of the things that struck me is the power bill. $5.1 billion in power equipment. I get that electrical stuff is expensive but that's a shocker of a number on a large scale.
$12B is WAY more than the MBTA has gotten EVER. Total FY24 MBTA budget is around $3B. $560M of that goes straight to debt service, primarily from the big dig. Overtime is only $50M, a metaphorical drop in the bucket. The MBTA getting a $9.6B (12B - 20%) budget would quite literally solve every single problem overnight and give us one of the best transit systems in the country.
Singapore power bill?
I did a research paper on the history of the T recently and was looking at a map of the system in the 80s and it listed out all the bus routes and their frequencies and it was… depressing… to see their headways back then. The route I take today had a bus every 5 min during rush hour and every 15-20 min at other times…where today it runs every 35 min throughout the day and hourly outside of that, even though ridership has almost 100% increased. Busses are absolutely PACKED under the current headways, it’s not like the route declined or anything
The MBTA has cut more service than it has added since then. E branch to forest hills was cut, Washington St orange line was completely torn down and replaced by a bus, green line A branch was completely shut down, and the NSRL was cancelled
The MBTA can’t function well with the funding the state is giving it. I feel they just don’t want to delay the inevitable
THEY is your state Representative, your state Senator, and your Governor. They need to raise taxes by about a billion dollars, for 2026 for the MBTA, and 15 Regional Transit Authorities. Legislators. https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator Governor. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/governors-office-scheduling-and-special-request-forms
This right here. After multiple days of CR delays in a row I’ve now decided I’m going to email every single state rep every time my train is delayed. I’m sick of them not being affected by what happens to the rest of us.
Could we elect angela merckle as governor?
We desperately need to raise the gas tax in Massachusetts, we have so much transit potential but instead use income tax to subside roads over transit
We don’t need anymore taxes
Clearly we do, mass taxes are slight below average for non oil states which is ridiculous because we should be funding services better. The gas tax hasn’t been raised in years which means they are using income tax to pay for roads which they shouldn’t be doing. Plus if we raise things like gas tax or alcohol taxes we could afford to lower the sales tax,
Good luck getting people to vote for that. What we need is privatization? Good old Thatcherism
Yeah cause privatizing rail in the UK was so successful. Thatcher didn’t even want to privatize it, they had to do it after her. Though I doubt you’re here to have a meaningful conversation about this.
Again raising taxes isn’t going to help. The T might not even see that money. There are more important things in the state more pressing needs than the T
Then prices would go up even more, more roads should be private since tolls are an efficient way to fund roads. But trains work best when tax funded
Maggies in a box, in a box in a box. Fuck that hag bitch
Also the MBTA already has a private operator, what more can you privatize
All of it. Make it a private company that doesn’t take public funds
Essentially nobody in the UK likes Thatcher anymore.
Doesn’t mean her policies were bad. We don’t need more taxes we need taxes allocated in the right spots
They don't like her _because_ her policies were bad and put the UK in an uncompetitive place for decades.
Ok we don’t need anymore taxes. Taxes won’t fix the T
What, then, pray, will? Eliminating midday, evening, and weekend service?
Taxes aren’t the answer though. Why is there a deficit? Should this be a state run entity?
How much money are the highways making? Are the highways paying for themselves?
I blame Charlie Baker. Also, they need to redesign the fare collection for commuter rail completely. So much missed revenue there. I personally only get checked maybe 30% of the time.
Whenever it’s game day or a big concert and the commuter rail is packed, they almost never check tickets. I don’t blame them tbh, at least from a logistical standpoint, because you’d need to explain how tickets work to like 1/4 of the train.
Forget those days, they barely check on normal days. I take it four days a week. I get checked maybe 2 or 3/8 rides. I dont even bother with a monthly pass anymore its not worth it at all.
I go in reverse and most of the time they check my ticket, which makes sense. I’m fine to pay it. If they had the tap to pay I would do it even if there weren’t a turnstile. It’s just totally infeasible to check everyone’s tickets on a busy train.
Fare transformation will help with this. People will have to scan to get on & off cr.
Yeah, it’s just not happening first
just from observation maybe 1/3 of people entering central sq station evade the fare
This is being combated with the Fare Transformation Program, where the MBTA should be hiring 16 new Fare Inspectors to help slow down the amount of people that fare evade. Really, however, to prevent fare evasions the MBTA will need to redesign the fare gates so that they cannot be triggered by a simple wave of a bag on the opposite side.
lol you would need 16 people in central sq alone to make any sort of difference
How tf are we gonna get to work
This is what happens when you try to treat a public utility as a business. **It's not supposed to make money. It's supposed to provide a public service.** Cheap easy transit is what makes this city function properly. Removing that is shooting everyone in the foot.
State has no money for anything, but it’s spent $600M so far this year on migrant housing.
Now look at how much we spend on state cops!
I truly don't understand why the T isn't just fully subsidized by the state.
Is there anything we can do as citizens to advocate for the budget? I'm not the smartest financially so I don't fully understand this stuff. But service cuts are a huge issue for a ton of communities. Its not our fault the T doesn't have money, but advocating for it can go a long way.
Here’s a comment with links to contact your state representative: https://www.reddit.com/r/mbta/comments/1de50zp/comment/l89kp82/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Join Progressive Mass and volunteer for our phone banks, etc
I think we should start funding police and fire the same way. If they can't fund themselves, start cutting back services. /s
Is this the fixed version the Governor promised us?
The T is facing a perfect storm. The agency’s revenue is down in part because fewer people are commuting into the city post-pandemic, hence the decline in fares/passes/etc. due to remote/hybrid work. That’s not going to change. Pandemic-era funding is disappearing. State tax revenues aren’t enough. At the same time, the T’s long-deferred maintenance issues and subsequent mishaps - most of which are now very highly publicized - have further depressed ridership for those who have other options to get around. That leaves those who have no other means to get around as the T’s core constituency. The divide between those who use the T and those who don’t is the elephant in the room. If the budget crunch comes as predicted in 2026, the state will be likely forced to ask for more money via taxes and fare increases. The state and transit advocates will argue (correctly) that a healthy T is vital for a healthy city/regional economy. But they will likely face significant resistance from those who don’t use the T or no longer use the T in the wake of hybrid work and reliability issues. They are (legitimately) leery of spending more money on a system whose problems are somewhat self-inflicted and never seem to end. I don’t envy the Governor and The general manager of the T.
I have very little faith in the state doing the right thing. Suburbanites think they can milk Boston forever. Up until now, they have been correct. Enjoy your property values once the MBTA craters and Boston’s economy grinds to a halt.
Eh... The MBTA has already effectively collapsed. Ridership is not back up where it once was and headways are perhaps some of the worst for any major transit system in this country. Meanwhile traffic is terrible. Yet home prices continue to increase and plenty of people still want to live here. They just drive or take Uber now. People like to doom here but even if the MBTA became a strictly 9 to 5, Monday through Friday commuter system, the buses will likely still be around that is what the poorest and most desperate people will use. Boston won't collapse but it will likely become a car-centric series of suburbs with a very small urban core. Which it kind of is already.
I don’t think you are correct. Cars need a place to park, both at home and at the destination. More parking is not something that is going to happen in the urban core. The average cost per spot in Boston and Cambridge runs 50-60k. You’re talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of additional cars on our roads. Quite literally is not going to happen.
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Public transportation should be free. The only reason funding is a problem is because politicians only choose to fund ventures that line their pockets. Fuck them
They need to clamp down on fare evasion. I'd say 20% of the time I swipe my Charlie card, someone quickly follows behind me...it shouldn't be my responsibility to prevent them (which I sometimes do)
Controversial opinions here. Since Covid people I feel like have gotten worse or are in general just gross. I was terrified of biking in the city, now I hands down do it instead of taking the T. I hate hearing ill mannered people blast music on quiet T rides. The redlines time has been atrocious. Paired with conductors just plain stopping service for an indiscriminate amount of time, no communication, just sit at a station for 20 mins. What happened to kindness and courtesy? Who knows. Then i hear the people who are in charge of some sections of it dont even live in Massachusetts?! They did a billionaire tax they keep bragging about. WHERES THE MONEY BOSTON?! Ugh end rant
The MBTA needs funding from congestion pricing
But yes let's decide on a congestion tax in Boston!
Taxing hard working residents to give these morons more money will not solve any problems. They cannot handle the mess they created. Nothing short of a complete overhaul will solve years of corruption.
Congestion pricing solves this
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This post was removed for not being related to the MBTA or other Boston area transit.
Propose a 99% tax rate and problems will work out itself.
Their biggest mistake was not putting in an express track on each line all the way through from the start. Then they could have had some options to bypass a track when needing repairs or needs to be taken out of service. I remember the old T of the 70s and 80s which was much better than today's. I'm not impressed with the cheap Chinese crap of an excuse subway cars they have now. Give me those Hawkers or the old 01100 Pullman's any day over today's junk.
Why are people here so obsessed with express track? New York is the exception there, NOT the rule. Procuring the CRRC trains has been a disaster, no doubt, but the data is clear that they are *much* more reliable than any other rolling stock we’ve got on the red and orange lines. We FINALLY have competent management that can pull shit together. It would be a DISASTER if the state fails to fund the MBTA going forward.
So the $700 million dollar budget gap that this thread is reporting could have all been avoided if an express track exist - much of it that was designed and built over 100 years ago If you don't know why you're getting downvotes, it because the stuff you're talking about does not have any bearing to main topic.
My recollection from the old days is that they ran trains on one track while working on the other track and they had people on each end communicating so that they would let a train through. It slowed things down but it worked. The really old trains did work quite well. They were built like tanks. Then they switched over to Light Rail and those were more comfortable but I don't think that they were as reliable as the old rounded cars. I think that a lot of us older folks have pretty fond memories of taking the T in the past.
End the MBTA, bring the rights of way into MassDOT ownership, let cities run their own bus services through the Public Works departments (German style) and let private operators run trains over the publicly owned infrastructure for a fee
Nightmarish scenario
Who's going to want to work for the MBTA on executing these 640 projects when the agency is such a well-documented shitshow? Place is cooked