That MBTA report is finally out and basically concludes Charlie Baker and legislative leaders need to take over control of the authority through a new "Fiscal and Management Control Board" to replace the new MassDOT board Deval Patrick and legislative leaders set up to take over control of the authority.
The report calls for an end to restrictions on fare increases - in fact, it criticizes the T for offering pass holders higher discounts than other transit agencies in the US and England and says that's "unsustainable."
The state should look at creating a special property-tax levy in the communities served by the T to fund capital improvements and pay off the T's debt - with a state commitment to pay off Big Dig related debts but no new ones.
Oh, and New Bedford? You might want to rethink those plans that assume you're getting commuter rail anytime soon.
The recommendations also include making the T figure out how to spend the capital money it already has - and just on capital projects, not salaries - and crack the whip on workers, too many of whom the panel concluded are system-abusing layabouts.
The report also calls for a halt to any spending on system expansion that doesn't already have federal funding until that program is actually in place. That means the Green Line Extension, which recently received a commitment of nearly $1 billion in federal funds is OK, but plans for an electrified commuter-rail line to New Bedford should be shelved.
The report estimates a 20-year period for "the complete restoration" of the T's physical assets.
Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!
Ad:
Comments
He hasn't done anything yet
By El Danimal
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:45pm
Many people before him have commissioned these expert panels to produce reports and recommendations. No one has really done much with them yet. I am willing to give Baker a chance and see if he actually tries to make some changes. If he actually takes the recommendations of the panel and takes over control of the MBTA, that would be a bold move. He would then own the entire problem himself and be judged on the outcome.
Right...
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:23pm
Yes, let's drive housing costs up even more! Big Dig debt should be moved back to the roads, plain and simple (this from someone who drives every day).
According to the report, the MBTA pays $108 million annually in big dig debt. I just looked at MassDot data for the tunnels and Tobin in Boston, and in 2013 (the most recent I can find) combined toll revenue was just south of $411 million. If there were a 5% toll increase, that's another $20.5 million per year right there that could all go towards the Big Dig, and these numbers may be higher based on updated data.
Not perfect, but it's a start and the increase would be negligible to drivers.
This will probably cause more harm than it's worth. Wheres the tipping point between paying a exorbitant amount for unreliable transit service (after all, this plan is supposed to take 20 years), and driving? I'd also be willing to bet fare evasion would increase due to people just on the cusp of being able to afford the T no longer being able to after a larger hike, and also because:
I've already pointed out in another thread that fare evaders get away with it, because you never actually see any T employees in stations, with the exception of some of the "Major" ones.
You're not going to win disengaged personnel back, and turnover comes at a very high cost in the form of training, recruiting, etc. It's a catch-22.
The halt on expansion is actually a good idea.
The public-private partnership idea NEEDS to be explored further and be brought front and center. I dedicated a year of graduate school to researching and redesigning a communications and social media strategy for the MBTA (which for the record is MUCH better than what they're doing now), and in the process also got into the business aspect a bit, particularly exploring PPP's. Setting these up with anyone who has a stop named after them would go a long, long way. BU, Northeastern, BC, MFA, Prudential, and other organizations with money have a lot to offer, and gain.
Get these organizations to fund cleaning and maintaining their respective stations in exchange for branding rights (as opposed to just selling them to random corporations as explored a few years ago) and either exclusive advertising rights in these stations, or a cut of outside advertising revenue for placements sold at these stations. You can also add free digital advertising for these organizations via social media at virtually no cost (posting/sharing/tweeting events, info, etc.)
There's way too much "old school" though in this report, and that's a big problem in such an "innovative" city.
The state should look at
By Irmo
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:55pm
For the record: if your town is populated by commuters who drive in, then you are served by the T whether or not you have bus/train service, simply because the T reduces the number of people you share the roads with.
I never said anything about proximity
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:02pm
So not sure where you're coming from. I simply said increasing housing costs via property taxes is NOT a good solution in this area.
From Business Insider this past February, which names the Boston area the 7th most expensive place to live in America:
I said that Big Dig debt should be placed back on the roads, aka the drivers (like myself), not the transit system.
Taxes aren't that bad in Boston
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:12pm
I pay taxes in another city in another part of the country and they are considerably higher and include more services.
Somebody must have asked someone in Southern NH.
So
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:20pm
The Taxachusetts moniker is inaccurate?
Seriously though, I won't get into a debate about Business Insider's sources, and if the article is inaccurate, fine.
Regardless, the cost of living in this area, especially housing, is extremely high for a variety of reasons. And while taxes may or may not play a role now, increasing property taxes increases the cost of housing, and that is not a good thing.
Yes
By leaving DTX
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 4:57pm
...I suspect you were kidding, but yes, the Taxachusetts moniker is inaccurate. I recently returned here from the Albany area, and NY taxes in nearly every category (auto, income, property, fees, whatever) are worse in nearly every way (higher, more tedious to calculate and pay, more paperwork, more fighting with the department over the true amount due). If you dislike MA/Boston taxes, I invite you to try New York State.
Born and raised my friend.
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 7:21pm
Spent 25 years there.
I'm not saying MA is the worst in the country, but there are a LOT of ridiculous taxes/charges here too.
What I'm saying is raising property taxes to pay for the T is stupid.
Yes
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 5:01pm
Yes. It is inaccurate. The high costs of real estate in the Boston area are due to the high cost of the real estate.
Massachusetts comes in at #31 - pretty much near the middle:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102566710
Considering our income and property values are quite high, the overall burden isn't bad at all.
Go live somewhere cheap
By Ari O
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 9:53pm
Go to Bakersfield. It's wicked cheap there. There's tons of pollution and no water, but it's cheap.
I'm good.
By ChrisInEastie
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 9:59am
Sigh. Reading comprehension.
This argument is that we shouldn't make housing MORE expensive to cover the mismanagement of our transit system.
Nothing to do with living anywhere cheap. Just not making it even more expensive here.
The report calls for an end
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:03pm
Yeah, something I don't understand with these other transit systems is that their monthly passes basically cost more than the number of trips a person would take to get to/from work each day. (See the "trip multiple" bubbles on page 11 of the report.) If you use the T only, or primarily, to commute to work, you'd use it 40x per month (2x day, 20 workdays/mo). So why would you buy a monthly pass that costs more than 40x a single-ride fare?
That's just one of the little tricks the report uses...
By octr202
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 8:43am
...to make the T look bad. Like a lot of the comparisons to other systems, they cherry pick the data to compare. WMATA is the outlier (throwing out London which is even more irrelevant a comparison than NYC), and they picked an artificially high pass (the 28-day FastPass), which is not intended for the same use as an MBTA LinkPass. The Metrorail system is still designed to have most riders pay by the ride, rather than via the unlimited ride system. A rider (as they illustrate on page 11) going from SIlver Spring to Metro Center would pay $3.60 per trip (peak price), and $144 for 40 one-way trips (average month). That FastPass they cite only makes sense for trips from outer areas (when the one-way peak fare hits the $5.90 max), but in those cases you're talking about trips that are comparable to commuter rail here. (And that's another insidious problem with the report - the Metrorail system isn't comparable to our subway - it's a hybrid of commuter rail and subway that reaches further into the suburbs than ours does, given that DC has a very limited commuter rail system.)
I also compared two trips I'm more familiar with. Melrose to Boston (commuter rail here) and New Carrollton to downtown DC (done by Metro, although there is a MARC commuter rail stop there as well). In DC, the trip costs $4.35 each way, or $174 per month (40x one-way). In Boston, that trip by commuter rail costs $5.75 one way, or a pass is $182. So there you actually get more frequent service at less cost than in Boston.
Their cherry-picking of data to compare with the T makes you wonder just how rooted in reality a lot of this report is.
And the big problem with
By anon
Fri, 04/10/2015 - 12:51pm
And the big problem with comparing with London and NYC is that in those cities, most people go everywhere by public transit, not just to work. So monthly passes are priced higher than the cost of 2 trips per weekday.
Also, Those Systems Are MUCH Bigger; And NYC Runs 24 Hours A Day
By Elmer
Fri, 04/10/2015 - 3:55pm
Also, Those Systems Are MUCH Bigger; And Run
By ChrisInEastie
Sat, 04/11/2015 - 10:53am
Fixed.
This is already almost the
By leaving DTX
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 9:03am
This is already almost the case on commuter rail. Monthly passes (the online variety) for my zone are slightly less than the cost of 32 rides (i.e. 16 days of roundtrips). Most months, all it takes is four or five days of work at home (and/or rides where my pass isn't checked) to make passes uneconomical.
So, past a certain point, raising the price of monthly passes can decrease revenue. Certainly in all cases there's a fixed point beyond which there is no more revenue to be gained by raising the price, and if the commuter rail pricing is any guide, the MBTA may already be close to that price.
yeah if it starts to cost
By whaler
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:29pm
yeah if it starts to cost more to take the T than to park...getting up super early and driving in is looking better and better.
Even just within the city
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:39pm
I live and work on opposite ends of the city, and even with Storrow traffic, it's a 20-30 min drive vs an hour to 1:15 train ride. And that's with going opposite rush hour traffic by the time I hit the Green Line.
Granted I have free parking at my office (yes, that does exist!), I'd pay in a heartbeat to avoid dealing with the MBTA. My car was in the shop for a week back in March, and that was one miserable week.
Remember, "Big Dig debt"
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:45pm
Remember, "Big Dig debt" actually means Silver Line and Greenbush Commuter Rail debt.
This is true
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:15pm
But it's my understanding that the transit portion of the Big Dig was required for environmental purposes to make the rest of it happen. It was pretty much forced debt, regardless of what was done with it.
But hey, at least the Silver Line is efficient, rig...nevermind.
Whatever
By BostonDog
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:19pm
I don't give a shit how the T is run or who runs it. They can take their pick provided one thing is clear:
NO SERVICE CUTS OR DISRUPTIONS
If they claim they can squeeze more out of the system, fine. If they think a better manager will solve the problem, fine. The only thing that matters to users and Metro Boston is that the trains arrive on time, on the same schedule used for the last few years, and that they operate reliably. But they can't claim the T is fully funded and then cut services.
Communities served by the T
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:22pm
meaning that if you drive to a MBTA stop from an outlying town like Dover or whatever, you don't have to pay for it? I can see not asking the citizens of Springfield, etc.... to pay but then again metro Boston generates more taxes than it receives* so why not?
* I think?
So now we see the MBTA get reformed with further service impacts and then maybe in 2-3 years after the reforms have failed to solve all the issues, we can look at fixing the funding? I hope it's a mild winter next year.
I'm okay with this
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:23pm
As long as the wester part of the state gets an equal amount of tax levys to start paying for all the money they steal from us in the city :)
But it makes perfect sense to
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 2:09pm
But it makes perfect sense to tax washing machines in Pittsfield to fund buses in Wakefield.
If it wasn't for all the income tax paid by bus-riding Wakefielders, income which clearly couldn't exist if only eastern Mass sales tax funded the T, our state would be so poor that we'd all be using washboards and wringers.
"it criticizes the T for
By J
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:27pm
"it criticizes the T for offering pass holders higher discounts"
This panel really is clueless. Pass holders get a deal for two major reasons:
1) Guaranteed revenue for MBTA. Cash in hand is better than cash in bush, or however that saying goes. Basically, when someone buys a pass, MBTA gets cash up front, versus the POSSIBILITY of future rides
2) It encourages off-peak ridership, where extra bodies cost the MBTA a grand total of zero, and the MBTA competes with FREE parking and little traffic congestion.
If the passes cost more than
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:08pm
If the passes cost more than 40 single-ride fares, many if not most of the people who just use the T to commute to and from work are going to stop buying passes. (See page 11 in the report, currently the passes cost 30-35 times the single-ride price.)
Exactly, and how much money
By Lyndsay
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:09pm
Exactly, and how much money are they really losing by giving a discount when a company, let's say, buys in bulk for its workers when it wouldn't have otherwise? it's called a sales incentive - Charlie should know this. It's a guaranteed payment per month no matter how often the person uses it. Sure, they might get ten more bucks a month from one person if they charged them per ride, but another month let's say that person goes on vacation and they're making twice as much for half as many rides. They get the money whether the person uses it or not. The person gets a tax deduction for taking the T. The company gets to offer it as a benefit. Everybody wins!
Too good a deal?!
By Mjolnir
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:09pm
When I was first pricing out the monthly pass, I chose not to get one. Looking at current prices, a monthly pass is $75. A single ride is $2.10. In order to not be spending MORE money than per-trip, you would have to be taking at bare minimum 35.7 rides a month - which makes sense for a commuter taking it at least twice a day, but commuters often have other options - walk, bike, drive/carpool, company shuttle or taxi... and they flood the system during peak time, as you mention. The cost is prohibitive for people who may not take the T that many times, and those people would likely be off-peak.
If anything, the discounts on monthlies should be higher, so people who don't need the T to commute but live/work around the system use it more, pumping money into the system. It should be reversed - high costs for street parking permit, resident discount on T pass.
Factor In Taxes
By BlackKat
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:35pm
One thing you need to factor in with the T Pass is that for many employees, whose employer funds a pre-tax transit deduction, is you save even more money. For those who don't have that option, remember you can and should claim a deduction for transit passes bought with post-tax pay.
deduction
By Saul
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:48pm
I believe that's only a state deduction, right?
If your employer doesn't
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:57pm
If your employer doesn't offer pre-tax transit (which can be either employer- or employee-funded, by the way), the only deduction you get is on your state income tax. That's 5.15% of a maximum of $750. Woo hoo, $38.63 -- party at my place!
Also note that while pre-tax transit can be used for pay-per-ride fares or passes on any transit agency, the post-tax deduction is only valid for MBTA monthy and weekly passes. If you're in the unfortunate situation of living in Lowell or Springfield and have to commute by bus, sucks for you. They say you can also deduct commuter rail "Twelve-Ride" passes, or T express bus or commuter boat "Ten-Ride" passes, but those don't exist any more.
So, let me see if I understand
By Kaz
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:52pm
They want us to double-check the discounts that monthly pass holders are getting?
They think this discount double-check is going to save us money?
There is no way in the last month that they actually ran any numbers regarding whether reducing the pass discounts would actually generate more revenue. They would need to determine what user thresholds were for when they buy a pass versus when they buy a single ride. They would need to determine all the intrinsic reasons people buy them versus don't buy them and determine if users see enough value added to justify buying a pass even if it is purely at face value.
This discount double-check couldn't possibly even raise enough money to do anything meaningful compared to the millions of dollars of debt service per year and maintenance needs and winterization and everything else!
Why would this panel even go there when there is so much more to deal with that they could have had more depth on and instead decided to spend ANY time at all brainstorming ways to bilk users for a few bucks more without actually running ANY of the necessary projects to determine if the idea would even result in what they claim it would?!
I take the Franklin line.....
By Pete Nice
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 4:11pm
Once in a great while, and everyone on the damn train seems to have a pass. In fact I have no idea what they have because the conductor always seems to ignore them and come straight to me. Anyway, if everyone had to pay cash each time (no passes) I can only imagine they would need more conductors during rush hours.
And wouldn't you still make money on monthly passes because people might be willing to pay more for services they probably won't max out on?
Increasing off-peak ridership...
By octr202
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 9:06am
...which is cheap for the T (uses existing service they're mandated to provide), also helps increase their total ridership, which helps increase certain streams of federal transit funding which all transit authorities receive.
That's why the old Sunday guest free program was good - very few of those Sunday guests were maxing out capacity on their services (no extra cost), and it helped increase other funding (and provided another incentive for folks to purchase passes rather than nickel and dime their transit payments each month).
(On a side note, spend some time traveling in other cities and you learn what a great and handy benefit the T's passes are. It'll be a shame if these great offerings are gutted or eliminated in the city that largely pioneered them.)
Similarly, as of 2014, the
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:30pm
More retirees than employees. So IOW the MBTA is basically a retirement program that happens to provide public transit as a side-business.
This is (unfortunately) not
By leaving DTX
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 9:09am
This is (unfortunately) not uncommon. In the early/middle of the 20th century, a lot of industries gave their workers generous pensions, ironically as an argument against communism. ("Look, industry can take care of workers - we don't need big government doing it!") But if they didn't think those pension commitments through, eventually they swamped the company. Bethlehem Steel is just one example - they no longer exist as a company anymore, the business entity which used to run a steel mill is now just a shell for the pension fund of its former workers.
KochPuppetry
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:40pm
Charlie loves him some Pioneer Institute, and the Pioneer Institute gets funding from various Koch holes.
This is chapter 1 of the playbook for destroying your middle class and unions: create an unnecesary "unfixable" crisis, replace the leadership with receivership followed by looting and ravaging and union busting.
Laugh all you want - Massachusetts is their latest target for all the wonderful things that have happened in Michigan, Kansas, and Wisconsin.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Insti...
Watch for Charlie Baker to claim that our public education system is too broken and he needs unchallenged power to bust unions there, too.
Damn girl, you just didn't
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:36pm
Damn girl, you just didn't drink the kool-aid but chugged the whole punchbowl.
Seriously how many people complaining here have bothered to read the entire report?
It sums up everything known to be wrong with the MBTA for decades now.
Dear Anon
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 2:56pm
Didn't your mother ever tell you to FOLLOW THE MONEY? Just google "Pioneer Institute" and "ALEC" or "Koch Brothers". No kool-aid there.
This is an all-out war on the middle class. Just because they've managed to dupe you into some auto-immune frenzy against your fellow citizens and your own best interests with a cooked-to-order report doesn't make Baker's ties to ALEC any less clear.
And left-wing groups are
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 6:54pm
And left-wing groups are funded by the likes of George Soros and Warren Buffet. Pointing to boogeymen behind the scenes is just a distraction.
False equivalence is false
By Kaz
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 9:15pm
http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/10/nothing-really-co...
are you implying...
By Malcolm Tucker
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:39pm
...that Gov. Baker is a Koch sucker?
other end
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 12:41pm
Puppet. They want him to show his face.
I say bring it on.
By RA
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:01pm
I say bring it on.
It sucks the way it is now.
So lets see how it is with some changes. If it sucks, go back to the way it is.
And what about unions that are corrupt?
By whyaduck
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:04pm
I am not anti-union by a long shot but, from what I read, it appears that the MBTA union(s) have some 'splaining to do.
The specific situation is irelevant
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 1:52pm
Baker is going to try to do in Massachusetts what Walker did to Wisconsin.
It has nothing to do with the specific situation, just the ease with which he can implement the ALEC policy plans to bust unions.
That's what people need to understand here: this is a manufactured crisis (or, at least, a massively inflated one) and this "report" is merely a pretense to gain the powers needed to try to nullify collective bargaining. The MBTA is simply an easy place to start the war on the middle class.
Do you have any proof and/or citations
By anon
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:01pm
Or are you getting this from you tin-foil thinking cap?
There is this thing called "google"
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/08/2015 - 3:39pm
I'm sure even an anon can work it.
Try these searches:
Pioneer Institute Charlie Baker
Pioneer Institute ALEC
Pioneer Institute Koch Brothers
and for fun ...
Koch Brothers Ilse Koch
Then I suggest:
Scott Walker ALEC unions
Wisconsin economy
Kansas economy
(oh, and my original post had a link to where the money flows, dear)
I am a working class man.
By Steven Gallanter
Thu, 04/09/2015 - 12:07am
I am a working class man. Why should i give a fig about what those who have more than I have to "endure?"
Pages
Add comment