MBTA proposes cutting service 20%, stopping subways at midnight, ending weekend commuter-rail service as ridership plunges

As always, cutting the lowest rungs of the ladder will disproportionately affect the poorest of us, and ultimately will hurt all of us.

Whether or not office workers around the region go back to the same commuting patterns in the next year or so (or ever, really), there is an inflexible base of key workers who live in the city and rely on current services to do their jobs and live their lives.

If those thousands of workers need to switch to cars, that's not just an inefficient economic burden that will be felt elsewhere, but will also cancel out any traffic / road maintenance gains we've seen in the WFH era.

Sure, they say it's "not permanent," but reduced service will have consequences immediately. At some point, it's gotta be a better use of our broader state economy to support the MBTA through lower-demand months. I really want to hear the state talking about a plan for increased funding after the pandemic.

How, exactly, does eliminating service on the E branch past Brigham Circle, save money? Instead of turning around in a loop, the trolley must be manually switched at Brigham Circle now. Unless I’m missing something here...

The seismic shift in the workforce from working downtown to working at home has taken away a large percentage of the T's customer base. No tourists, no Garden events, no students from either colleges and high schools have decimated the ridership. No mention of layoffs in the workforce but reducing the number of workers is inevitable.

There should be trip- wires set up, so that reaching x volume of ridership, or opening x part of the economy, automaticly triggers resumption of normal T service.

It's too bad this didn't push them to run more efficiently. Trim the inspectors (how many people does it take to do the nightly shutdown process at each station?) but keep the subways and buses running. Rethink the whole commuter rail operation, especially off peak. Think single-employee railbus, not hauling 8 giant hunks of metal back and forth to Worcester all day with 3 or more employees and only 1 car open.

Much smaller cities in Europe have much better rail and bus networks. And they have high labor costs and plenty of regulations, same as us. We should look at how they do it, not just say it's the same old thing or nothing.

Charlie M. F. Baker can take a long chauffeured SUV ride off a short Swampscott pier!

The man has spent his professional politicaa a l career on what appears to be a single-minded ambition to DESTROY public transportation in favor of private cars.

Most people have no idea it was Charlie M.F. Baker who, as Gov. Weld's director of Administration and Finance, concocted a financing scheme to cover billions of dollars in Big Dig "cost overruns" that shifted the debt onto the MBTA. Most people don't know that, around the same time, the Legislature decided that they would shift the MBTA to a "forward funding" model, instead of simply covering their costs. The result of this financial engineering was twenty-five years of deferred maintenance, layoffs, and reductions in service that have brought us to this desperate moment.

Charlie M. F. Baker had the audacity to starve the MBTA for more than 20 years, and then point to the agency and accuse them of poor financial performance, as a means of further immiserating the region's transit riders.

The man is an anti-social menace, and I, for one, can not WAIT to see the back of him as he exits Beacon Hill.

I propose they eliminate the Bid Red cars.

What has Huntington / South Huntington Ave done to the MBTA? How much money will they actually save?

On a related note, it seems like the T's using COVID as an excuse to get out of everything that they find the least bit complicated! Besides street-running GL trains, there's also the catenary wires in Cambridge (71/73) and the South Boston Transitway (SL1/2/3)...

of transit oriented development just collapsed.

Cutting service due to decreased ridership isn't unreasonable, but this seems way too late. Maybe I'm overly optimistic but I'm hoping that things will start looking better, covid-wise, at some point in 2021. These cuts don't even start until spring 2021.

A train carrying 50 people costs the same to run as one carrying 500.

Costs aren't tied to ridership so why is revenue?

A free tax funded MBTA would mean better, more consistent service.

Part of this proposal will cut the two main bus routes from the Oak Grove stop to the city of Melrose/Wakefield, effectively cutting off the cities from the T. Terrible decision that I hope is rescinded.