Monday February 13th ride the “T” into Copley Square and arrived about 4:30 for a grand, large, classic rally to protect the MBTA for a working Metro Boston! See http://www.occupyboston.org/2012/02/10/monday-ride-rails-rally-copley-save-t/ After the Rally, march on over to the Boston Public Library for a chance to take the microphone, and share your own story, hopes, fears, and solutions. Join with OccupySomerville, OccupyBoston, Occupy the T, and the T Riders Union and be heard.
Please share widely!
That seems to be the position of the Occupy group but neither of those things is an option. There will be cuts. There will be a fare hike. The questions are, what can be cut and how high of a fare increase?
I don’t venture much off my usual route of riding the buses along Mass Ave and taking the Red Line in and out of Boston. Just from what I see, it appears that certain bus routes along Mass Ave could be consolidated or run on more efficient schedules. It isn’t as rare as you would think to see three 77 buses, one after another and bumper to bumper, heading toward Arlington.
The Ride appears ripe for a good hard look. How many of the people using The Ride actually need The Ride? Same question about the Ferries. Are they just a luxury?
But closing the commuter rail on the weekends strikes me as absurd. I don’t see why it should be seen any differently than closing the Red Line on the weekends. They should be running the commuter rail more often, not less, and on every day including the weekends.
I live at the end of Hull, four miles from Boston by water. The bus that connects where I live to the rest of the MBTA system is also on the chopping block. It is about a 30 minute drive through town to the Greenbush line. There are not enough parking spaces there and rush hour trains are packed. They can’t run additional trains, because it is a single track route. The bus connecting Red Line in Quincy – Hingham is planned to be cut off in Weymouth according to one proposal. Even IF the Greenbush line were a valid option I work in Back Bay which is not an easy commute from South Station. My wife works around State, which is slightly more reasonable walking, but is not fun in the winter.
Hull is on the water, but it is the fourth poorest town on the South Shore, we are not rich and we historically have relied on water transportation to connect us to Greater Boston. Without this bus and the ferry, Hull becomes a mass transit island over 20 miles from Boston. Many people would no longer be able to live there and work in the city, property values would decline, and it would no longer be a good place to live and raise a family.
One can take their bike on the ferry, can’t do that on a rush hour commuter train. Keeps even more cars off the road, honestly if we didn’t have the ferry we would drive (as would many others with the option in Hull).
What did you do before that?
If you had to choose between the service cut, bus or ferry service from Hull, which would it be?
Well, I can’t comment on the first question, because I’ve only lived in Hull since 2010.
On the second, the answer is neither. Why should we have to give up the most reliable and efficient segment of the entire MBTA system (I’ve seen numbers on the subsidies per passenger ride, boat is avg. $3 per passenger ride and apparently the Greenbush line loses $30k per day). It’s almost always late as well.
These are false choices, and we should all be in this together. This game of “divide and conquer” is how the poor & middle class get screwed over by the wealthiest people in this country. Let’s work on fighting for a solution that protects mass transit for everyone, not just those who take bus/train.
I will not make that choice between cutting bus or ferry, cutting the bus hurts lower income folks who work in other South Shore towns. Cutting the ferry hurts middle income folks who work in Boston and want to keep pollution and traffic down.
These are false choices, and the solution is to raise funding for public transportation. Push the deficit to someplace else in the budget, and then raise taxes to cover it.
We cannot kill public transportation in Massachusetts. We will kill ourselves if we do.
If we think in the terms being demanded of us by politicians and their hand-picked fellas running the MBTA, we’re doing their bidding and not the other way around. THEY created this mess, not us. The MBTA would be fine were it not for the big dig debt they took on; the state should be forced to pay for that out of its pockets and relieve that debt from the MBTA. With that done, the MBTA would be out of a dark cloud that it’s been living in for the better part of two decades.
We can’t live in the box we’ve been put in. We’ve got to get out of it and demand real change on this issue, at least if we want a transportation system that belongs in the last century… never mind this one.
No cuts, no hikes, and raise taxes.
There is no other alternative, the anti-tax gravy-train has to be stopped.
don’t raise taxes on struggling middle America.
Tax the people who produce the gas that run the trains and buses, with a stipulation that they can’t transfer that tax in the form of price increases. Get the money from people who are making millions and billions of dollars, not from the people who barely meet their household budgets. Force oil and gas companies to reduce their fuel prices for the MBTA and all transit entities across the nation, again, with the stipulation that the costs cannot be transferred by price increases to the general public. There are ways to raise revenue without further hurting the economy. But that would be taxing the powerful. It’s far easier to tax the powerless.
There is plenty of money just sitting around up in the bubble doing absolutely nothing. Force that money back into the economy by taxing it.
Take the Big Dig debt off of the MBTA’s back, and find a non-regressive way to make a small tax increase that is in effect until the debt is retired. Make sure the vote is on the record in the Senate, so that supposed “friend of the ferry and public transit for his constituents” Bob Hedlund is forced to vote against saving the T.
We’d even be fine if we made some of that $1 billion + in yearly tax credits in the supplementary budget be used to pay off the MBTA’s Big Dig debt.
The film tax credit alone is almost $150 million dollars a year at this point — and I don’t even think that counts the fact that these film studios are exempt from paying sales taxes.
Add in the fact we pay 25% of Tom Cruise’s $20+ million dollar pay day — and that film studios aren’t required to hire Massachusetts employees for their crew or service needs, who pay Massachusetts income taxes, and it’s little wonder that we lose almost every dollar we spend. It takes spending $4 in film tax credits to create about $1 in economic growth for the state… which is an embarrassing way to spend money as a state.
Shifting the funds spent on that one tax credit alone would nearly cover the entire MBTA budget deficit, in one fell swoop.
So, what do people think is more important to the Massachusetts economy? Having a strong public transportation system that shuttles around hundreds of thousands of people every day, a system that’s one of the key reasons companies decide to come or start up their business here, or having an extra couple movies filmed in Massachusetts every year?
It’s no contest. Save the MBTA.
The T debt was not the Big Dig, it was from expanding the T as part of the Big Dig.
The MBTA did not create that debt. Corruption and slop on Beacon Hill did, that and crony deals, crony capitalism, and the fact that everything, EVERYTHING was sold down the river behind closed doors.
The fares have never paid more than 32% of the MBTAs costs.
Today, all the fares do is barely hold the line on the stinking debt, the reeking pile from the Big Dig. And do you really think the Big Dig culture is gone? How about the $33 million that the strartgists and lobbyists plucked from the trees on Beacon Hill for middlemen while doing a shill-song for the film industry goes to the MBTA? Fully half the revnue that this state could have is tapped away – and the court reforms are already under attack, yes, indeed.
But don’t forget the Tax Expenditure budget and that the MBTA is the arteries and veins for commerce and workers and students and separated family members in this Commonwealth. The ferries and commuter rails are part of the blood and bones of this state.
For more about the sweet, sweet sap tapped out of the veins of the taxpayer by the Tax Expenditure Budget:
http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy12h1/tax_12/htax2.htm
or look at the minutes of the third meeting of the commission trying to drag this stuff out from the shadows ( well, some of them are anyway) http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEwQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mass.gov%2Fdor%2Fdocs%2Fdor%2Fstats%2Ftax-expenditure-commission-materials%2Fagendas-minutes%2Ftec-minutes-12-7-11.doc&ei=8zk3T73ILOT50gHD19nKAg&usg=AFQjCNGvojXIP8Fxx8aPiCj9_GOI3zBy5Q
I couldn’t make it, but I understand it was very well attended and the message delivered was to not cut commuter rail service to Lowell.
they should be expanding and upgrading it. This is just so sickening. There is so much wealth on Wall Street and in the 1% bubble, and taxed at such a low rate. I really can’t believe this is happening.
Prosperity for the wealthiest, austerity for the rest of us.
Fare increases and service cuts won’t solve the funding problem at the MBTA. Several posters have hit the nail on the head – it’s the Big Dig debt that was dumped on the MBTA with the Forward Funding legislation that is the problem.
There is a coalition of riders, community groups and labor that is tracking the news and debates at http://www.mbtatruth.org.
It’s time the Legislature stepped up. I keep reading news articles qouting State Reps and State Senators opposing MBTA fare increases and service cuts but I don’t read about them offering real solutions like addressing the debt.
http://www.mbtatruth.org
Save the MBTA Ferry It is not just about the ferry though, we are concerned with all services that are utilized in our region.
Everybody ducks the issue because the state finances are already a disaster.
Taxes must be raised.
The least powerful and most vulnerable men, women and children of Massachusetts are already suffering from the effects of the unmitigated greed of the very wealthy in Massachusetts. One way or another, the very wealthy must pay substantially higher taxes than they do today.
The middle class, already paying so much of the burden today, is also the primary consumer of transportation services. The middle class will benefit the most from increasing transportation funding (both directly and indirectly). Like it or not, if we don’t increase taxes on somebody, then the resulting price will be paid by everyone except the very wealthy.
Taxes must be raised.
Really some of the opinions here are so far from the mainstream it’s crazy.
I like the the idea that the MBTA exists and use it once in a while. I understand all the collateral benefits to MA life that it adds, and agree it’s needed.
The current proposals are completely stupid. Imagine a business that says we’re going to cut service and raise prices. Sticking it to the Lowells and other cities at the end of the commuter rail seems politically stupid as well.
People would support increased funding to the MBTA, but only IF they we satisified that the money was not going to perpetuate an inefficient culture that has excessively high costs. All it takes is the periodic “bus driver that makes $100K” story to reduce any support for the MBTA. The cuts proposal, the lack of operations changes in the plan, and the whole Bruins rally fiasco shows the leadership is clueless.