Ok, so after I bashed the living daylights out of Hub Politics, I’ll give them due credit for being the first to spot this article about a T Boycott in the Herald.
A boycott, right now, is about the most counterproductive thing any transit advocate could do. So I’d like to hear from any of the boycott organizers as to how they think this will help.
Here’s their website — it took a little digging. Who’s organizing this?
If anything, transit advocates should be doing the opposite and encouraging more people to ride the T, as it is declining ridership which has contributed largely to the need for this fare hike. I’ll support the group that comes out with some suggestions for how to get people back on the T.
Please share widely!
I tried to do some seraching, and I found little info. A whois search didn’t reveal anything, and they don’t appear to have any links to other T advocacy groups like the T Riders Union. That doesn’t make them illegitimate, though.
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The boycott seems centered around getting people to the hearing on the fare increase at 4:30. I think that’s a good goal, as the T needs to hear that people aren’t pleased with this. As for a boycott, I don’t think that it will have a major impact one way or another on the T’s finances. If it could get noticed, it might increase pressure on the legislature to address the T’s sorry funding system. But I don’t think that it’s been organized in such a way that it would have much impact–a T boycott would a huge organizing feat that can’t just be done with a website!
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I do have to disagree with your assertion that declining ridership is responsible for declining revenues. Though this plays a role, the T is saddled with a huge debt burden and a ridiculous government funding scheme known as forward funding, which basically does not give it the necessary money to run a system of its size. There have been several articles about this, including a decent one recently in the Boston Phoenix (though in my opinion, it focused too much on the role of T labor negotiations).
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I don’t knock encouraging people to ride the T–I published a letter in the Globe about it last September, the last time gas was $3 a gallon. But between the racial inequities in the system, the absured funding scheme, and the lack of service to the disabled, transit advocacy groups have far more to do than simply to encourage people to ride.