UPDATE from the author (jlove1982): I just realized that some of my math is off because I hadn’t noticed that subway to bus transfers are free. I have no idea how I missed that… therefore, disregard that part (as you’ll see from my striking it, which I did so that you could see where I messed up), even though the increases are still daunting to those attempting to get around the city who don’t have the means. I’d take this down, but I think there’s a much more interesting discussion going on right now in regards to T tolls, so have at it and all that
It was early morning, and I was heading down to the T station. I was drifting off into a music-inspired funk while putting my monthly Charlie card into the T machine and going through when I thought I heard it beep on me. I turned around and went back, thinking it had failed and that I needed to do put my card in again. So I tried that, and was informed that I had used my card too soon in the past to allow me to use it again at that time. As I have one of those monthly passes, I found out one of the downsides of these things: It does not let you go through again if you already used it once at that station. Wanting to get to work on time, I decided to buy a $5 card to get through. So, in a rush, I used the machine and paid for a new card, and went through the T machine. However, as I went through again, I heard the beeping. Deciding that I went through fine, I kept going. But I looked back and then understood why this time the machine went off: a woman and her child had followed me through, using the modern turnstile machine’s open door (rather than the old turning thing that is being phased out of most of the T machines) to sneak through.
I did not think much of the incident until I was reminded of the Boston T increases that are set to go into effect at the beginning of next year. The T is increasing by around 25% across the board, as The Boston Globe further notes that:
Under the new fares, subway and trolley rides will go from $1.25 to $1.70, and bus fares from 90 cents to $1.25.
Meanwhile, the monthly rates will change, ending the Subway-only pass while decreasing the Subway/Bus pass by around $12 from the current price of $71 to $59. Now I will admit, I do currently have the monthly subway-bus pass. So I’ll save some money. But, as Boston Mayor Menino has noted (in the same above article),
“Who is going to take the T? It’s not going to be the executives from some of our biggest companies,” Menino said this morning in a Globe interview at the Parkman House. “It’s our working people … It will take money out of their pockets.”
He’s right. Let’s take a look at the $s, assuming that someone is only taking a bus or subway directly to their jobs…
Single fare bus: increase of .35 cents x 10 fares a week (5 round trips) = $3.50 extra per week, or around an extra $175 a year
Single fare subway: increase of .45 cents x 10 fares a week (5 round trips) = $4.50 extra per week, or around an extra $225 a year
But we all know that many people do not live on a direct line to work. Let’s play around with some fares. If we assume that people are having to commute via bus to a T stop, then getting on the T stop and walking the rest of the way, you now have a commute that will cost an extra $8 a week, and around an extra $400 a year. On top of this, if you have a bus to T to bus commute, your commute will average out to an extra $11.50 a week, and nearly $600 (actually $598) a year.
Those figures may seem small, but when you consider that nearly 20% of the city of Boston lives in poverty based on city statistics, $598 (it) is a big freakin’ deal for a good deal of the city and outlying individuals.
Yet, there may be some justifiable reason to increase fares. Early on in the process, MBTA chief Mike Grabaskus cited
“flat ridership, increases in fuel costs, and $8.1 billion in debt”
as some reasons behind these increases. And I understand that pain is going to have to come from somewhere. But why in an area that for many people is the basis for how they get around in Boston?
To finish off the story I began before, the woman had asked for some change to get back, because it was obvious that she didn’t have the money to go both ways. I ended up giving her my CharlieCard (the T card). Yet there are people all over this city who can barely afford to get to where they need to go. I don’t think I need to explain that effective, cheap transportation is the way towards a more productive society: people can get to their jobs while getting the rest of their life in order, without going into massive amounts of debt. Therefore, you have people coming to work on time, and with less stress. That, and people who would otherwise not be able to afford to work in certain places can, and can do so without worrying about getting to and from work.
As we have seen, people from Mayor Menino to Governor-elect Patrick have opposed these increases. And we all should too. Because as Menino said, these fare increases are not going to affect you, me, or executives. It will affect the poor, and the people of Boston and the Boston-area who have a tough time of it as it is without having to pay an extra $200-600 a year (more) just to get to work.
I’m happy the “groin crusher” (or as you called it, the “old turning thing”) is being phased out. Well worth a fee increase.
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A card misread on that was painful. Nothing quite wakes a person up on the morning commute like a metal rod to the groin.
That seems to be a drawback of separate agencies governing the MBTA and the MTA — they don’t think to the big picture.
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It would make some sense to me to raise the tolls on the turnpike coming into Boston and keep the commuter rail prices flat. Let the drivers subsidize the mass transit folk because the traffic is up and mass transit ridership is down.
These days I ride the bus more than the subway. The new bus card readers are fussy (causing lots of fumbling to get the card in the slot just right) and hold onto each card for a few seconds.
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The comparision is to the old “swipe your card” routine, which was fast & easy.
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So at rush hour, in inclement weather, each bus trip will be burdened with slow-moving lines of riders at every stop. Yippee! But wait, there’s more.
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I hope I am wrong about this, but the new monthly passes are going to be smart-cards that customers must “fill” or renew (or something) every month, rather than getting a new card.
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For bus riders, the place to do this will be–on the bus! Better get a really early start on the first morning of the month. Or walk.
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So you see, there are potentially hours of entertainment in exchange for the fare increase!
I honestly hadn’t heard about the card thing and the smart card system. That is going to make things more ridiculous as it is.
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The monthly system (and the elimination of the of the subway-only pass) is also incredibly insane. That’s an immediate increase of over $15 if one only wants to use the subway.
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At the same time, I would love to see some demographics figures for who and how people are buying monthly passes. The problem is that people may not necessarily be able to budget in it if their costs are still too high, and the elimination of the subway pass makes monthly passes all that more expensive.
which will cost $15. Unlike the current weekly passes, they will be available at any time and will run for 7 days from the time of purchase.
If this is true, and the combo pass is $59 a month, then you save $1 by buying the combo pass instead of weekly passes, or maybe $1.20 or so if you count the extra 2-3 days beyond 28 in a month. This makes no sense.
Buying “in bulk” is always cheaper than buying “a la carte”. Under the old system it was cheaper to buy weekly passes than monthly passes, and that made no sense to me.
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Under the new system a year’s worth of monthly passes will cost $708 (5912) and a year’s worth of weekly passes will cost $780 (1552). The difference, $72, works out to $6/month.
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Which makes sense. Make it (slightly) cheaper for commuters, and squeeze tourists and other infrequent riders.
One other comment about the “smart readers” on the busses. I have a friend without a car who depends on busses and trains. She lives at one end of Arlington and takes the bus every morning with her son who attends an elementary school at the other end of town. The first morning after the new readers went in, they showed up late and she was fuming because it had taken her 45 minutes to make the ride. It seems that with the old machines, people could drop in a handful of change all at once, but with the new machines you have to drop the coins in one at a time. At rush hour on Mass Ave. on a heavily traveled bus, this significantly added to the length of the ride.
I was riding with a friend who provided the coins for our ride: nine dimes. I don’t want to tell you how annoying and frustrating it was to try to feed nine dimes individually through that tiny slot as opposed to dumping them into the hopper that the buses used to have. The best you can do now is five coins: three quarters, a dime, and a nickel. In future it’ll be two coins for a very few — dollar and quarter — and five quarters for most folks. All through that one-coin-at-a-time slot, which you’re trying to feed either with impatient people behind you, or as the bus starts jouncing off down the street.
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Clearly, they want to encourage — force? — use of the Charlie Card everywhere. But those people who designed and/or chose that new bus fare box are idiots one and all.
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I wonder how much of the fare increase is to cover the cost of all these new fare boxes, card machinery, and turnstyles.
Flat ridership? The reason why there’s flat ridership is because of the last fare increase. With the increase in gasoline prices over the past couple of years, plus the traffic problems, and the parking situation, you would think that ridership would be up, but the MBTA in its infinite wisdom came to the conclusion that increasing prices wouldn’t have an effect on ridership. Oops, that hasn’t worked out well, so they decided to raise prices again to try and feed their budget. By now, we should know what the result of that move will be, an ever downward spiral.
With the increase in gasoline prices over the past couple of years
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See my comment below to see why that’s not an incentive for people to take the T. Gas prices would have to get up to the $20/gallon – $40/gallon range for the T to become cost-competitive for short trips. T fares are insanely high, to the point where gas prices still pale in comparison.
The inconvenience issue is a non-starter if you have to commute into the innner city part of the T system. When I was much younger, and things were less expensive, I would often drive into town, but now, the aggravation with parking and traffic make it likely that I would never do it again. Even with gasoline at $1.00 per gallon, I would not consider driving into town under any circumstance other than an emergency, and by that, I mean something more serious than to buy tickets for the next concert at the Garden.
I’ve spent most of the past decade living in Somerville and Cambridge, near public transportation. I’ve had a car almost the whole time, for trips out of the city, carrying people and stuff around, and going out past 1am. But when I was working as a computer sysadmin with a good income, I used to take the T whenever it was convenient, which was very often, considering where I lived.
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Then I went into political campaigns and organizing, and saving money became a high priority. Since then, I rarely take the T.
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Currently, I live in Central Square. I go to Somerville several times a week, and often stop at points along the way. My car gets about 28mpg in the city, reasonable and not at all unusual. It’s about a 2.5 mile drive from my place to Davis Square. When gas prices were up at $3/gallon, that meant: 2.5 miles / 28mpg * $3 = about 25 cents in gas.
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Over my car’s history, maintenance has averaged about 5 cents/mile, so make that about 38 cents in marginal cost for the trip. Or, at today’s $2.10/gallon that would be about 25 cents for the trip.
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If I make that trip about three times a week, the total marginal cost to me for a month is about $6.00, or about $9.00 when gas prices are near $3/gallon. By T, it’s $30/month, and about to go up to over $40/month. A new T pass, at $59/month, is equivalent to the marginal cost of making 236 trips to Davis or back! And if I stop on the way, say to pick up something at a store, or meet a friend? By car, no extra cost. By T, it’s another $1.25 if I don’t have a pass.
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I remember when I didn’t care enough about this to even figure it out, but now, saving $30/month or more on transportation makes a difference.
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The result: I could be taking the T, but instead, I’m on the roads. Increasing traffic congestion, increasing pollution, increasing gas consumption, increasing health & injury risks. Because the T is too expensive!
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There are a lot of people in dense areas like Cambridge and Somerville, with a lot of public transport, who do own cars, and who need to own cars. T fares are a very strong incentive for them to maximize the use of those cars. They (we) benefit from using cars, by saving money. But the cost of that hits everyone.
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It’s insane. We don’t charge people per-use to drive on the roads. We shouldn’t charge people per-use to take the T. It’s completely unreasonable for there to be any T fares, at all. It benefits nobody, and hurts everybody.
If you didn’t have to pay for the car itself.
The car was paid for whether Cos uses the T or not. That money is already spent. Since that car’s cost is sunk, he can now must choose which method of transportation will cost more from here on out.
If you were deciding on whether to buy a car or take the T, or whether to buy an extra car, then other aspects of the cost of ownership would be more important.
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Also, maintenance costs are not-linear, they will go up as the car ages. Doing mostly city driving will put a lot more stress on the vehicle and will need to replace your clutch, brakes, etc. more frequently than if you are doing mostly highway driving. Driving your car more frequently can also increase your insurance costs.
That’s why I referred to “marginal cost”, and explained in two different places that I’m not talking about the choice of whether or not to have a car at all.
… and …
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This isn’t about whether to do without a car at all. There are much greater costs in that choice, that make the cost of owning a car worthwhile (for example, a contract job that includes occasional need to zip out to a data center on 128, is one I couldn’t take without owning a car). The issue is, given that I do own a car, and do live in dense urban areas and travel around them a lot, do I choose, on each trip to use the T or to drive?
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As I said, there are a lot of people in this situation. According to the 2005 City of Cambridge budget, there are about 40,000 Cambridge resident parking permits, which means more than 40,000 cars owned by Cambridge residents (since some people with driveways/garages don’t get permits) out of a population of about 100,000. How many short trips per week within Cambridge/Somerville/Watertown does each of these cars make? How much lower would that number be if the T were free to ride? I’d be interested in a study that estimates those numbers, but I bet they’re large.
I live out in the burbs and when I’m feeling flush I take the commuter rail. I enjoy the ride; it takes only a few minutes longer than it would to drive, and I get to read the paper, doze, whatever.
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But…it is a luxury, as the round trip from me to get from Acton to East Cambridge, including parking, is $14.50. I don’t know what they will increase to when the fares go up, probably on the order of $18. Cost to drive to Alewife and take the T, probably $8.50 now, around $10 after the increase. Cost for me to drive all the way in? About $12 if I park in my favorite cheap0 parking lot. Plus, as you point out, the added flexibility of having my car. If I didn’t hate driving with a mad passion, I’d be doing it every day.
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Taking the commuter rail is a luxury for the affluent. :-4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097
My husband takes the commuter rail in, and generally, factoring the monthly pass vs his old way of driving to the orange line (wellington) and parking to take the T, it’s pretty costly either way, but the car wins out. With this fare increase and gas (temporarily) so cheap, it’s hands down driving costs less.
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On the time-saver side, the only way the commuter rail wins out is if there’s really nasty traffic. Otherwise, the 50-minute ride to North Station from Lowell is easily beat out by the 20-25 min drive to Wellington and 20 minute ride to the center of Boston (depending on wait times).
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So we’re dutifully buying our T pass (through his work, it’s pre-tax, so we save $20-$30/month on it) but it’s not because it’s cost effective or time-saving. It is slightly less stressful and you can nap or do work or read instead of drive, but as my husband doesn’t hate driving that’s not the real reason to go commuter rail…
The original post lists higher costs for people who use both a bus and the subway to commute. I thought they were starting free bus-to-subway transfers?
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Also the computation for full time commuters is based on purchasing separate fares rather than a monthly pass. The pass costs $15 more per month, I think, which means $180 per year no matter how many transfers.
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Also, I believe Boston should implement a cost to enter the city with a car, as London does.
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It doesn’t make sense to encourage using the T without simultaneously discouraging using cars. And the toll could off-set some of the fare increase.
If they institute a system-wide policy that is similar to what they have on the 39 bus now, the transfers won’t be free if you go bus-subway but you’ll have to pay the difference.
How would you implement an enter-the-city charge without bringing traffic to a crashing halt? I do want to encourage T ridership over cars but not by making driving an veritable impossibility.
I had misread the press release. I’ve updated and struck out the parts that were innacurate.
If you take both a bus and a subway, and use the new CharlieCard (not yet available), your fare should go down from $2.15 to $1.70 . The monthly pass also goes down, from $71 to $59.
Not some. That is the only category of fare that is ‘reduced’
Newton Green Line ‘D” riders will pay $1.70 instead of $3.00. Quincy and Braintree riders will pay $1.70 instead of $2.50 . Zone 1B commuter rail riders will pay $1.70 instead of $2.00 . Zoned local bus riders will pay $1.25 instead of $1.55. There may be a few others that I can’t remember right now.
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My big problem with all this is that the T is trying to rush too many things together at once — conversion of all remaining stations, introduction of the new CharlieCard, and a fare increase. All by the end of 2006. They should do this one step at a time. Also, the surcharges for not using a CharlieCard are much too high, and should be gradually phased in rather than suddenly imposed in January.
So yeah, my math for at least part of this is completely unnecessary IF you are using the Charlie Cards. I hadn’t noticed that before, and that’s my mistake.
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That doesn’t help me, very much, does it?
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This fair increase is complete BS. It’s starting to remind me of my days in D.C. when I had to choose between having food or being able to get my weekly pass on the Metro System so I could get to work. Literally, I had a choice of eating or the Metro system some weeks (and it’s not as if I’m a spend thrift, either).
is quick, clean and efficient. It also has a graduated rate, so if you live way out in Vienna and work on Capital Hill its going to cost you more to ride than if you lived in Foggy Bottom or Brookland. The card system they have there (especially the one you wave at the machine, rather than feeding it) is great. I’d take the Metro over the T anyday.
One of the bullsh*t reasons the T provided for switching to this slow system was that it would be harder to cheat and pay less or not pay at all. It seems that with the wide open gate-like things instead of turnstiles, it’s easier to cheat, unless the station is monitoring the gates and has personnel to punish violators.
I pretty much regularly see people bust through the gates that someone else has paid to go through, when there is a train right there to hop on. Anecdotally, more so than I saw from the aforementioned referenced “groin busters”. Nor have I seen the on duty attendant do anything about that, they are at the very least busy trying to help people make the damn thing work, even if they were so inclined to do something.
The fare increases have their justifications, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. Some great points are made in this posting about the impact to the most impoverished.
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As someone who is not in the poverty category, the aspect that makes me the most unhappy is that the T service has not changed. The trains are still disappointingly overcrowded, equipped with inferior intercom system, and horribly scheduled and delayed.
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Put simply, it isn’t worth the money. I can understand beyond any doubt why someone would rather walk, drive or bike to their job when living in Boston, because the T is probably the worst subway system in America.
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They need to stop building stations and build a worthwhile system of trains that run on time and are capable of handling the volume of riders.
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But rest assured I’m doing everything I can to lower that volume by one.
I think the best way to increase traffic (and therefore profits) on the T is to… get this… decrease the costs. We should be cutting it to a dollar, not raising it to $1.70.
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Honestly, if I were commuting to Boston, I wouldn’t ride the T for a buck 70. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t. It’s no longer reliable, it’s always been dirty and the fumes make me sick. I love public transportation and it’s how I get into Boston now. However, it’s starting to climb right up to the rates of the Metro system in D.C. – which was almost as expensive as owning a car anyway.
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The T is a public service, it should be getting enough support from Beacon Hill that it should never be in the red. It doesn’t have to make all its money back from riders because non-riders depend on it too. Given that hundreds of thousands of employees who work in Boston or nearby areas use the T, those employers have an invested stake in the T actually working and delivering their crew. Therefore, their invested stake means some of their tax dollars should be going into it without complaint.
The subway lines are all electric and they are getting rid of all of the diesel buses.
They aren’t getting rid of all the diesel buses, but they’re replacing them with cleaner-burning ones. Some buses now burn CNG instead, but not all.
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Commuter trains still run on diesel.
The subway has to be paid for somehow. The question is what options are there for paying for it? The ones I can think of are fares, sales taxes, tolls, parking fees, gas taxes, income taxes, and property taxes. If you pay with income taxes, you are asking the whole state to pay for something that only benefits the Boston area, which seems unfair. Gas taxes, tolls, and parking fees can be localized to the region and discourage people from driving when they could take the subway/bus.
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The remaining three options (fares, sales taxes, and property taxes) collect money from people who actually benefit from the subway/bus system. All three of them are generally considered to be regressive taxes. But ultimately, most of the money should come from these three sources because then the system is paid for by the people/companies that benefit from its existence. A property tax surcharge of 1-2% on all commercial property within 1 mile of a subway stop and 0.5-1% on all commercial property within 1 mile of a bus stop would go a long way towards paying for the system (you could extend these taxes to residential properties too). A sales tax increase to 7% within all cities that have bus/subway service would also provide lots of revenue.
The MBTA should be paid for from general government funds. We don’t ask people to pay a toll each time they use the residential street they live on. How else would we pay for that road?
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Are we all up in arms that some of our income tax dollars when to pay for repaving Old Main Road in Savoy, MA, where there are only two houses? I might be the only one on Blue Mass Group who’s ever driven that road, but it sure did need repaving and I’m glad it happened.
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Transportation infrastructure isn’t there just for the individuals who directly use it. Transportation facilitates commerce and culture. It helps people get to us, not just us to get to them. In dense urban areas, transportation is part of development that makes business work and gives us more tax revenue for the state, more scientific achievements and technological advances. Maybe the band you love that just played a gig out in Newburyport would never have been able to get a good start if it hadn’t been for those venues in Allston and Cambridge that couldn’t survive if the T weren’t there to bring people to them.
One percent of the 5.3% income (it could be sales, but I think its income. Any help?) tax goes to the MBTA. Another 1% goes to the school building assistance program. People from the Berkshires are already paying for the T. I suppose you could argue that 20% of the state population has access to the T so it is equitable, but I don’t have the numbers to back that up.
Public transportation is costly…and those of us who use it should be expected to pay a portion of the costs. But – at the risk of getting into a rant — I have to raise the question of where the money is going. Consider the following cascade of costs:
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1) Of the entire T budget, an extraordinary amount goes into debt service. They’re paying off debt because the T has not been able to adequately fund its operations though its generous subsidy combined with fares.
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2) On top of that…did you know that of the 5% MA sales tax – 2 cents on every dollar goes to the T? If that doesn’t steam up the folks in Western Mass….nothing will.
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3) So where IS the money going? Look no further than the infamous Carmen’s Union. Until the election, even their web site was crowing about having the most “generous” benefits package in North America. I learned that they got wind of the outrage that might generate during an election, so its now back to basic humdrum union stuff at the site. This is well known as the most hack-ridden, parasitic union in the US. You name it, they’re lavishing it on themselves: the notorious “sick day accrual” benefit (even more outrageous than Mass Port); obscene and costly health benefits for “retirees” – eg> you can retiree from the T at age 44 and have full health coverage for life.
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It’s good to discuss and debate the need for fare increases. But until someone (Hello…Deval?) has the political courage to to take on the T unions – and require the T retirees (yes, especially the present fat-cat retirees) to pick up the cost of their health benefits, public transportation will continue to operate in a dysfunctional black hole.
I’m intrigued.
What angers me the most is the T is my only form of transportation (save my own two feet). The T could go up to $3.00 a ride and I would still pay it if I wanted to get to UMass or work.
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I hate that I have no form of democratic protest against htis increase. I can’t “vote the bums out” because they are appointed. And I certainly can’t take my business elsewhere.
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God help Dan Grabauskus if I ever run into him on the street; I have a few opinions i’d like to express to him.
I knew at some point there would be a good old fashion “union bashing” post. That terrible Carmen’s Union – out there representing 4500 working men and women – the majority are people of color who live in the Greater Boston area. That means they are working men and women, paying taxes, raising children, struggling like everyone else. But hey let’s dump on the workers and their union.
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Never mind there are 17 unions on the T. Never mind that the Legislature changed the funding for the T several years ago and created a funding shortfall. Never mind the unfunded debt. Never mind the gas prices you are complaining about are costs the MBTA has to pay as well.
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Jump right in a bash the workers. After all they should have slave wages, no benefits and no rights so some yuppie can ride for free.
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Carmen’s Union members have given up pay rasies and other benefits over 70 years of collective bargaining to maintain health care for retirees and to have a pension. So tell you what – you pay them back the 70 years of lost wages they gave up to have these benefits now and then you can change the system.
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And BTW, how terrible – they are fighting for health care for retirees. Let’s just require public sector workers to work for 30 years and then cut them lose. That will save us big bucks. But get ready to drive the bus yourself.
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And where were the critics when the Carmen’s Uion fought the “privatization scams” of the 90s and won. They maintained hundreds of hard to serve routes that would have been lost under privatization.
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So screw you and your anti-worker, anti-union crap.
Re: “Anti-worker, anti-union crap”
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Stryker, I’m afraid you sound a lot like the Carmen’s Union itself. Well, you don’t know me, so you have no way of knowing that I personally support many of the unions here in town.
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Let’s just say that I know most of them quite well, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re getting a bad rap due to a few truly rotten apples. I and a lot of others who’ve been around this city for a while think the Carmen are the utter worst of that bad lot.
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The accrued vacation time rip off speaks for itself. As for health benefits. No one in private industry gets even close to the obscene health deal those guys have scored for retirees. Most people out in the “real world” are losing their retirement health benefits entirely. I think its wrong to continue extracting ever more money from T riders to keep providing extravagant perks for retirees who can, and should, at the very least pay for PART of thier health coverage.
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I apologize for seeming to be against working people. I’m a “working person” myself. I also apologize for appearing not to appreciate the collective bargaining that’s led us to this point.
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But I cannot apologize for advocating some common sense about the excessive perks that bargaining has lavished on T workers. Nor will I apologize for pointing out the fundamental unfairness of making struggling people pay ever more for the T retiree gravy train.
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I have a hunch that you will not agree with me, of course. Ultimately, I think it will be a moot point. The change is likely to come by neccessity.
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I’m done. Peace!
What is needed is a parking tax…it’s the only way to get money out of everyone coming into Boston (not just those using the Turnpike). If it costs more to park for 15 minutes than it does to ride the T, maybe people will start using public transit (and I’m not just talking garages and on-the-street, I mean all parking). Another idea–increase the excise tax on automobiles (especially in the Boston metro area). I agree with those who say that the fares need to come down…getting ridership up needs to be the main goal. The benefit of having people take public transit rather than using cars is one that accrues to the public at large, not just the users of public transportation.
Excise taxes are regressive. Lower income people often need to live away from where they work and sometimes need a car for it, so excise taxes need to remain low enough not to hurt them. Sure they could ride the T to work – if where they live and where they work are on the T. Places to live near the T are usually more expensive. And excise taxes are about the choice of whether or not to own a car, not the choice of when and how often to use it. Excise taxes high enough to have a real impact on the car vs. no car choice would be extreme and excessive, and they wouldn’t be properly targeted.
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What you want are ways to give people incentive to ride the T rather than drive a car into the city, when that choice is available. The best way to do that is to make that choice more available: – eliminate T fares – extend hours – make buses run more often – put updated maps and schedules at every T and bus stop
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The next thing to do, as a supplement, is to penalize driving when & where public transport is available. A parking tax in downtown could be part of that. It is only a supplement. Penalizing people for parking without making the T more available is mean and pointless, and sticks without carrots never lead to good results.