Let’s get the casino talk out of the way. Talk about the casinos didn’t take up that much time and attention at the forum, but it was mentioned a couple of times. Murray specifically mentioned them as a way of recapturing revenues currently lost to Connecticut and Rhode Island gambling ventures.
We know that revenues from the casinos are designed to lower property taxes. Specifically, half of the revenues will go to that goal. We’ve also heard about the health care fund of 2.5% of casino revenues. A large portion of the remainder — possibly all of it (I didn’t quite catch what he said) is going to go towards repairing our transportation infrastructure, to the tune of over $200 million per year.
A gentleman whose name escaped me, but is active in transportation issues in Marlborough, pointed out that there’s the possibility of creating up to 100,000 more jobs in the MetroWest area, if only the roads were up to it. Shouldn’t we be looking at that instead of casinos?
Murray’s response was to the effect that it is, of course, not strictly one or the other. They’re looking at 495/90 area issues, but they can’t ignore the 24,000 jobs the casinos would create.
Other important topics were also discussed. How can we encourage more use of public transportation, and get public transportation available in a larger part of the state? Do we have the workforce available to repair our transportation in a timely fashion?
For the blow-by-blow, as quick as I could type at least, see my live-blog effort at MetroLeft.
Were there any questions about funding public transport? That infrastructure is in worse shape than the roads and badly needs the money.
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As for how to get more people using it, the first answer is obvious: cut the price! Public transit is extremely expensive, and it doesn’t take much thought, wisdom, or analysis to understand that if it were easier to afford people would use it a lot more. Did that come up?
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We need the green line extension to actually happen. Why doesn’t the Worcester Commuter Rail go out to Amherst, Northampton, and Springfield? Why doesn’t the Lowell line go up to Nashua, Manchester, and Concord? etc. But really, first of all, we need to fix the infrastructure and CUT THE PRICE.
Several people mentioned the funding of public transportation, and particularly how funding of road projects always seems to come at the expense of the MBTA.
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When the Big Dig was being funded the feds gave us matching money for various aspects of the project. According to Murray, a lot of the state funds getting the matching money came out of the MBTA, and is one of the big reasons why 26% of the MBTA’s annual budget is allocated to debt relief, the T has that much debt.
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Expansion of commuter rail was talked about, yes. New Hampshire has apparently expressed interest in getting the commuter rail up to Nashua and Manchester (dunno about Concord), and the various expansions you talk about were all mentioned by Murray as things the administration was talking about.
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Price, though, was not directly an issue discussed, aside from aspects driving it up, like the constant debt relief issue.
Cost is the #1 issue, and the main thing driving it up is that we expect the T to be partly self-supporting in a way we don’t expect city streets to be. This question should be the big question at every single forum and discussion dealing with state transport spending.
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Thanks for the report.