The Globe today has a story saying that even with money from the state, the T is looking into raising fares by 15-20%. You see, the $160 million the T may get from the state in the coming year isn’t enough to cover the ever-rising debt payments, and the agency is forced to consider this fare hike to be able to pay its bills.
And what is the response from the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee?
“It is unreasonable to think that there wouldn’t be adjustments in fares periodically,” said Representative Joseph F. Wagner, a Chicopee Democrat and cochairman of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee.
Yes, Chairman, is it unreasonable to think that fares will never go up. But you know what else is unreasonable? The fact that fares have doubled in the last decade.
Mr. Chairman, when was the last time the gas tax was raised? 1991? How about tolls?
Wagner said the transportation overhaul will provide cost savings. And he pointed out that the T already gets 1 percent of the state sales tax annually as a subsidy, meaning that the agency will get close to $900 million a year once the additional subsidy is taken into account.
It seems that Mr. Wagner doesn’t understand the concept of public transportation and thinks that riders should be thankful that the state is paying for any of it at all.
There’s a lot of talk from our elected “leaders” about the need to prevent toll increases, such as these gems from Senate President Terry Murray and Governor Patrick.
“The public cannot be expected to take on any additional burdens, like a toll increase, when they are already being asked to make significant sacrifices for the greater good of the Commonwealth,” Senate President Therese Murray said in a statement.
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“We’re not going to have a tax increase and the tolls,” Patrick said. “Nobody wants that, I certainly don’t want that.”
It’s a shame that “the public” doesn’t seem to include those who use public transportation.
…is expecting that the state as a whole should indemnify the MBTA ridership from fare increases.
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p>”The public” also includes a pretty sizeable number of us who don’t live in the MBTA service area and who perceive little if any benefit to the state committing to any increased funding of the MBTA.
First of all, including commuter rail, the majority of Massachusetts population is within the MBTA service region.
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p>Now, ponder this: per capita, where do you think the state spends more money on roads — Boston or Pittsfield? The fact is that road spending skews toward rural areas, and we city folks end up subsidizing your transportation.. yet you don’t want to return the favor.
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p>Never mind that Boston is the tax engine of the state, and that the T is absolutely essential to keeping that tax base — traffic would be absolutely wicked were it not for the T, and it’d be one more reason for folks to leave town for New Hampshire.
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p>Never mind that Boston tourism needs the T as well, and that’s tax dollars that aren’t coming from Mass-holes.
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p>Never mind that mass transit is essential to dense living, and dense living is the most energy efficient way to live.
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p>The T fare has doubled in ten years. Gas tax hasn’t moved. That is unreasonable.
Take that. If you want to start comparing tax base vs. expenditures, you central/western Mass. folks won’t be happy. I don’t want to hear your bitching about a couple bucks a week.
FYI, I don’t live in either central or western MA (don’t forget Cape Cod).
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p>I’d love to see some hard data on the geographic breakdown of state revenues vs. expenditures.
I’d love to see “commuter rail” extended Down Cape. I know it’s a mixed bag for Cape Codfolk (it would increase density and tourism, with all it’s benefits and costs). But, I think about those traffic jams of folks heading down Friday afternoon and can’t help but think that some of it might be alleviated with rail… not to mention some South Shore traffic jams.
…that we can not turn this into an argument of who’s region is being treated better? Sure, no part of the state should be neglected, but this is one COMMONwealth and as such even as a Merrimack Valley resident I recognize the Berkshires and the Cape as part of the same state. Let’s not keep score too closely; that only pits us against each other and no good can come of that.
I can’t dispute anything you wrote, however, the fact that spending on roads is higher per-capita in rural areas does not give a blank check to Boston for endless subsidizes derived from many non-Boston residents. It’s a factor, but not a trump card.
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p>Wagner is keenly attuned to the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, and their big beef a few years back was that the MBTA gets a dedicated revenue stream in the form of 1% from the sales tax from the entire state while the PVTA settles for scraps. Right or wrong, that is what happens, and the sense out here is that this is unfair. That isn’t a need-based budget, it is a great revenue stream that has very clearly been taken advantage of with little oversight.
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p>I don’t see the doubling of fares in a decade as particularly egregious. That simply means they went up 8% a year. That’s not optimal, but not an obscene increase either. I’m sure the amount of funding derived from the sales tax went up too in that period. What did their expenses do?
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p>What I do see as egregious are the benefits that the MBTA has granted themselves. It seems a little unsustainable to have a “work 23 and full pension” policy — in Western MA, people tend to work 45 years before retiring, and they don’t get anything resembling a full pension. In fact, the MBTA salaries are a lot higher than most jobs out here too. And up until last year, retirees paid 0% of their health costs — meaning that people retiring at the age of 45 got free health bennies until they died. That’s unsustainable. They now pay 10%, a number that is still lower than most people in the state, and that was forced on them via arbitration.
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p>Article after article describes the extreme generosity of MBTA compensation. We’re not talking nickles and dimes here, we’re talking about people working 23 years and then retiring with lifetime pensions of $40k (for a rail-repairer) to $130k (Michael Mulhern, age 48, who was the MBTA general manager). That bears repeating — the MBTA will pay Michael Mulhern $130,000 a year from age 48 until he dies. That’s obscene, particularly since there is no double-dipping provision — he is now pulling down $225k per year (on top of the pension) as “executive director of the MBTA Employees Retirement Fund”.
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p>The MBTA is in another stratosphere when it comes to benefits. And their salaries aren’t anything to scoff at either — is an upholsterer really worth $85k per year? Do private-sector sheet metal workers bring in more than $105k per year? Bus inspectors making over $80k? Car cleaners making $64k? Even a “fueler” (which I assume is someone who pumps gas) makes $48k. Plus nearly free health care. Plus retirement with pension after 23 years. That is nowhere near the private sector. Not even close.
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p>And while we are definitely all part of this state, that arrangement can’t be one-way. We in Western MA see project after project going to Boston. The Big Dig still smarts out here — when it was going on, road projects out here dried right up because all the money went to Boston. Even the infrastructure stimulus package was grossly unfair — 1.5% of the money spent in Hampden County (a county that the Globe can’t even spell right) when 7.3% of the population lives here and, as you correctly state, has more road needs per capita than the more dense areas?
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p>I think that before the conversation about raising the gas tax for the MBTA starts, we need to figure out if the MBTA expenses are in-line with reality, and we need to figure out if all areas of the state are getting the transportation attention they need. Again, the fact that most people live in Eastern MA should not be repeatedly used as a club against the rest of the state.
I’ll take it pointwise since you raise lots of good, interesting points…
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I don’t mean to use it as a trump card, but I’m tired of the “trump card” of folks outside of MBTA region who complain about adding a penny more funding for the T since they don’t use it. They play that trump card constantly, and it’s nonsense.
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The PBTA has a fair beef, and I agree with much of their frustration. Personally, I’d like to see all public transit agencies merged, forming a MP(ublic)TA. I imagine that it would use most of the structure of the MBTA, but it might be a nice way to get some reform thrown in there. There’s no reason why MBTA should get a state-wide funding stream but the other agencies don’t. I suspect you’ll find that most public transportation advocates would agree.
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What else has gone up 8% a year for 10 years? The only thing I can think of is health care costs, and that’s being labeled a crisis. The price of gas has gone up, sure, but that’s not the whole cost of operating a vehicle. The total cost of ownership and operating motor a vehicle has not doubled since 1999, so far as I can tell. This of course ignores that driving personal vehicles has detrimental externalities locally, statewide, nationally, and globally — and it’s well understood that we as a society must move to more efficient transportation if we are to avoid severe problems associated with climate change, peak oil, trade imbalance, and the like.
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p>The T is spending 25% of it’s budget on debt services. A third of that was handed the T from the Big Dig — the train is subsidizing car driving around Boston Metro. Take away that $2.4B in debt and the T is relatively healthy.
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See, that’s an asinine comment. We’ve railed on the 23 and out, and we all agree it’s a problem that’s got to be resolved. Know how much it will save? Less than 1% of the T’s budget. Should we fix it? Heck yeah. Is it a distraction? Yip. Do people everywhere in America tend to work 45 years before retiring? Yeah, which is what makes your comment quite unproductive.
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Neither article is particularly helpful. The first points to single instances of problems, which we all agree ought be fixed but also ought to agree that they save very little money in total. The second article is absolute crap. It was main paged recently, and most of those “savings” offered are simply to remove wages or benefits from employees and replace them with… nothing. It’s a nonsense pot shot at labor, and it’s not at all productive.
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OK, have a closer look. That list doesn’t show overtime, experience, or any other factors. So, sort by Pay Rate, and go to page 162 (the median) by changing the URL. $1160.80 per week ($60,300 a year pre-OT, pre-tax). That’s a much better understanding of salary, and personally I don’t think it’s an unreasonable salary, truth be told. Of course, the devil is in the details, and these are details neither of us know much about.
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To be clear, roads projects in Boston don’t help me much either — nor many other Charlie’s on the MTA. Not too many people are happy with the aftermath of the Big Dig, and that includes transit riders (who, as I pointed out above, have effectively been stuck with billions of the Big Dig tab in the form of fare increases while the gas tax remains flat and Murray has called the tolls unraisable). You mention the stimulus money — IIRC, Middlesex actually got the lion’s share of the money, and they’re sorta-in-sorta-out of the MBTA region. And let’s not forget, the stimulus money went for roads. Public transit got the short end of that funding.
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Hey now, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t justify more spending per capita in Hampden because of “needs” but then scoff at mass transit neads in the metro. Either they’re both legit, or neither are legit. I think they’re both legit. I have no problem spending more money on roads per capita in rural areas. I have a big problem with those same people (and their legislators) putting the squeeze on public transit while they fight tooth and nail against any gas tax or toll increase.
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We’ve already figured this out. They’re not. Know which part isn’t? Debt services. When compared to all US public transit agencies, the MBTA pays a bigger percentage of their budget to debt services than any other agency. Know where that debt came from? Two places: (1) Finneran’s forward-funding fiasco transferred billions from state obligation to MBTA obligation. State legislators decided what projects to fund, and then handed the MBTA agency with the bill after the fact, when the MBTA would have never gone for the project had it known it was going to be asked to foot the complete bill. (2) The Big Dig environmental requirements saddle the MBTA with another $2.4B. Again, the T didn’t ask for this — our legislators, governors, and others put it on them. You take away the parts of MBTA debt that MBTA management didn’t sign for, and the MBTA is solvent.
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p>Wages and bennies? Sure, reform away. Fix the 23 and out. Get them on GIC. Adjust staffing levels to reduce overtime exposure. The fact is that this would save a few percent of the MBTA’s operating costs. Worth doing to be sure, and I wish it would get done. But it’s a distraction, and folks like the Herald will always find another distraction, another imperfect operation in a $1.4B annual operation with 1.3 million riders a day.
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Frankly, the fact that most people in MA live in the Eastern part means that the Eastern part deserves most of the attention and budget within Massachusetts.
I always learn a lot. Wish I could do more than one 6
A MassPIRG article summary I found only links the MBTA to the Big Dig by saying that:
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p>and also
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p>That seems like a somewhat tenuous link — it doesn’t sound like debt was shifted there, it sounds like the MBTA wasn’t given as much money as it could have been given due to the money being spent on the Big Dig, and it expanded more rapidly than it should have in order to meet Clean Air Act requirements.
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p>I will agree with you that debt is part of the MBTA’s problem, but the debt loosely associated with the Big Dig represents just 8.75% of the annual budget (25% of the budget goes to service debt, 35% of the debt is Big Dig related).
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p>I’m mainly shocked that employee costs and benefits are not being discussed here at all. I would also to know more about these employee costs. I can agree that the weekly rate and the gross pay are not in synch. That can be misleading. I can understand certain positions which need to have overtime due to staffing reasons. However, how does a $1,374 a week upholsterer ($71k) get $13,000 in overtime? Assuming a 40-hour week (which may be high), and time and a half for overtime, that would mean he would have to have worked 252 extra hours, or nearly 5 hours per week. Are there any controls on overtime?
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p>What is so curious is that so many employee base salaries don’t match their annual earnings. I picked four pages at random, and found that 77% of the people earned more, with the median overage of $8,000. Of those earning less, it seems likely they just did not work the full year.
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p>I don’t think your analysis of salary-based compensation is accurate because you are dismissing actual take-home earnings. I can accept that there will be individual cases where people earn more than their salaries due to overtime, but when a random sampling of 80 employees shows that 63 earned more than their salaries by an average of $11k and a median of $8k, it is clearly relatively easy to bring home more than your actual salary.
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p>Can you explain how you arrived at your “less than 1% of the budget” figure for the 23 and out policy? As a rough guess, it seems like this policy would lead to twice as many retirees as if the retirement age was higher, probably more becuase of mortality issues. Are the MBTA’s retiree costs just 2% of their budget?
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p>I’m not sure why you dismiss the second article. I will agree that the premise of the article is that MBTA employees are compensated too generously — so yes, that is a way to save money, by making the employees pay more for their health care, simply bringing them in line with other public sector employees. I just don’t see why that is sacrosanct. It’s not being proposed to drive more profit, it’s not being proposed to lower taxes, it’s being proposed because the MBTA is in trouble — lower revenues, lower ridership, high fixed costs — and part of the reason they are in trouble is that their compensation is so generous.
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p>I am not arguing that only MBTA riders see benefits from its existence, however I am mostly hearing arguments that “everyone else” should bail out the MBTA here — I think a better approach would be to raise fares (but less than what has been proposed), push to get those employee costs down, and put a smaller amount of state money to the MBTA via a gas tax or other state revenue.
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p>When Springfield got itself into trouble, the entire focus was on some corrupt individuals who worked for city-related agencies (Springfield Housing Authority) — but the corruption was not the reason for the financial problems. A lot of the city’s trouble can be tied to factors similar to the MBTA — lower than expected revenues (via flat state aid), high debt (due to schools having to be built), unfunded busing mandates, etc. We had a finance control board imposed on us, and we were given a no-interest loan, not additional assistance. No one stood up and said “hey, that’s not fair, things were beyond their control, let’s help them out a little”. No, fees were imposed on residents, services were reduced, and employee costs and benefits were cut.
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p>It seems to me that we are letting the MBTA off the hook awfully easily here, asking nothing of either their employees or those that use their service.
While I came down hard on the regional parity arguments, you’re absolutely correct that the MBTA is out of control. According to this database, 441 employees at the T made over $100k last year in total comp. Let me say that again — 441 individual employees, ostensibly in the public sector, took in more income than 15% of all households in the US. And that’s not even getting into their gold-plated pensions and healthcare.
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p>And when you look through the job listings, sure, the execs are at the top (along with our always-well-compensated Men In Blue), but most of these people have blue-collar jobs — repairer, dispatcher, painter, machinist, etc. How many blue-collar employees in the private sector pull down over $100 large? Workers at auto companies had to take paycuts, and their wages were around $60k per year.
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p>Moreover, compare their income with the rest of state and local government employees. How many teachers make over $100k? How many social workers? How many prosecutors?
You’ve got to compare to employees who work 365. Sundays and holidays add up. Painters can generally work M-F. Drivers work every day.
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p>Again, I’m not arguing that MBTA_employee(salary) + MBTA_employee(benefit) is the right number. I’m just pointing out that comparing the salary of an employee who’s schedule includes hours between 5am and 1am, 365 days a year is a lot different than an employee who works a daytime shift M-F.
Massachusetts labor law does not require that overtime be paid for nights, weekends, and holidays:
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but it shows up in union and lots of other contracts… and it’s not really unreasonable in my opinion. Working holidays and weekends is worth more. How much more? Dunno.
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p>That’s two of the parts, the latter being the biggie methinks. This, of course, is in addition to the suprise! debt that Finneran’s Forward Funding lobbed on the MBTA.
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Just 8.75%? Just? That, my friend, is massive. 9% of a $1.4B budget is $126M. Another 8% (roughly) is from Finneran’s Forward Funding, call it $100M. That’s over $200M. The T is about $165M in deficit. So, there you have it. As is, just that $126M would put close the gap considerably; the sales tax increase would closed the gap completely.
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p>Just 8.75% is huge, and it will hang over the heads of the MBTA for the next 20+ years.
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I’m no labor expert, but it occurs to me that the MBTA runs 365. There are 10 federal holidays, plus 2 for Suffolk County. Now I have no idea how often the upholsterer is doing ’emergency’ repairs of train cars or buses, but I do know that the MBTA doesn’t have many extra vehicles lying around. If a seat gets slightly torn, you’ve got to fix it now or fix a worse problem later. Does this mean upholsterers need to work Sundays? No idea. So, let’s instead think about the folks who do have to work 7 days, which I suspect is most of the workforce. Mechanics, drivers, customer service folks, signal operators, etc. 10 federal holidays plus 52 Sundays is 62 holidays out of 365 — 17% of the days. So, if they’re getting time and a half, that’s a weekly wage multiplier of 1.085 if they are all working 40 and the same number of hours are worked on each of the seven days. Of course this is a bit simplistic — service is reduced a bit on the weekends, and not every repair needs to happen immediately. Still, it does give a little sense for the reason why folks are earning extra. That doesn’t even take into account coverage for others’ vacations or vacancies.
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p>Straight from the lips of a good friend of mine who works for the MBTA Advisory Board — an agency who is focused on problems exactly like this one. Yeah, I just cited an anonymous source. That’s all I gots. You can’t just 1% + 1% is 2% because the early retirees are relatively cheap. Their insurance is quite cheap (50 year old men don’t cost nearly as much as 70 year old men) by comparison, for example. Furthermore, it can’t be fixed immediately — you can’t just tell a guy who’s been working 22.75 years and has started making retirement plans that he’s got to work another 15. Doesn’t work that way. So, requiring work until 65 (or whatever) is a good thing to do, but the savings aren’t massive and would take a while to phase in. Again — worth doing, but it doesn’t solve the immediate problem, and it ignores the reality that reducing the value of pension will require offering something else: why should the carmen et al just give up benefits for nuttin’?
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This is why.
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I’m not asking for a bailout. I’m asking that the state take back the two anvils it threw the MBTA. Do that, and the MBTA is running in the black. Anvil 1: the Forward Funding debt. Anvil 2: the Big Dig debt. Remove those two, and the MBTA finds over $200M in savings in it’s budget, more than enough to overcome their budgetary problems for the time being.
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p>You mean except for the fact that fares have doubled in the past 10 years before this round of fare increasing and a reduction in service (remember Night Owl bus), while the gas tax hasn’t changed? Meanwhile far more stimulus money is spent on roads and airports and parking lots than mass transit?
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p>Asking nothing of us? Puh-leaze. This, of course, ignores the other tangible public benefits like environment and foreign policy, but also less common but very legit like service in snowstorms, providing shelter (in the form of buses) in emergencies like fires, a key asset for tourism dollars, etc.
Overtime is paid at 1.5x the regular rate. Massachusetts does not require that overtime be paid for nights and Sundays if they are part of a regular work week (I’m not sure about holidays).
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p>For a service that runs 24×7, it is therefore possible (at least legal) to pay straight-time instead of overtime. Are there no blue-collar workers willing to work part-time on straight-time pay?
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p>The rest of your points are, as always, well-taken and right on the money.
Perhaps it shouldn’t work that way… but it does happen. In the private sector. To the 62 y.o. guy who just looked at his 401k.
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p>And this is a strawman. There will be some tiered transition. If youve got less that 10-15 yrs, you’re going to have to work longer for a full pension. Like it or lump it.
A 401k isn’t a contract, and a pension is not a worker investment in financial markets.
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p>A pension is a promise, not a speculation. Citing 401k is like arguing that it’s reasonable that a day before heading to the dentist for my root canal, the insurance company calls me and tells me my co-pay has been increased by $200 because of the real estate crash.
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p>Comparing a pension to a 401k is nonsense. They’re entirely different financial vehicles, with entirely different structure.
His salary was slashed by “just” 7%. Seems he thinks that was kinda a lot!
Traffic is exactly what this fare hike will bring. It will be more cost effective to drive into Boston then to take the T. It’s about a wash now, 20% increase and it will clearly be cheaper to drive yourself to Boston.
Murray, et al, have railed against another toll hike. I can’t say they’ve done nothing to help the MBTA, but they had to know that this $160 million wasn’t even going to cut it this year, nevermind going forward, because Stomv was laying out those numbers pretty clear on BMG. And he’s just some young blogger hanging out in his momma’s basement snacking on Cheetoes, or something.
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p>While I use the T occasionally, I get hit with the tolls far more frequently, and I still feel this way. In fact, the chief reason why I get hit with those tolls more often is because it’s more expensive for me to pay for parking and the T pass than it is to just take my car in as it is. So I only do use mass transit when I have some engagement that will be over by 11 in the Downtown area, where parking costs $20+ for a few hours. I would rather take the T in all the time and if I had the extra cash, I would. The state needs to make the T more affordable, not less. It also needs to stop treating T users as some public pariah — and be as vocally behind them as they are any other constituency.
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p>I imagine there’s a lot of people like me. Government needs to be the force that makes the socially wise decisions individually beneficial, because decisions that are individually wise often don’t make sense at a societal level. Me driving costs society more than me taking the T, even if I drive an efficient vehicle (a Civic). However, government could use its ability to impact policy in a way that reverses that decision, making public transit the best decision individually as well as for society in general.
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p>The T just doesn’t receive the support in this state that it does in several others which make other systems far more viable and supported (and convenient and used). The MBTA and our other regional transport authorities need to become a sacred cow in this state that we do no harm to (at least in terms of services), even at the cost of raising taxes, even in the bad years. We have very few years to actually do something about Global Warming — we need the rapid expansion of rapid transit, not the other way around. We need Senator Murray and the rest of the legislature to do much more on this issue — and defend it at the very least as much as they are willing to defend toll-payers and gas-tax payers.
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p>It would be far more accurate to write that he’s just some young blogger hanging out in his grad student office snacking on pretzels and Diet Mountain Dew, but I digress.
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p>:D
But then I wouldn’t be snarky, would I? Can’t heap too much praise on the best post-for-post commenter on BMG.
and I do love the snark.
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p>It’s strange, and this may not be the right place for this comment, but:
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p>I really get a kick out of you online, yet we seemed to rub each other the wrong way the three or so times we’ve met in social settings in person. Maybe I just read it wrong, maybe it was bad luck, maybe I have a better read on your snark and personality online than I do in person. Who knows.
I had no idea… Maybe it was a long time ago and I just forget? In any event, I promise, I don’t bite. I can be more shy at first in person than I am online, as well as more oblivious. But I can also be more friendly, funny and talkative. Guess it just depends on the day 😉
I took Wagner’s response to be an attempt to phlegmatically indicate to the MBTA Hype Machine that they won’t be threatened or bullied by the latest round of dire predictions.
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p>When James Aloisi says something, I don’t exactly hurry to believe him at this point.
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p>The gas tax is raised per gallon every time the price of gas is raised. Unlike T fares, which stay the same as costs rise.
The gas tax is a set number of cents per gallon. Not a percentage like the sales tax. So inflation has made the gas tax less painful since 1991.
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p>Big Oil might raise the price of gas, but the amount of tax you and I pay on a gallon of gas stays the same.
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p>But perhaps you are saying that Big Oil gouging consumers is a gas tax increase.
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p>That would be false.
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p>If Lee Raymond of Exxon charges an extra dollar per gallon, he doesn’t fill any potholes in Lunenberg, nor paint any rusty bridges.
over where the most money is spent or whether drivers should pony up for public transit, remember this for what it is – another threat from the administration that the world as we know it is coming to an end unless the Lege gives them the tax increase they want. Things have been quiet for the past few weeks, and they wanted to push their plan along by ratcheting up the pressure some more. Toll increase, big gas tax increase, quiet, toll increase, tax increase, quiet, MBTA problems, quiet, T fare increase, and on it goes.
The budget is clear. Revenue minus expenses = $160M. You can get the money from raising fares, raising other revenue, or cutting expenses. Raising fares is the “easiest” though it flies in the face of good public policy. Raising other revenue is possible to some extent (the “sell the Pike lands” version of the MBTA”) but not to the tune of $160M. Cutting costs — sure, you can save a few percent on salaries and bennies, and it’s worth doing, but it’s not nearly enough. You can cut service, but then you cut fare collection too so that’s a tough route. Finally, you can cut debt service payments (25% of expenses, the largest slice of the pie chart) if the state takes on some of that debt, either directly or into the Pike (a la Big Dig).
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p>The world is coming to an end? No. But MBTA service is getting worse and getting higher fares. The budget is clear.