The good news, delivered quietly and without fanfare at a May MBTA Riders Oversight Committee (TROC) meeting was that the T will not raise fares in 2010 or 2011. The reasons are equally good – the MBTA has instituted enough cost-savings measures to make a fare hike unnecessary in the immediate future.
The good news does not, however, sound the ‘all clear’ for the nation’s most indebted transit system.
Cost savings included two big-ticket items:
1. The MBTA “restructured” a portion of its debt. That debt doesn’t go away – restructuring effectively just puts the due date on the bill off to the future.
2. Employee benefits, specifically health care coverage, have been shifted to the state’s Group Insurance Commission (GIC) system.
Earlier this month the T announced that for the first time in recent memory they actually have a surplus of $1.2 million. The MBTA is, however, also saying that they expect this to be a one-time occurrence, and anticipate operating deficits for the next four years.
Without reservation we applaud the MBTA and MassDOT for saving riders, especially the most transit dependent communities, from another fare hike. Unfortunately the short-term win for riders does not mean that things are “fair.”
Fairness is still missing from the financial equation, due to the debt still crushing the MBTA. The T and its riders are still paying for an obligation the state took on in exchange for getting approval of the Big Dig.
As part of the legislature’s 2001 “forward funding” scheme the MBTA was told to absorb $1.8 billion in Big Dig debt. Like a holiday fruit cake that nobody wants, the cost of Big Dig mitigation, for air quality issues, was passed from the highway agency onto the MBTA. Now the T is stuck with that lead-heavy tasteless treat. The nation’s largest underground roadway project is being financed by MBTA riders, and that burden needs to be lifted.
Since 2001, MBTA fares have been raised three times. Still, the debt has grown and its effect has been displayed in dramatic and scary ways.
Fires in MBTA tunnels have been traced back to old wiring that should have been replaced years ago. Rampant breakdowns of buses and trains are often due to a failure to maintain a “state of good repair.” The 2009 D’Alesandro report, requested by Governor Patrick, found a system rife with safety issues putting passengers at risk largely due to inadequate funding.
Restructuring debt only puts off the inevitable. As the D’Alessandro report states, “Unfortunately, the repeated restructuring of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt payments achieved the exact opposite intent of the legislation that sought to transform the MBTA, and postponed the day of reckoning for repaying deferred interest and principal.”
Instead the state legislature needs to own up to its fiscal responsibilities as a matter of fairness. The MBTA didn’t ask for the Big Dig and shouldn’t be paying for it. Facilitating the smoother and faster flow of vehicles to and through the city was a monumental and likely valuable project, but it wasn’t the T’s project.
We are under no false illusion that removing the Big Dig debt from the MBTA will solve either its fiscal or state of good repair problems. The T is, however, clearly making a good faith effort to reduce all costs and maintain service, as witnessed by their recent cuts.
The legislature should follow suit with a similar good faith effort to stop forcing transit riders to pay for roadway projects. Fares may not go up this year, but without some legislative action, voters in the 175 cities and towns in the MBTA service area are guaranteed an increase soon.
Bob Terrell is Coordinator of On The Move, a coalition of nine community based organizations in greater Boston that came together in 2002 to advocate for transportation justice. See http://bostononthemove.org/ for more information.
Simply put, require the legislature to take the debt back. Are there enough MBTA riders (1 million daily) out of the number of voters (2.3 mil ’06, 3.1 mil ’08) to win that election? You wouldn’t get a single vote from the far north, south, or west… perhaps you could make a gasoline tax inside 128 pay for it? Tolls? A combination? Dunno, just spitballing here.
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p>P.S. When the legislature funds road projects on Cape Cod, the Berkshires, or elsewhere in MA, those folks don’t cry out that the citizens in Boston Metro shouldn’t be forced to help pay for it. Just sayin’.
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p>Just because the state funds some projects on the Cape (and in other less served portions of the state), doesn’t mean that we can’t criticize the current and historical extent of geographic redistribution. It’s pretty clear that some areas of the state are net revenue cash cows for the state and get shafted by Beacon Hill both in state expenditures and in state controlled discretionary federal block grant distribution.
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p>To a degree, some level of redistribution is appropriate, but the current state of affairs is completely ridiculous. Fix that issue and perhaps we’ll see less anti-tax agitating from the exurbs of Massachusetts.
I’ll tell you what’s “completely ridiculous”. It’s completely ridiculous to destroy public transportation in the Commonwealth of MA while all of us so desperately need to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel. The explicitly stated intent when the current situation was created was to “starve the beast” and kill public transportation. Sadly, it is working. Surely basic sanity about our collective responsibilities while living in a first-world society in the twenty-first century doesn’t end at route 495.
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p>If you have a proposal for a better or more equitable way of paying for public transportation that benefits every Massachusetts resident, please offer it.
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p>No it doesn’t, but the exurbs shouldn’t be viewed as a permanent cash cow either (i.e. the Boston suburbs have their own “collective responsibilities” to the rest of the state).
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p>In my view, transit (or any other form of) redistribution should be limited, temporary, and be specifically goal oriented. In no way should the state be enabling a culture of excessive subsidies, poor management, and bloated salaries/benefits/pensions.
then most roads west of Worcester would be dirt roads — they don’t have the population to pay for ’em, excepting maybe Pittsfield. Meanwhile, folks from the sub/exurbs drive on Boston roads far more often than Bostonians drive on their roads… what about that redistribution?
You know, that’s the trouble with you, stomv, you’re so darned picky about facts.
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p>Debating is so much more fun when you can just make stuff up.
It’s better to consider funding vs. aggregate passenger mile traveled. This would more closely account for the higher number of passenger miles traveled by suburban/exurban residents vs their urban counterparts (and corresponding contributions to roads via road taxes).
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p>I don’t think that argument makes much sense. All drivers pay road taxes for state roads. As long as the state is maintaining roads in rough proportion to miles driven on those roads, I don’t see that as significant redistribution.
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p>MBTA funding is quite different. In FY2010, ~48% of revenues came from the state while fares ~31% and assessments ~9% were well less than half. Yet the original poster thinks there should be a state debt bailout! The truth is, even if the MBTA debt was wiped clean, the current fares and assessments couldn’t even fund 50% of the ongoing operating costs.
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p>Look, I agree the public transportation is a public good for a multitude of reasons. At the same time, the ridership and geographic area served receive the vast majority of the resulting benefit. Consequently, the vast majority of funding should be the responsibility of the ridership (fares) and served area (assessments) and not the state as a whole.
You misunderstand road taxes. Firstly, it’s not a road tax, it’s a gas tax (and some tolls). First: the tolls. They stay with that road system though not that road necessarily. Now, the tax. There are two: federal covers about 90% of federal roads — Interstates. State gas tax doesn’t even cover 100% of state roads. The rest is made up from the general fund. But what of local roads? Property tax pays for ’em. The vast majority of roads in Boston aren’t paid for by use fees/taxes; they’re paid for with property tax. That is indeed a significant redistribution, from those who live in the city to those who drive in the city. That’s a major subsidy flowing out of Boston/Cambridge/Quincy/Somerville/Brookline into the suburbs.
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p>$2.3B of the MBTA’s debt is money spent for roads, not the T. This debt was assigned to the MBTA when it went to forward funding, despite the money not being spent on the MBTA. It wouldn’t be a bailout for the lege to take that debt back; rather, it would reverse the bailout the lege forced the MBTA to make on behalf of the Commonwealth.
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p>Oh, but it is. The MBTA serves 50% of the cities and towns in MA, by number. According to 2009 estimates, 25 of them have a population of 50,000+. Know how many are served by the T? 20, including 3 of the largest 6. An additional three of the five not served have specific plans being implemented to get service: New Bedford, Fall River, and Taunton. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people who live in Massachusetts pay their sales tax in a city or town which has MBTA service, and therefore, just as you suggest should be the case, the vast majority of funding is the responsibility of the ridership and the served area. It’s just collected in the form of a sales tax.
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p>Is this now true? How close is it? I was under the impression that fuel tax revenue was historically significantly higher than state road expenditure.
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p>You seem to be completely discounting relative benefits of roads to local taxpayers (particularly businesses). I’m not denying that non-residents don’t derive benefit from local roads, I just don’t believe that local roads benefit outsiders significantly more than the taxpayers themselves (via commerce opportunities, etc).
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p>…and automotive excise tax, and unrestricted local aid (of which urban areas get the disproportionate share).
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p>No, the majority of the funding is provided by the state (in the form of sales tax receipts) collected from the entire state. That the majority of sales tax receipts just happen to currently come from MBTA communities in practice doesn’t make the sales tax subsidy of the MBTA from non-served areas any more palatable (or just) to those who live outside of MBTA served communities.
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p>It is indeed true, and I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
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p>Not at all — but keep in mind that Boston/Cambridge does lots of things which doesn’t benefit those cities directly — everything from large law firms to large biotech. They’re not selling to residents of those towns, and many (most!) of the employees don’t live their either. Sure, their existence generates property tax, but the city would be much better off fiscally if those employees from out of town rode the T to work instead of drive.
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p>The automotive excise tax is a local tax. So all those folks who live in the suburbs — their automotive excise tax goes to their town despite driving in and out of the Hub every day. As for local aid, the urban areas also get a disproportionate share of the expenses — everything from more housing projects to more homeless shelters. Is it disproportionate to the amount of tax their city generates? I’m not so sure. Got data?
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p>You just moved the goalposts. Above, you wrote that “vast majority of funding should be the responsibility of the ridership (fares) and served area (assessments) and not the state as a whole.” I pointed out that it in fact is. The folks who live in areas with the MBTA pay the vast majority of the sales tax revenue. That doesn’t “just happen to be that way” any more than rural areas “just happen to have more miles of road per person.” The fact is that the communities which have the MBTA are funding the vast majority of the MBTA, either directly (fares) or indirectly (sales tax). They’re also funding a big chunk of the Big Dig, which happens to be in their general area as well. To claim that the sales tax is paid by the state is nonsense. It’s paid by people, who live in particular locations. Most of the sales tax revenue comes from people who live in MBTA communities.
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p>What do you mean “the amount of tax their city generates”? Employees? Residents?
Data is available for a city’s residents. Not so much for a city’s employees…
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p>In any case…data for some scattered communities (share of state income, share of state unrestricted aid, share of aid/share of income, median income):
Barnstable: 0.63% 0.20% 31.7%, 54k
Boston: 9.59%, 17.82%, 185.8%, 44k
Cambridge: 2.19%, 2.02%, 92.2%, 59k
Newton: 3.87%, 0.55%, 14.2%, 105k
Quincy: 1.07% 1.79%, 167.3%, 60k
Wrentham: 0.19% 0.09% 47.4%, 89k
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p>First, that’s a pretty hefty degree of redistribution just in the unrestricted aid portion of the budget. Second, the Cape is getting screwed even worse than I ever suspected–but that’s another whole topic.
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p>That may be true, but you still fail to address the lack of value returned to the significant number of non-MBTA served communities for their earmarked sales tax contribution.
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p>I remain unconvinced the MBTA should get additional funding support from areas outside it’s service region (and that includes a state funded debt bailout).
It’s not so clear to me that the money moves inward to the Hub. In fact, I’m willing to be that it doesn’t. Why do I say this? Well, the miles of roadway in Boston is tiny when compared to it’s population; the same can’t be said for the more rural areas of our Commonwealth. It’s true that building a mile of road in Boston is more expensive than a mile in North Adams, but it’s also true that there are 500 times more people to help pay for it.
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p>So… got any numbers which show state funding of roadway by city/town? Numbers which show MA tax revenue by city/town? I hope so, because I’d bet that Boston and Cambridge get the short end of the stick, never mind that oodles of out-of-towners drive on their roads every day.
Get some tolls on I-93, both north and south of Boston, and then use that to offset T debt. Those drivers are actually using the road that we built.
The gas tax is an ok proxy, but doesn’t reflect the reality that a Prius in “regen” mode causes just as much wear and tear as a higher-consuming conventional vehicle of the same weight at the same speed.
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p>A Nashua, New Hampshire commuter who drives down the DW Highway to 3-A all the way to 128 (yes, some do!) or who creatively uses any of the multiple alternative back roads won’t pay the toll on I-93 and causes just as much wear and tear.
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p>We should measure and tax roadway use across the state. It could be as simple as an odometer tax, collected annually.
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p>In any case, the fact remains that most of the “redistribution” is from the Boston metro area towards the exurbs.
But that would be an administrative nightmare. Low-tech, it would be a boon to unscrupulous mechanics odometer-fixing business; high tech use of GPS transponders would be expensive and intrusive.
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p>Gasoline tax would be useful enough, Prii notwithstanding, for the short and medium term.
It could be done as part of the annual inspection-sticker process.
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p>Sure, some folks would try and game it — so what. Most people are honest, most shops are honest.
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p>I’m not necessarily opposed to the gas tax (I’ve supported it in the past), but it’s a short-term fix at best and doesn’t really get at the problem we’re trying to solve here.
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p>Another option is RDF chips embedded in license plates. Yes, there are obvious privacy concerns that we’d have to address, but they would provide the basic ability to measure highway consumption of individual vehicles.
The drive to more efficient vehicles, hybrids and electric only will require a transition to a “use” fee on out highways and streets.
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p>I agree with Tom, the use of the roads by a electric only car will yield “0” in gas tax to work on the roads compared to a typical gas powered vehicle. Yet, the weight of the electric only car is at least equal to that of its gas powered counterparts. I would hypothesize that the GVW for electric only cars is more that gas powered equivalents given the weight of the batteries and the fact that battery weight does not decrease as they are used whereas the weight of gas does decrease as it is used.
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p>This could result in ever increasing gas taxes to make up for the loss of “revenue” from gas taxes as people transition to more fuel efficient vehicles. While there may be some who would say that taxing gas vehicles to maintain roads for ALL cars (a sort of subsidization of road maintenance by gas powered autos), the outcome will be even more poorly maintained roads and bridges which will need to be used by all, including hybrids and electric only autos.
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p>The only solution, in my opinion, is a use fee based on miles driven. It can be done on a monthly or annual basis (my concern with annual would be the ability to collect from all users while a monthly payment akin to the “budget” programs provided by natural gas companies may make more sense).
I agree with CMD on this one.
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p>The low-tech model doesn’t work — MA isn’t entitled to the mileage I obtained on private roads, nor on roads outside the Commonwealth. The hi-tech model isn’t good either; I don’t want the state tracking all of us.
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p>The gas tax is a wonderful proxy. It’s true that the driver of a Prius isn’t paying as much per mile. Then again, the driver of a Prius isn’t (a) endangering other drivers/passengers nearly as much as a bigger, heavier SUV, and (b) isn’t contributing as much per mile to (i) air pollution, (ii) climate change, and (iii) our dependency on foreign oil.
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p>Raise the gas tax to pay 100% of the costs of the roads*, and we’ll be making progress.
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p> * The Fed gas tax pays almost all of the cost of federal roads. The state gas tax roughly covers some of the cost of state roads — and there aren’t that many miles of state roads. Local roads? Property tax funds ’em.
The wear and tear caused by passenger vehicles is insignificant compared to that of trucking.
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p>It’s estimated that a single legal capacity 18-wheeler causes approximately 10,000 times the amount of incremental wear and tear to a road as that of a typical passenger motor vehicle.
Why do you suppose there are so many more trucks on the road today than, say, fifty years ago?
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p>What might we do to get those damaging trucks off the roads?
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p>Hint: It involves steel wheels on steel rails.
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p>There are many times more passenger vehicles… and those growing larger every year. I doubt very much a gross differential of any appreciable effect exists between total cars and total trucks.
If there was a 10,000:1 ratio in passenger miles traveled to heavy truck miles traveled, you’d reach parity (in wear in tear). I’ve never driven down a highway and seen that lopsided a ratio of passenger traffic to heavy truck traffic.
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p>The fact is, DOT highway studies repeatedly confirm that the vast majority of incremental highway wear and tear is the result of heavy truck traffic and not automotive traffic.
For local roads — there may well be a 10,000:1 ratio. The street which I live on (backside) probably gets 500 auto trips a day, and one large truck every few years when somebody moves.
Heavy vehicles put a much larger wear on the road than lighter ones. I doubt that the wear is directly proportional either.
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p>Of course, a lot of road wear is due to rain, snow, salt, plow damage, construction and utility work. If no one drove on a given road at all, it would still deteriorate over time. So it seems silly to get overly concerned with directly accounting for road wear in the tax code.
to the argument on why the taxpayer in North Adams must support the T