General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

F-Line to Dudley said:
There's a lot more hurdles than just national pride. How many foreign civil servants would even want to relocate to the U.S. in the first place? These planning jobs, with their inherent fragility to political machinations from above, are not very attractive on-spec and certainly don't pay enough above market value to entice relocation and cultural reassimilation from abroad. There aren't one thousand Andy Byfords out there willing to hop the pond for any old job. It's very, very hard to competitively hire foreign transportation expertise for local jobs. Transpo blogosphere dogma keeps bleating that things would be so much better if we just self-satisfyingly fired every locally-bred failson in the ranks, wholesale-imported their European or South Asian replacements like it's one big ol' Berlin Airlift, and let the good old days begin. But they never bother to articulate what job market conditions would lead that to utopia actually becoming a possibility. It's not nearly as simple as it sounds. While foreign transpo experience should be treated as a crucial asset in hiring where we can find it, we can't pretend that simply pulling our heads out of our asses and welcoming world best-practice experience for a change is going to lead to our beaches being stormed with qualified applicants. We're going to have to learn how to home-grow some adherence to world best-practices if we hope to fill those positions and make them continually more attractive.
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I ought to have been more specific. The “importation” I’d like to do is as much Euro/East Asian ideas about transit/urban planning as much as foreign experts themselves, though of course the latter would be welcome, too, if they’d not (fairly enough) consider it a downgrade. It’s part of the broader issue of too many Americans thinking we still lead the way, or are just “too different” from other parts of the world, instead of just worse.
 
In unfortunate news, I saw a 10 mph speed restriction posted on the southbound/westbound Lechmere Viaduct this morning (that my train absolutely did not observe lol). The sign had a yellow background, which I haven’t seen before and which may or may not have any significance, but the dashboard shows it as well.

Hopefully this time the slowdown doesn’t linger for over a year. Sigh…
 
alewife said:
In unfortunate news, I saw a 10 mph speed restriction posted on the southbound/westbound Lechmere Viaduct this morning (that my train absolutely did not observe lol). The sign had a yellow background, which I haven’t seen before and which may or may not have any significance, but the dashboard shows it as well.

Hopefully this time the slowdown doesn’t linger for over a year. Sigh…
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On reddit people mentioned the RL had a lot of 25mph slow zones pop up on the braintree branch as well. Hopefully just temporary caused by the heatwave in precaution..
 
sneijder said:
On reddit people mentioned the RL had a lot of 25mph slow zones pop up on the braintree branch as well. Hopefully just temporary caused by the heatwave in precaution..
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There was a board meeting this afternoon; unfortunately Eng acknowledged the new slow zones on Red, but didn't say anything indicating that they were heatwave related.

Additionally, today they took a presentation from the Boston MPO on potential "sources of community value," at a high level of "what is possible" as additional funding sources for the T. The slides are very bare bones; verbal content provided more details as to what the range represents. Generally, the high end is if all new revenue is directed to the T, instead of its existing portion of that revenue souce. Overall, they are a decent look at what levers are available for the legislature to pull in closing the FY26 and beyond fiscal cliff.

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Stlin said:
There was a board meeting this afternoon; unfortunately Eng acknowledged the new slow zones on Red, but didn't say anything indicating that they were heatwave related.
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Heat restrictions would be day-to-day only. They're usually auto-retired as soon as the heatwave breaks and they do a spot inspection of the welds/joints. That these restrictions are popping on the week-to-week performance dashboard probably means there's something more substantial to work on (though who knows...maybe a heat-kink day was the straw that broke that particular camel's back on a stretch of past-its-maintenance-prime track).
 
There are still no updates on the other capital projects (eg RL/OL signals, Alewife crossover). The closest they get is ambiguous statements about work accomplished during track shutdowns.
 
Stlin said:
There was a board meeting this afternoon; unfortunately Eng acknowledged the new slow zones on Red, but didn't say anything indicating that they were heatwave related.

Additionally, today they took a presentation from the Boston MPO on potential "sources of community value," at a high level of "what is possible" as additional funding sources for the T. The slides are very bare bones; verbal content provided more details as to what the range represents. Generally, the high end is if all new revenue is directed to the T, instead of its existing portion of that revenue souce. Overall, they are a decent look at what levers are available for the legislature to pull in closing the FY26 and beyond fiscal cliff.
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Don't laugh but I was going to suggest a WFH Tax. I don't think congestion pricing would work here, mainly because people would just avoid Downtown more than the revenue brought in.
 
Stlin said:
There was a board meeting this afternoon; unfortunately Eng acknowledged the new slow zones on Red, but didn't say anything indicating that they were heatwave related.

Additionally, today they took a presentation from the Boston MPO on potential "sources of community value," at a high level of "what is possible" as additional funding sources for the T. The slides are very bare bones; verbal content provided more details as to what the range represents. Generally, the high end is if all new revenue is directed to the T, instead of its existing portion of that revenue souce. Overall, they are a decent look at what levers are available for the legislature to pull in closing the FY26 and beyond fiscal cliff.

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Wasn’t the millionaires tax going to provide billions for transportation and education? This place is going to tax itself into oblivion if it keeps this up.
 
TallIsGood said:
Wasn’t the millionaires tax going to provide billions for transportation and education? This place is going to tax itself into oblivion if it keeps this up.
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The state conservatively estimated $1 billion in projected revenue and split ~510m for education and ~490m for transportation.

In education, K-12 lunches are free, community college is tuition free for adults 25+, and there is a good amount of grant money for building improvements.

On the transportation side, the state split it into:
  • $100 million for local road improvements across all towns.
  • $164 million for MassDOT Highway
  • $186 million for the MBTA, including $5 million for reduced fares and $181m for capital projects
  • $40 million for MassDOT Rail and Transit
If I recall correctly, this tax was campaigned heavily on improving the T, and in reality, ~1/10th of the real revenues ($1.8 BN) ended up there.
 
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TallIsGood said:
Wasn’t the millionaires tax going to provide billions for transportation and education? This place is going to tax itself into oblivion if it keeps this up.
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Thanks, @stefal, for that breakdown

Also, at the same time the millionaires tax went into effect, Healey pushed through ~$1B tax cut that seems to have mostly gone to the rich. The exact taxes paid for each household has changed, but on average, this is basically a wash. That tax cut seems to have been forgotten by everyone complaining about the millionaires tax and how it is damaging the state.
 
stefal said:
The state conservatively estimated $1 billion in projected revenue and split ~510m for education and ~490m for transportation.

In education, K-12 lunches are free, community college is tuition free for adults 25+, and there is a good amount of grant money for building improvements.

On the transportatin side, the state split it into:
  • $100 million for local road improvements across all towns.
  • $164 million for MassDOT Highway
  • $186 million for the MBTA, including $5 million for reduced fares and $181m for capital projects
  • $40 million for MassDOT Rail and Transit
If I recall correctly, this tax was campaigned heavily on improving the T, and in reality, ~1/10th of the real revenues ($1.8 BN) ended up there.
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A couple of notes on fair share.

1) The Education and Transportation Fund (ETF) is in its 2nd full year, and as such had to fund its reserve balance of ~340 million before all else in FYs23-24, the year your referencing numbers from. This is the "rainy day" portion of Fair share and is only to be used "during significant revenue declines"
2) the ETF has a legislated spending cap, in FY24 of 1.0 billion. This is currently being proposed by the H.2 budget to rise to 1.3B in FY25 but that action hasn't taken place yet.
3) as a result of that spending cap, the excess revenue is dedicated to two funds, the reserve and capital fund. The reserve fund is a second piggy bank, again for revenue slowdowns. The capital fund is explicitly only to fund one-time expenses, and has no appropriation timeline attached so the state can squirrel away money for something down the road, but it can't fund recurring expenses. As yet I don't believe we've seen proposals funded from the capital fund, and we won't until at least the end of the year when those excesses are certified.
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4) the text of the Fair Share amendment to the state constitution explicitly states to "provide the resources for quality public education and affordable public colleges and universities, and for the repair and maintenance of roads, bridges and public transportation, all revenues received in accordance with this paragraph shall be expended, subject to appropriation, only for these purposes." Therefore, while the legislature can appropriate this money for capital, fixing the T's infrastructure and the like, it actually can't fund Operations through this. (The reduced fare money was "one time expenses to explore the feasibility of").
 
Apparently the shuttle buses for the upcoming diversion will be allocating 55 minutes to get from Wellington to North Station.

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ritchiew said:
Thanks, @stefal, for that breakdown

Also, at the same time the millionaires tax went into effect, Healey pushed through ~$1B tax cut that seems to have mostly gone to the rich. The exact taxes paid for each household has changed, but on average, this is basically a wash. That tax cut seems to have been forgotten by everyone complaining about the millionaires tax and how it is damaging the state.
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While I don’t think the tax cut went to the same folks as the 80% tax increase, $1.0b tax cut isn’t a ‘wash’ with a $1.8b tax increase.

The damage isn’t done in a day but over time. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/21/business/millionaires-tax-survey-accountants/
 
Stlin said:
A couple of notes on fair share.

1) The Education and Transportation Fund (ETF) is in its 2nd full year, and as such had to fund its reserve balance of ~340 million before all else in FYs23-24, the year your referencing numbers from. This is the "rainy day" portion of Fair share and is only to be used "during significant revenue declines"
2) the ETF has a legislated spending cap, in FY24 of 1.0 billion. This is currently being proposed by the H.2 budget to rise to 1.3B in FY25 but that action hasn't taken place yet.
3) as a result of that spending cap, the excess revenue is dedicated to two funds, the reserve and capital fund. The reserve fund is a second piggy bank, again for revenue slowdowns. The capital fund is explicitly only to fund one-time expenses, and has no appropriation timeline attached so the state can squirrel away money for something down the road, but it can't fund recurring expenses. As yet I don't believe we've seen proposals funded from the capital fund, and we won't until at least the end of the year when those excesses are certified.View attachment 51854
4) the text of the Fair Share amendment to the state constitution explicitly states to "provide the resources for quality public education and affordable public colleges and universities, and for the repair and maintenance of roads, bridges and public transportation, all revenues received in accordance with this paragraph shall be expended, subject to appropriation, only for these purposes." Therefore, while the legislature can appropriate this money for capital, fixing the T's infrastructure and the like, it actually can't fund Operations through this. (The reduced fare money was "one time expenses to explore the feasibility of").
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Repairs and maintenance seems like operations and not capital improvements.

Also how does reduced fares fit into the “repairs and maintenance” restriction? Why reduce fares when staring at a billion dollar deficit in a few years?
 
TallIsGood said:
Repairs and maintenance seems like operations and not capital improvements.

Also how does reduced fares fit into the “repairs and maintenance” restriction? Why reduce fares when staring at a billion dollar deficit in a few years?
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I assume that "reduced fares" refers to the Reduced Fares program, which subsidizes lower fares for certain groups.
 
TallIsGood said:
$1.0b tax cut isn’t a ‘wash’ with a $1.8b tax increase.
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Oh yeah, that's fair. The initial predictions for the tax cuts and the millionaires tax had them both at about $1 billion. It looked like that would be a wash, and I still had that in my head. But you're right, In reality, the millionaires tax is bringing in more than predicted. I haven't seen an accounting of what the tax cuts actually amounted to (but maybe someone on here knows). My bad.

TallIsGood said:
The damage isn’t done in a day but over time. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/21/business/millionaires-tax-survey-accountants/
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As for this article, the study they're citing is pretty staggering BS. The survey tries to claim there is a mass exodus of millionaires from Massachusetts because 2/3s of surveyed CPAs say at least one client has moved out of state in the previous year. That number sounds like a lot. What they don't make clear is those CPAs have an average of 30 high-income clients (and presumably many other lower income clients). So.... how many people have moved? Dozens? Thousands? We have no way of knowing from this study because they are weirdly obfuscating these basic numbers that should be their main finding. That's so crappy, it looks intentional.

With their main statistic turning out to be total garbage, it shouldn't be surprising that the rest of this survey is also garbage. They don't say if the rate of people moving out of state is any different from years past (because they're not even clear how many people are moving now). There are errors when describing other states's tax policies. This study says other reports back up their findings, but the first one I checked explicitly says Massachusetts outmigration is being driven by high housings costs and unreliable transportation, not taxes.

And those problems are really scratching the surface. That study is pure crap, and the Globe should be embarrassed that they reported on it.
 
Tax cut details can be found below. It covers a lot of ground, and it's not clear where the absolute dollar amount savings are across each of the cuts, but note there are line items that will disproportionately help higher income individuals (capital gains and estate tax relief) and others that are probably felt most by low income individuals (child and family tax credits increase, rental deduction, low income housing tax credit). And who could forget the targeted relief to cider and dairy manufacturers? In any case, the net revenue from the millionaire's tax does need to be considered in view of this much broader set of cuts, some of which will provide relief to those who are paying the new 4% marginal rate.

Governor Healey Signs First Tax Cuts in More Than 20 Years

$1 billion in tax cuts includes savings for seniors, businesses, renters, and the most generous Child and Family Tax Credit in the country
www.mass.gov www.mass.gov
 
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