They also made a (probably non-binding) agreement to not raise fares again until 2019. Also, members of the Board stated they wanted the funds from the increased fares to go to a dedicated repair/maintenance fund so that the fare money is "directly invested back in the system."
The maintenance 'lock box' is a great idea, though it pains me to see that come out of a draconian fare increase rather than Baker and/or the legislature authorising more money from the general fund.
I guess in some way, this is the board attempting to legitimise the much steeper fare increase in spite of a purportedly reduced budget gap that is allowing this money to be spent on the maintenance backlog - we're still trying to figure out this crazy back-of-the-napkin math that's been cited at different amounts in various articles last week. It makes sense that they're trying to pull what levers they have and I know that on some level these hearings aren't for them to hear the riders but as political theatre for the state to really see how many angry, upset, and varied riders and arguments are out there. It still doesn't look great on either the MBTA or the governor's appointed control board, purportedly with the power to do 'whatever needs to happen'. I think this is proof positive that even the FMCB - as a
part of the MBTA/MassDOT governing struture - still doesn't have what leverage it needs to get the job done.
We've been
driving this narrative that fare hikes are especially difficult to swallow by the general public because they appear to yield no benefit. Your fare goes up faster than inflation but you're still paying for the same shitty, unreliable service and your fares are only going toward plugging a financial gap that grows year over year because of a systemic underinvestment in capital - funded by a separate budget that hardly anyone ever attends meetings for and barely bats an eye when underfunded by the legislature/authorised bonding. (The Red/Orange Line cars went unauthorised behind billions of dollars in safety-priority capital projects -
it was tender-ready in 2010 - but no one gave two shits until the last year of Deval Patrick's term when everyone was suddenly asking themselves '
What do you mean it'll take 4 years for the trains to arrive on property!?!')
I get where we're going with this, but the spirit of PAYGO in transit is that you're spending money you
already have and are putting it directly into the capital budget for maintenance, new trains, etc rather than increasing the debt by that much in bonding. Even in New York State, where the 'lock box' concept - while basically nullified by the state's
repeated raiding of said lock box - is in reference to dedicated state revenues or portions of the general fund that are set aside for MTA's capital budget.
When us advocates say we want more revenue from the T, this isn't what we meant. We fully acknowledge the money must come from
SOMEWHERE, but riders already pay their fair share of 'user fees', especially among systems that run much tighter ships - either from being younger or having better weathered the transit funding nightmare of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.
I'm personally at a loss for words, but I'm okay with walking away from this fight - it's pretty much over unless ACE/TRU and T4MA have something up their sleeve - and shifting focus onto the next hope:
Regional Transportation Ballot Initiatives... The T is a major component of our
regional transport network; we should start funding it that way. Argue what you want about gas taxes going (
marginally [PDF]) to the T's operating budget - we can start to cut that down if we can double down on our modernisation of the system because I'm really tired of reform
reform reform AND THEN revenue ...
on rider's backs.
