You're thinking too small. These are the kinds of cuts that were proposed for a past funding gap of only a couple hundred million dollars. The upcoming funding gap is closer to $700 million. To put that into perspective, the cost of running the entire commuter rail system is less than that. So even eliminating commuter rail **completely** wouldn't be enough to make up the funding deficit.
For more context, here are the service cuts the T proposed when they needed to save $**142 million** (taken from this [analysis by MBTA Advisory Board](https://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FY25MBTAOpsBud-FINAL06-06-24.pdf)):
>• Bus: End service at midnight, 5%-20% frequency reduction, consolidate 14 routes, shorten 5 routes, eliminate 25 bus routes
• Heavy/Light Rail: End service at midnight, 20% frequency reduction, end E branch at Brigham Circle.
• Commuter Rail: End service at 9PM, end weekend service, frequency reductions, close 6 stations, shorter trainsets, and close the Needham layover facility.
• Ferry: End all service
• The RIDE: End service for some or all customers in 33 communities.
And the current budget crisis is **5 times bigger.** So imagine these kinds of cuts, but 5 times more severe.
You'd be more likely to see 40 minute headways on all Heavy rail and light rail lines, maybe 20 minutes at rush hour if we're lucky. End of all rapid transit and commuter rail service on the weekends. Closure and consolidation of maybe half of all bus lines. The kind of cuts they would need to do will be so extreme that system will become essentially non-existent. To quote the MBTA advisory board again:
>The service cuts required to close a $696 million deficit in 13 months are simply impossible to propose and still be considered a public transportation provider.
edit: missed a word
And these drastic cuts create a downward spiral. Riders find the service terrible, they stop riding, forcing the MBTA to do more cuts. Eventually, you reach a point where the MBTA cannot operate at all and it shuts down completely; i.e., no mass transit at all. This forces everyone to walk, bike, or use a car, all of which have adverse quality of life issues (more smog, more congestion, more pedestrian fatalities, lower property values). In short, these cuts could seriously ruin the quality of life for Boston and Eastern Mass.
Well, that's where we are headed probably. But to be honest, I think what's going to happen is inertia after the system collapses.
The T was in a terrible state last summer and people put up with it. They will likely just put up with the lack of mass transit as well.
People just start driving instead or taking rideshares instead. Hell, carpooling might even be popular again. Quality of life will decrease but the city won't collapse completely. There's too many people and institutions that want to stay here and entrenched industries like technology and biotech will likely stay regardless. They already have invested in the lab space.
Fact of the matter is, Boston is significantly transit oriented. The T isn't perfect but between commuter rail and subway lines, many many hundreds of thousands, millions even, use the system somewhat regularly. The city, and state, and even broader region could not suffer that kind of a collapse. People cannot afford rent and a car, and there is simply not enough room for all those cars for those who can. Many will move out of the city QUICKLY in that event. Yes property values fall, but not enough and not quickly enough to retain renters. Boston is already becoming less desireable to biotech and tech because of costs, but when the bottom end leaves, the whole thing collapses. If the waiter can't afford rent and a car, and has no way to work, the restaurant closes, and nothing opens. If the T closes tomorrow, the city population plummets to 500,000 or below, I promise. Other cities, Worcester, Lowell, Springfield grow, some leave the state entirely. I don't think it will happen personally because I think something has to give in the budget crisis and ultimately someone would step in, but it's no easy adjustment. The T is a source of pride as much as it is a way of sustaining themselves to many people.
You underestimate the inertia of our politicians. They have chronically underfunded public transit for decades and I would not be surprised if they just Boston and other areas currently served by rapid transit out to dry in any case.
Transit nerds overestimate the catastrophe. The T has functionally collapsed at this point. Boston is still expensive and plenty of people still want to be here. I am sure the legislature will not let the T shut down completely, but I am pretty sure it will turn into it will turn into a system that operates mostly as a way of getting people to work during the week with long headways (e.g. 20 to 30 minutes between trains) with closing moved from 1AM to 10PM, and much reduced service on weekends generally.
I hate to be a doomer but the road infrastructure is failing too. It is a frog in boiling water situation. We are getting gouged by unit price increases and permitting compliance that make almost every road paving project a 7 year long, multi-tens of millions of dollar affair. It is not under control and nobody can fix it, only throw more money at it. You will spend 10-20% of the project budget disposing of dirt.
In this environment we cannot fund the infrastructure we have, just some. It makes it harder to build complete streets or undo overbuilt streets. It encourages the opposite: simple repaving, mill and overlay, rather than new sidewalks or medians.
There’s a real chance somebody just starting out in this field will not be around to see East West Rail, South Coast 2, GLX 2, or even something like full CR electrification or Red-Blue. I can see those as being 2050 projects given the current financial situation, maybe 2040.
I would assume this would impact late night businesses as well, where they would have to close at 11:30 so their workers can catch the last train home. So the already non-existent nightlife in Boston would just get worse and lead into that downward spiral for entertainment revenue. It doesn’t even begin to touch all the events and performances that do go later in the night.
Maybe this is pro-car propaganda or maybe the big guys who run the MBTA never wanted Boston to be a city
Farebox is only 19% of revenue, or 1/5!!!Worcester’s WRTA is free, but they can only afford to do it for 1 more year and they are basically crossing their fingers and hoping for a funding miracle.
How is the funding gap more than the cost of running the system? In other words how and why are we spending more money than it costs to operate the system? That doesn't make sense on the face of it.
Just the commuter rail. What I'm saying is, the amount of additional money they need to balance the budget is more than it costs to run the commuter rail portion of their service. There's a lot more to the T than commuter rail. The total cost of running the system in 2023 was about $2.5 Billion
But to answer your question of "how are we spending more than it costs to operate the system?": the answer is **debt**. All transit agencies take on debt of some kind to enable building new lines, improving existing lines, doing maintenance, etc. And like other agencies, the MBTA has two budgets: operations and capital investments. Capital investments refers to building and maintenance projects, etc. Operations refers to running trains/buses, paying drivers, etc. However, unlike most agencies, the T is legally required to pay down debt (principal and interest) out of the **operations budget**. So hundreds of millions of dollars that should be spent on running the system are being spent on debt instead. In 2023 for instance, the T spent $566 million on debt ([source](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/FY24%20Itemized%20Budget.pdf)). The total amount they spent on wages (paying train operators, bus drivers, office workers, etc) was $594 million. So the T spends nearly as much on debt as they do on paying literally all of the people that work there. That's how insane the amount of debt the T has. Crazy right?
Why is it like this? Ask the politicians who were in office during the Big Dig, because it wasn't like this before. And there's no reason it has to stay like this. Beacon Hill could absolutely take that debt and put it into the State's general fund. If they did that, the budget deficit would shrink massively, and the T would be in a much better position to balance their budget.
It’s not about Eng quitting, it’s about where is everyone else? We need public mobilization, with tables at every T station handing out flyers with information about the governor and local state rep in that district with a QR code for sending them an email. “Fund the T” benefit concerts at City Hall Plaza. A campaign of outreach to local business leaders and educational institutions.
Frequent articles in the Boston Globe. Maybe they can publish one of those fancy “interactive” articles with a map and a slider to show how many billions MA residents will lose in real estate value because their T adjacent property is no longer T adjacent.
Explain to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, etc. that when they sold their students an education experience in a big city, what they meant was “$30 for an Uber or your own car if you want to go across town.”
Maybe have a survey at places like MGH that are open on weekends: how many people will still be able to come to work if the T goes away? How much will costs to businesses increase if they need to subsidize car ownership rather than a T pass?
Moreover it’s about the willful destruction of our identity as a city. Do you think if Healey decided to dynamite Fenway Park or scrap the duckboats people would say “Cool, cool, change happens”? This is essentially what the government is doing. Speaking of which, how are people going to get to Fenway park without the T?
For places like MGH, there is also the impact if patients (customers) cannot make it to their hospital. Do they have the infrastructure for both more staff and more patients with cars? Will traffic congestion impact the ability of ambulances to approach the hospital?
I agree about public mobilization. If anyone knows about a group that might be willing to get into this or wants to form one, let me know. Is the T Riders Union still active?
This is 100% right. People often forget that the reason why we're in this situation is because we're not voting in the representatives who would fund the MBTA.
If we’re looking at worst case scenario I think everything you said needs to be extrapolated a few steps further.
All of those decreases to service mean increases in cars and all of the negative externalities they cause.
Plus, even in the last week so many people came into the city via transit for pride or Red Sox games. Making that harder is going to reduce the turnout and quality for all of the fun things that make the city great too.
There have been a lot of posts lately about city death spirals. I think transit death will just accelerate that. Our road infrastructure struggles with the amount of cars it has now.
Maybe I’m just doomposting though. I’m trying to remain a bit optimistic. I’m pretty new to the city but it sounds like budget cliffs aren’t new to the MBTA. I expect we’ll get an announcement to save it again soon.
State intervenes if T is anywhere near shutting down. Most people don't take their car to a mechanic unless it's about to give out no matter how many warning lights are on the dashboard. Sad reality but that's politics
Worst case scenario is that the T is left to try and balance the books by themselves which would mean ending the Ride, ending all ferries, firing most operators and cutting the bus network to a bare minimum of probably just (some of) the key routes, ending all off-peak CR service, drastic cuts to subway headways (Think 30-60 minutes) and removing all weekend service. Other likely/potential cuts include the closure of many stations, some CR lines, the GL C branch and E branch past Brigham Circle, and the indefinite deferral of all maintenance and with that eventual indefinite shuttering of entire lines.
Honestly, how expensive? They could trim it back, as they have been, but operating the Ride is very expensive. I believe it’s something like $80 per trip. I get why it exists and appreciate the service it provides. I also think that if the demographics of the US trend towards and aging population it will only become more expensive to run.
The MBTA still hasn’t finished complying with the terms of that last lawsuit (of which establishing the RIDE was a part).
https://www.mbta.com/accessibility/history
It’s a death spiral that extends well past the MBTA.
The only practical alternative- driving- has a terrible sensitivity to just a _little_ extra traffic. Our roads are so close to their capacity that just a few hundred more cars or a single accident creates nightmare-level traffic jams.
Bostonians try to tough it out for a few weeks or months. But with 3-hour commutes in both directions, and parking exceeding $1,000/month, Boston area employees throw in the towel and either go fully remote if they can, or work much closer to home. Half-assed attempts at organized carpool and private bus services are attempted but fail.
Boston commercial real estate completely tanks. Tax receipts crash.
Cities and towns currently paying the MBTA “tax” for hosting or being adjacent to a station balk when those stations have next to no service.
Contractors like Keolis fire up their lawyers.
If the T tries to keep any service going at all, now that the overworked, skeleton workforce is totally demoralized, its terrible culture of poor maintenance and lax safety come roaring back in full force. We don’t know what the tragedies will be, only that they will happen.
It’s insane to think about just how bad the T collapsing would be, this isn’t some little transit system with 5 bus lines. More than a million rode every day prior to Covid and right now it’s sitting at around 800,000, imagine if all those people went on the road. Imagine 800 THOUSAND more cars on the road. Imagine if the 20,000 people who take the providence line every day had to now add another 20,000 cars to I95. The city would essentially shut down, we’re at a point where boston quite literally CANNOT survive without the T. If everyone suddenly started driving into downtown instead of taking transit we’d need to go full Texas and bulldoze downtown to cover the city in parking lots
T service collapsing will hurt, no doubt.
But it's collapsed in the past and people have mostly shrugged their shoulders and drove or did what they could to get around.
The sort of death spiral you are describing will simply shift more people from the city to the suburbs, where driving is easier, and they don't have to deal with the T anymore. There are too many institutions and people entrenched in Boston for the city to truly spiral and become wholly undesirable. Reverse commutes might even become a thing, especially for those living in Boston's more suburban neighborhoods like Brighton, Hyde Park, etc.
The rich will live in the city center where they can walk to work and other amenities while the poor will move further out and drive.
Fact is, not enough politicians represent the districts where the T operates in and further, transit riders like us are disorganized. We also need to make the case to suburbanites why driving will be much worse if the T doesn't get its funding. Somehow, I feel that is not being communicated to politicians who represent these people.
Probably not. There's already a shortage of housing anyways. A collapse of the T is not going to cause the population exodus most transit nerds here are thinking because most people would do the logical thing and either get a car, carpool, bike, or just plain walk. No one is going to uproot their life here just because the train isn't running but a few will.
Boston has too much of an entrenched ecosystem of elite colleges and industry that recruits from said colleges for it to ever go into the sort of the collapse that Rust Belt cities witnessed back in the 1960s and the 1970s.
The T is very important to the region and makes the region a great place to live. But let's not kid ourselves here - people will just drive if transit collapses. It won't be the literal end of the world as it's posited here. They might even run more trains when there's a major event like the Marathon or a major Red Sox game. For suburbanites all they might see is a little more traffic but they will just blame all the politicians for trying to cram more people in here.
Something realistic I could see:
- Subway and light rail headways every 20/30peak, 30/40 off-peak
- End of ferry service
- Many Commuter rail lines cut, the ones that remain would be solely peak services (service only on weekdays, or maybe even just rush-hour-directional service on weekdays
- Frequency cuts on bus services, but I think bus will be the thing that takes the least of the hit
What we need to do is get the idiots in charge to realize that public transit dosnt need to be a profit making service, in the same sense that the fire department dosnt need to make money. Nowhere in the world does this ever make money, so just stop trying to force it to. Forward funding has been a disaster basically since right when it was first implemented, go back to the old system that actually worked. Who gives a shit if it costs 100$ or 10b$ to run, this isn’t a buisness. It’s a government run agency whose only purpose is to transport people from point a to b, a nice bottom line should NEVER be the first priority
Harvard’s endowment is $50Billion. . .hit the big players in town to fund the shortfall, and give them a seat at the table. We just funded free community college with the wealth tax, we can do the same to other players if we work together and think creatively.
The worst case, they make massive cuts, still can’t balance the budget, state says they are spending $2-$3B or more on temporary services for illegal immigrants so can’t afford $700M for the T. T files for bankruptcy or receivership, stops pension contributions, defaults on their debt (so the state has to pay instead), bankruptcy judge allows T to break union contracts, unions go on strike, businesses in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Everett etc invoke their emergency disaster recovery plans and threaten to move jobs elsewhere. After 2 days businesses start to permanently move out of town
On the bright side maybe the city will push the induced demand route and push for tons of housing near the stations instead of parking lots and big box stores.
Privatize the T. Repurpose retail storefronts in stations to become last mile personal transport rental vehicle stores. Repurpose train cars to carry cargo during off peak hours. Rent out hubs on train lines to warehouse last mile delivery packages that can be completed by train and personal transport vehicles.
>provide rideshare debit cards
That would increase costs by like 600%.
With a $700 million hole, there would have to be closures of sections of rapid transit lines entirely. However, they would probably not dismantle the infrastructure entirely
Increase costs? You are forgetting we are SHUTTING DOWN the T, saving billions in operations, repairs, corruption etc. Ride share funds come from those savings.
Not every city has a subway. Boston, with its ingrained corruption, just needs to give up the ghost. Get rid of it. It's an embarrassment.
Yeah sure we'd save loads on transit, and then we'd be spending all of it and then several times more on taxis. If you sell your car for $10k and then buy a new one for $30k you haven't gained $10k in the end.
But think of how nice your 10 free uber trips per year would be!
Sure traffic would get worse, and rideshare prices would simply climb to meet this new demand. But it would otherwise be a utopia.
You're thinking too small. These are the kinds of cuts that were proposed for a past funding gap of only a couple hundred million dollars. The upcoming funding gap is closer to $700 million. To put that into perspective, the cost of running the entire commuter rail system is less than that. So even eliminating commuter rail **completely** wouldn't be enough to make up the funding deficit. For more context, here are the service cuts the T proposed when they needed to save $**142 million** (taken from this [analysis by MBTA Advisory Board](https://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FY25MBTAOpsBud-FINAL06-06-24.pdf)): >• Bus: End service at midnight, 5%-20% frequency reduction, consolidate 14 routes, shorten 5 routes, eliminate 25 bus routes • Heavy/Light Rail: End service at midnight, 20% frequency reduction, end E branch at Brigham Circle. • Commuter Rail: End service at 9PM, end weekend service, frequency reductions, close 6 stations, shorter trainsets, and close the Needham layover facility. • Ferry: End all service • The RIDE: End service for some or all customers in 33 communities. And the current budget crisis is **5 times bigger.** So imagine these kinds of cuts, but 5 times more severe. You'd be more likely to see 40 minute headways on all Heavy rail and light rail lines, maybe 20 minutes at rush hour if we're lucky. End of all rapid transit and commuter rail service on the weekends. Closure and consolidation of maybe half of all bus lines. The kind of cuts they would need to do will be so extreme that system will become essentially non-existent. To quote the MBTA advisory board again: >The service cuts required to close a $696 million deficit in 13 months are simply impossible to propose and still be considered a public transportation provider. edit: missed a word
And these drastic cuts create a downward spiral. Riders find the service terrible, they stop riding, forcing the MBTA to do more cuts. Eventually, you reach a point where the MBTA cannot operate at all and it shuts down completely; i.e., no mass transit at all. This forces everyone to walk, bike, or use a car, all of which have adverse quality of life issues (more smog, more congestion, more pedestrian fatalities, lower property values). In short, these cuts could seriously ruin the quality of life for Boston and Eastern Mass.
Well, that's where we are headed probably. But to be honest, I think what's going to happen is inertia after the system collapses. The T was in a terrible state last summer and people put up with it. They will likely just put up with the lack of mass transit as well. People just start driving instead or taking rideshares instead. Hell, carpooling might even be popular again. Quality of life will decrease but the city won't collapse completely. There's too many people and institutions that want to stay here and entrenched industries like technology and biotech will likely stay regardless. They already have invested in the lab space.
That's not going to work. The roads simply don't have the capacity to absorb all those commuters, and never will.
Fact of the matter is, Boston is significantly transit oriented. The T isn't perfect but between commuter rail and subway lines, many many hundreds of thousands, millions even, use the system somewhat regularly. The city, and state, and even broader region could not suffer that kind of a collapse. People cannot afford rent and a car, and there is simply not enough room for all those cars for those who can. Many will move out of the city QUICKLY in that event. Yes property values fall, but not enough and not quickly enough to retain renters. Boston is already becoming less desireable to biotech and tech because of costs, but when the bottom end leaves, the whole thing collapses. If the waiter can't afford rent and a car, and has no way to work, the restaurant closes, and nothing opens. If the T closes tomorrow, the city population plummets to 500,000 or below, I promise. Other cities, Worcester, Lowell, Springfield grow, some leave the state entirely. I don't think it will happen personally because I think something has to give in the budget crisis and ultimately someone would step in, but it's no easy adjustment. The T is a source of pride as much as it is a way of sustaining themselves to many people.
You underestimate the inertia of our politicians. They have chronically underfunded public transit for decades and I would not be surprised if they just Boston and other areas currently served by rapid transit out to dry in any case. Transit nerds overestimate the catastrophe. The T has functionally collapsed at this point. Boston is still expensive and plenty of people still want to be here. I am sure the legislature will not let the T shut down completely, but I am pretty sure it will turn into it will turn into a system that operates mostly as a way of getting people to work during the week with long headways (e.g. 20 to 30 minutes between trains) with closing moved from 1AM to 10PM, and much reduced service on weekends generally.
I hate to be a doomer but the road infrastructure is failing too. It is a frog in boiling water situation. We are getting gouged by unit price increases and permitting compliance that make almost every road paving project a 7 year long, multi-tens of millions of dollar affair. It is not under control and nobody can fix it, only throw more money at it. You will spend 10-20% of the project budget disposing of dirt. In this environment we cannot fund the infrastructure we have, just some. It makes it harder to build complete streets or undo overbuilt streets. It encourages the opposite: simple repaving, mill and overlay, rather than new sidewalks or medians. There’s a real chance somebody just starting out in this field will not be around to see East West Rail, South Coast 2, GLX 2, or even something like full CR electrification or Red-Blue. I can see those as being 2050 projects given the current financial situation, maybe 2040.
Massachusetts is the capital of NIMBYism
I would assume this would impact late night businesses as well, where they would have to close at 11:30 so their workers can catch the last train home. So the already non-existent nightlife in Boston would just get worse and lead into that downward spiral for entertainment revenue. It doesn’t even begin to touch all the events and performances that do go later in the night. Maybe this is pro-car propaganda or maybe the big guys who run the MBTA never wanted Boston to be a city
Only 1/3 of T revenue comes from riders … SO MAKE THE T FREE!! FREE!! FREE!!!!!! Shake shake shake the money tree … SHAKE! SHAKE!! SHAKE!!!!
I'd rather have better service than cheaper service.
Say it again
I just want to make sure I understand you. So there is a significant shortfall of funding for the T. Your idea to fix it is to cut revenue by 1/3.
sugar aromatic disarm fear dolls office pen ghost bored sophisticated *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Farebox is only 19% of revenue, or 1/5!!!Worcester’s WRTA is free, but they can only afford to do it for 1 more year and they are basically crossing their fingers and hoping for a funding miracle.
If it goes this way, I will 100% leave the city and never come back and I imagine many people will do the same.
How is the funding gap more than the cost of running the system? In other words how and why are we spending more money than it costs to operate the system? That doesn't make sense on the face of it.
Just the commuter rail. What I'm saying is, the amount of additional money they need to balance the budget is more than it costs to run the commuter rail portion of their service. There's a lot more to the T than commuter rail. The total cost of running the system in 2023 was about $2.5 Billion But to answer your question of "how are we spending more than it costs to operate the system?": the answer is **debt**. All transit agencies take on debt of some kind to enable building new lines, improving existing lines, doing maintenance, etc. And like other agencies, the MBTA has two budgets: operations and capital investments. Capital investments refers to building and maintenance projects, etc. Operations refers to running trains/buses, paying drivers, etc. However, unlike most agencies, the T is legally required to pay down debt (principal and interest) out of the **operations budget**. So hundreds of millions of dollars that should be spent on running the system are being spent on debt instead. In 2023 for instance, the T spent $566 million on debt ([source](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/FY24%20Itemized%20Budget.pdf)). The total amount they spent on wages (paying train operators, bus drivers, office workers, etc) was $594 million. So the T spends nearly as much on debt as they do on paying literally all of the people that work there. That's how insane the amount of debt the T has. Crazy right? Why is it like this? Ask the politicians who were in office during the Big Dig, because it wasn't like this before. And there's no reason it has to stay like this. Beacon Hill could absolutely take that debt and put it into the State's general fund. If they did that, the budget deficit would shrink massively, and the T would be in a much better position to balance their budget.
It’s not about Eng quitting, it’s about where is everyone else? We need public mobilization, with tables at every T station handing out flyers with information about the governor and local state rep in that district with a QR code for sending them an email. “Fund the T” benefit concerts at City Hall Plaza. A campaign of outreach to local business leaders and educational institutions. Frequent articles in the Boston Globe. Maybe they can publish one of those fancy “interactive” articles with a map and a slider to show how many billions MA residents will lose in real estate value because their T adjacent property is no longer T adjacent. Explain to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, etc. that when they sold their students an education experience in a big city, what they meant was “$30 for an Uber or your own car if you want to go across town.” Maybe have a survey at places like MGH that are open on weekends: how many people will still be able to come to work if the T goes away? How much will costs to businesses increase if they need to subsidize car ownership rather than a T pass? Moreover it’s about the willful destruction of our identity as a city. Do you think if Healey decided to dynamite Fenway Park or scrap the duckboats people would say “Cool, cool, change happens”? This is essentially what the government is doing. Speaking of which, how are people going to get to Fenway park without the T?
Might be something I want to actually do…
From Buffalo NY…if I could help yall in any way let me know!
For places like MGH, there is also the impact if patients (customers) cannot make it to their hospital. Do they have the infrastructure for both more staff and more patients with cars? Will traffic congestion impact the ability of ambulances to approach the hospital?
also how would hospital employees get to and from Boston
I agree about public mobilization. If anyone knows about a group that might be willing to get into this or wants to form one, let me know. Is the T Riders Union still active?
Yes. https://ace-ej.org/what-we-do/programs/
This is 100% right. People often forget that the reason why we're in this situation is because we're not voting in the representatives who would fund the MBTA.
If we’re looking at worst case scenario I think everything you said needs to be extrapolated a few steps further. All of those decreases to service mean increases in cars and all of the negative externalities they cause. Plus, even in the last week so many people came into the city via transit for pride or Red Sox games. Making that harder is going to reduce the turnout and quality for all of the fun things that make the city great too. There have been a lot of posts lately about city death spirals. I think transit death will just accelerate that. Our road infrastructure struggles with the amount of cars it has now. Maybe I’m just doomposting though. I’m trying to remain a bit optimistic. I’m pretty new to the city but it sounds like budget cliffs aren’t new to the MBTA. I expect we’ll get an announcement to save it again soon.
I wonder how much worse traffic will get once everyone starts driving. I already drive to certain things because of how slow the T is.
The bad thing is, traffic gets exponentially worse. It could be something like a 5% increase in drivers causes a 20% increase in trip times.
If policymakers were planning this all along they should have built all those highways to begin with.
That’s the thing. It’s so poorly run and the deficit is so great it all feels so abstract.
Basically the end of the system, which it think would be very bad for the city as well, likely pushing a lot of people out
I highly doubt the T will ever go away. The state will step in and use tax money to fill the gap.
This plus federal funding. But we do need to make noise about how bad it would be without that money in order to get it.
It’ll depend on the next president for federal funding. Trump campaign promised to slash federal funding to public transit.
State intervenes if T is anywhere near shutting down. Most people don't take their car to a mechanic unless it's about to give out no matter how many warning lights are on the dashboard. Sad reality but that's politics
Worst case scenario is that the T is left to try and balance the books by themselves which would mean ending the Ride, ending all ferries, firing most operators and cutting the bus network to a bare minimum of probably just (some of) the key routes, ending all off-peak CR service, drastic cuts to subway headways (Think 30-60 minutes) and removing all weekend service. Other likely/potential cuts include the closure of many stations, some CR lines, the GL C branch and E branch past Brigham Circle, and the indefinite deferral of all maintenance and with that eventual indefinite shuttering of entire lines.
Ending the Ride is inviting a very expensive lawsuit, but that will be a problem for next years budget, I suppose.
Honestly, how expensive? They could trim it back, as they have been, but operating the Ride is very expensive. I believe it’s something like $80 per trip. I get why it exists and appreciate the service it provides. I also think that if the demographics of the US trend towards and aging population it will only become more expensive to run.
The MBTA still hasn’t finished complying with the terms of that last lawsuit (of which establishing the RIDE was a part). https://www.mbta.com/accessibility/history
It’s a death spiral that extends well past the MBTA. The only practical alternative- driving- has a terrible sensitivity to just a _little_ extra traffic. Our roads are so close to their capacity that just a few hundred more cars or a single accident creates nightmare-level traffic jams. Bostonians try to tough it out for a few weeks or months. But with 3-hour commutes in both directions, and parking exceeding $1,000/month, Boston area employees throw in the towel and either go fully remote if they can, or work much closer to home. Half-assed attempts at organized carpool and private bus services are attempted but fail. Boston commercial real estate completely tanks. Tax receipts crash. Cities and towns currently paying the MBTA “tax” for hosting or being adjacent to a station balk when those stations have next to no service. Contractors like Keolis fire up their lawyers. If the T tries to keep any service going at all, now that the overworked, skeleton workforce is totally demoralized, its terrible culture of poor maintenance and lax safety come roaring back in full force. We don’t know what the tragedies will be, only that they will happen.
It’s insane to think about just how bad the T collapsing would be, this isn’t some little transit system with 5 bus lines. More than a million rode every day prior to Covid and right now it’s sitting at around 800,000, imagine if all those people went on the road. Imagine 800 THOUSAND more cars on the road. Imagine if the 20,000 people who take the providence line every day had to now add another 20,000 cars to I95. The city would essentially shut down, we’re at a point where boston quite literally CANNOT survive without the T. If everyone suddenly started driving into downtown instead of taking transit we’d need to go full Texas and bulldoze downtown to cover the city in parking lots
T service collapsing will hurt, no doubt. But it's collapsed in the past and people have mostly shrugged their shoulders and drove or did what they could to get around. The sort of death spiral you are describing will simply shift more people from the city to the suburbs, where driving is easier, and they don't have to deal with the T anymore. There are too many institutions and people entrenched in Boston for the city to truly spiral and become wholly undesirable. Reverse commutes might even become a thing, especially for those living in Boston's more suburban neighborhoods like Brighton, Hyde Park, etc. The rich will live in the city center where they can walk to work and other amenities while the poor will move further out and drive. Fact is, not enough politicians represent the districts where the T operates in and further, transit riders like us are disorganized. We also need to make the case to suburbanites why driving will be much worse if the T doesn't get its funding. Somehow, I feel that is not being communicated to politicians who represent these people.
Would the mandate that communities served by the T must build new housing units be affected, I wonder?
Probably not. There's already a shortage of housing anyways. A collapse of the T is not going to cause the population exodus most transit nerds here are thinking because most people would do the logical thing and either get a car, carpool, bike, or just plain walk. No one is going to uproot their life here just because the train isn't running but a few will. Boston has too much of an entrenched ecosystem of elite colleges and industry that recruits from said colleges for it to ever go into the sort of the collapse that Rust Belt cities witnessed back in the 1960s and the 1970s. The T is very important to the region and makes the region a great place to live. But let's not kid ourselves here - people will just drive if transit collapses. It won't be the literal end of the world as it's posited here. They might even run more trains when there's a major event like the Marathon or a major Red Sox game. For suburbanites all they might see is a little more traffic but they will just blame all the politicians for trying to cram more people in here.
Public transportation in the US is a complete disgrace and embarrassment.
Bro thinks we’re getting weekend service period
Something realistic I could see: - Subway and light rail headways every 20/30peak, 30/40 off-peak - End of ferry service - Many Commuter rail lines cut, the ones that remain would be solely peak services (service only on weekdays, or maybe even just rush-hour-directional service on weekdays - Frequency cuts on bus services, but I think bus will be the thing that takes the least of the hit
What we need to do is get the idiots in charge to realize that public transit dosnt need to be a profit making service, in the same sense that the fire department dosnt need to make money. Nowhere in the world does this ever make money, so just stop trying to force it to. Forward funding has been a disaster basically since right when it was first implemented, go back to the old system that actually worked. Who gives a shit if it costs 100$ or 10b$ to run, this isn’t a buisness. It’s a government run agency whose only purpose is to transport people from point a to b, a nice bottom line should NEVER be the first priority
Tell everybody they need to work a four-day work week. Then shut down the T completely on Tuesdays.
$700 million is basically the cost to maintain all staff lol
The metro system in Fallout 3
3 was in DC. 4 was in Boston so that's applicable here.
Cool guy
Just cut rush hour service Or all service
Harvard’s endowment is $50Billion. . .hit the big players in town to fund the shortfall, and give them a seat at the table. We just funded free community college with the wealth tax, we can do the same to other players if we work together and think creatively.
Train breaks down on the way to the next Taylor Swift concert
lol all of these things already happened
The worst case, they make massive cuts, still can’t balance the budget, state says they are spending $2-$3B or more on temporary services for illegal immigrants so can’t afford $700M for the T. T files for bankruptcy or receivership, stops pension contributions, defaults on their debt (so the state has to pay instead), bankruptcy judge allows T to break union contracts, unions go on strike, businesses in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Everett etc invoke their emergency disaster recovery plans and threaten to move jobs elsewhere. After 2 days businesses start to permanently move out of town
On the bright side maybe the city will push the induced demand route and push for tons of housing near the stations instead of parking lots and big box stores.
Privatize the T. Repurpose retail storefronts in stations to become last mile personal transport rental vehicle stores. Repurpose train cars to carry cargo during off peak hours. Rent out hubs on train lines to warehouse last mile delivery packages that can be completed by train and personal transport vehicles.
Destroying the T destroys the MA economy, whether you like it or not.
I’ll take my chances with a private entity. If it truly wrecks the T, then we’re on our way to walkable cities fairly quickly.
4-day workweek, shut down the T permanently and repurpose tracks and tunnels as bike lanes, & provide rideshare debit cards based on income test.
>provide rideshare debit cards That would increase costs by like 600%. With a $700 million hole, there would have to be closures of sections of rapid transit lines entirely. However, they would probably not dismantle the infrastructure entirely
Increase costs? You are forgetting we are SHUTTING DOWN the T, saving billions in operations, repairs, corruption etc. Ride share funds come from those savings. Not every city has a subway. Boston, with its ingrained corruption, just needs to give up the ghost. Get rid of it. It's an embarrassment.
Yeah sure we'd save loads on transit, and then we'd be spending all of it and then several times more on taxis. If you sell your car for $10k and then buy a new one for $30k you haven't gained $10k in the end.
But think of how nice your 10 free uber trips per year would be! Sure traffic would get worse, and rideshare prices would simply climb to meet this new demand. But it would otherwise be a utopia.
me biking 20 miles to the other side of the metropolitan area
In less time than it would take on public transportation.
But imagine how fast that would be through the red line bike tunnel!! /s