| According to recent reporting, Gov. Charlie Baker is less than enthusiastic about skepticism regarding a 6.3 percent MBTA fare hike proposed by members of the transit agency’s Fiscal and Management Control Board.
At the board’s meeting last week, member and UNITE HERE Local 26 President Brian Lang said it would be “completely wrongheaded” to lean only on T riders to generate the extra revenue administration officials say it needs to bridge a structural budget deficit. Lang’s fellow board member Joseph Aiello echoed those sentiments.
At the ribbon-cutting for the new Fairmount Line Commuter Rail station that same week, board member and 128 Business Council Executive Director Monica Tibbits-Nutt echoed Lang Aiello.
“You have so many micro-mobility options right now and the fact that they’re not having to put as much money into the state, into the infrastructure, is ridiculous. I mean they’re using public roads,” she said, according to Commonwealth Magazine.
At the same event, Commonwealth reported, Baker affirmed he thinks the T should increase fares first, while increases in the gas tax or in fees paid by Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing services should come later as Massachusetts negotiates a multi-state transportation emissions reduction agreement like former Gov. Mitt Romney’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
We respectfully disagree.
Yes, it is unfair to raise fares on T riders to pay for service improvements while drivers who benefit from the system’s existence aren’t charged a penny. The MBTA keeps hundreds of thousands of drivers off the roads every day, but more significantly it is critical to keeping the Massachusetts economy humming and strong.
More importantly, however, not making other commuters pay their fair share misses an opportunity to make a dent in congestion caused by ride-hailing services by increasing fees beyond the $0.20 per ride under current law. It also could make congestion worse by enticing some commuters, particularly Commuter Rail and some bus riders, to abandon public transit for cars. As more riders leave for Uber or their own cars, the T’s revenue picture will only get worse.
A broad-based method of raising funds can easily be written to address very real regional equity concerns. Gas taxes and ride-hailing fees paid outside of the MBTA’s service area can be directed to the state’s smaller regional transit agencies as an operating subsidy or as block grants to fund specific improvements or capital expenses.
Baker is absolutely right to seek a regional compact that will put a price on the carbon emissions of the transportation sector. Such market-based solutions are key to reorienting the region’s economy for a low-carbon future.
However, the regional initiative Baker’s transportation emissions pact is inspired by took two years to negotiate. If the T needs new revenue as urgently as the Baker administration says, that is too long to wait. To borrow a line Baker is fond of repeating in the context of his proposed zoning reform bill, Massachusetts shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to transportation funding.
