Public Transportation in Massachusetts

Year after year, I hear that the MBTA is running a deficit... like that's a bad thing.  First of all, keep in mind this is a government entity, not a for-profit business or even a non-profit organization.  The purpose of this entity is not to make money or provide a service at no cost to anybody that doesn't use it.  The purpose of government is to provide for the common welfare, and it's a good thing for us to have people have access to public transportation.... let's go into some of the reasons why:

1. Environmental: It's true, to some extent, that public transportation is better for the environment than everybody using cars to get everywhere.  I say "to some extent" here because it depends on how many people are using it.  Definitely, when the busses and trains are crowded, it is much more efficient at people-moving, but what about when the bus is less than 1/5 full?  So, rush-hour is definitely better for the environment and off-peak hours are sometimes worse.  So this reason isn't as strong as advocates might claim, but it's still strong.  Nevertheless, the findings from this claim would suggest that we should only have public transportation at busy times.... but that's only thinking from an environmental perspective, and there's more to public transportation than just environmental benefits.
2. Help thy neighbor: Public transportation isn't super cheap anymore, but it's certainly cheaper than some alternative forms of transportation, so it can be seen as a common good in so far as it allows us to more cheaply move about.... but I would suggest this too is not the biggest reason to be in favor of public transportation.
3. Traffic congestion and parking: Now we're talking!  It's all well and good to say that public transportation is good for everybody and it's instinctual to me to believe so, but for the optimal explanation to someone who's not interested in being nice to people and worried about spending tax dollars on things, here's the big explanation.  As you replace cars on streets with people walking/biking/being driven to public transportation, you reduce traffic and you reduce the amount of parking spaces you need everywhere.  When I think about people from Boston or Cambridge coming to Davis Sq. for the evening, I'm very thankful that not everybody has to park there and that many people come by bus or train.  It's worth a little of my money to help this take place, even if I'm not using the public transportation myself.

Alright, so, we've established that having public transportation is in the public's interest, next up, the financing.

First off, we have a general financing problem.  It's not the T's fault that we spent a ton on the Big Dig.  It's not the T's fault that we reduced our tax rates in MA.  Don't burden the T with the debt.  Instead, I would suggest we wipe the slate clean and have all debt for state agencies be consolidated into a general state debt.  Start fresh so we can plan properly and respectfully according to the agencies' needs and our interest in the agencies' support of our communities.

Secondly, we shouldn't use a tax on gas to pay for an agency that is supposed to reduce our need for gas.  That's just ridiculousness.  The budget for the MBTA should come out of the general budget and should not fluctuate with how much people drive.  This would further stabilize the agency, again assisting with being able to make planning possible.

One last item, which I'm sure I'll go into more detail later: Massachusetts tax rates are too damn low.  We, yes we since it was a ballot measure, cut our state income tax in 1999.  The plan was to reduce it from 5.95% (pre-2000) to 5%.  We stopped the decreasing in 2002 until tax income met pre-set amounts at which point we would decrease it by .05% per year.  Let's think about this for a moment.  Why did we stop the reduction in the tax rate in 2002?  Because the US economy faultered.  In point of fact, the US economy was going through a pretty good period in the 1990's.  Between 1992 and 2000, we had a GDP percentage increase of 5% or more 3 times as often as between 2000 and 2008, and we haven't even reached 5% since mid-2006.  So, since we were in time of prosperity, it makes sense that we would be bringing in enough taxes to pay our bills, but we should be using those times to build up our rainy day fund for times like we've been going through every since, where GDP growth has been minimal if any.  It should come as no surprise to anybody that we've been cutting our budget constantly for the last decade, and this is the reason, we saw some good growth years and thought they were average and therefore decided we could shrink our tax rate when in fact we should have been investing more and preparing for average and even lower than average years.  My suggestion, therefore, is that the income tax should be raised back up.