The Red Line of the T recently had a derailment which is causing all kinds of problems. The accident caused damage to the signaling for that line and is going to cause slower service for the rest of the summer. But this isn't the start of the decline of service, no, that has been happening for years.
WBUR conducted a poll that shows a majority of those polled disapprove of the way the MBTA has been managed by the Baker administration (https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/06/27/wbur-poll-mbta-transportation-baker). I hate to say I told you so, but, yeah, I'm pretty sure I did.
There are now calls for the T to not increase fares until service issues are resolved. But you can't resolve the issues the T has without increasing the funding. Yet I agree that fare increases are not the way to go. But what can we do?
How about this... how about we identify that public transportation needs to be publicly supported and needs to be considered one of the major lifebloods of our society... how about we not just identify it but we show it in how we pay for it. Instead of having the riders pay 40% of the operating costs, let's decrease that significantly and increase the general burden to those living and working in Massachusetts. This change in how we sustain the program will help shift the mentality around public transportation from something that's a luxury to something that is essential to the very fabric of our state. Instead of saying "it's a partnership between the tax payer and those other people that make use of it" we're saying "this is something we want a majority of the people who work and travel in the metropolitan area to use." The change in where we get the funding would change then change the philosophy within the administration and make it more important to improve service and reliability rather than seeing this part of our government as being a burden to reduce. Yes, we should be efficient but we should be efficient while providing this desperately needed service to our people. We should also go a step above just shifting where the money comes from and put a lot of money, not just some, into repairing and upgrading what we have.
But here's the question I pose to you now: Baker has announced that we will spend some extra money over the next few months to pay for repairs that are needed... it's far less expensive if you space these over years rather than months due to overtime and ramp-up inefficiencies. So... why didn't we start making these repairs and upgrades after the terrible winter breakdowns early in Baker's administration? Why didn't we follow through with what Baker claimed he would do, which was to fix the MBTA? Simple, he doesn't see the value of it. It all goes back to it being a partnership between us, the taxpaying drivers, and them, the commuters.
It's time to shift this understanding of what the service is that the MBTA provides. Instead of us vs them, it should be simply us. We, the residents and workers in Massachusetts, need this transportation to exist and function well. I may not need to take the T to work (right now), but that doesn't mean that it's not hugely beneficial to me to have the Greater Boston area thrive from a functioning transportation system.
It's time to start funding the MBTA and push the improvements we need, not just the extension of the Green Line but the repairs and improvements to all branches, and not just in ways that are visible to the riders but those that are felt by them as well. We need the infrastructure supporting the trains to be worked on and we need that work to be sustained. Let's do what Baker said he was going to do after his first year in office, let's finally fix the MBTA.
