LEANING INTO THE political potential of MBTA rider outrage, Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu plans to organize volunteers to canvass straphangers on July 1, the day a roughly 6 percent fare hike takes effect. The at-large councilor, who opposes the upcoming fare hike and has suggested making the whole T free to ride, hopes to […]
Fares
Posted inTransportation
Isolation problem: T fares rising faster than cost of driving
IN NOVEMBER 1990, Bill Weld won his first election as governor, NBC aired the first full season of Seinfeld, and someone driving from Melrose to catch a Bruins game could expect to pay 87 cents more for the car trip than the $1.65 train fare into North Station. A lot has changed since then. Looking […]
Posted inTransportation
T notes: South Shore customers want later trains
MBTA ADVISORY BOARD Executive Director Paul Regan thought he had given the MBTA everything needed to change up schedules of commuter rail trains to make them useful to South Shore riders spending a night on the town. “It’s the only area of the commuter rail service that doesn’t have service after 11 o’clock,” Regan told […]
Posted inTransportation
T notes: Blue Line an outlier on ridership
WHILE WEEKDAY RIDERSHIP has generally dropped on MBTA subway and bus routes, boardings on the Blue Line have been on an upswing, according to data presented by the T’s research director, Laurel Paget-Seekins, at Monday’s meeting of the agency’s Fiscal and Management Control Board. Joe Aiello, the board chairman, said it would be “interesting to […]
Posted inTransportation
T eyes hikes for fares, parking fees
MBTA OFFICIALS CRACKED open the door to a fare hike and increases in parking fees by the beginning of next year as the cash-strapped agency, despite cuts and privatization efforts, continues to face a stubborn $111 million projected deficit to start the next fiscal year. T budget officials, at a meeting of the Fiscal and […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Riders confess to fare evasion
How does the MBTA figure out how many commuter rail riders aren’t paying their fares? It asks them. A survey of 1,655 commuter rail riders at the beginning of March indicated 80 percent paid the correct fare, while the remaining 20 percent either paid nothing (3 percent), paid an incorrect fare (5 percent), used an […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Hail to the T’s Control Board
The five members of the MBTA’s Fiscal Management and Control Board are the most intriguing people in state government right now. They work long hours for no pay and take lots of abuse at their public meetings, yet they refuse to take the easy way out. On Monday, the board assembled at the state Transportation […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
A fare warning
Is the MBTA’s plan to raise fares running into signal problems? The agency, now under full control of Gov. Charlie Baker through the the Fiscal and Management and Control Board he fought for last year, has teed up fare increase proposals ranging from about 6 to 10 percent. As was clear at a public hearing […]