Politics/ Transportation

Baker, Walsh at odds on T funding

Determining the impact Uber and Lyft

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Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh may be good friends, but they don’t see eye to eye on the MBTA.

Walsh said on CommonWealth’s Codcast this week that the T needs additional revenues, and he suggested a good place to start is with a bigger assessment on the ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft. Right now the apps pay a fee of 20 cents per ride, with 10 cents going to the municipality where the ride originates and the rest split evenly between the taxi industry and state transportation agencies.

Certainly a strong case can be made that the ride-hailing apps are contributing to congestion in Greater Boston, and that higher fees on them might be warranted for their use of the roads. State data released at the start of May indicated Uber and Lyft provided 64.8 million trips in Massachusetts during 2017, with more than two-thirds of them originating in Boston and Cambridge.

At a meeting of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board on Monday, several members raised concerns about the congestion being caused by ride-hailing apps and the impact they are having on bus ridership. The number of bus riders is down about 6 percent over the last three years.

Brian Lang said he drives all over the area and sees Uber and Lyft cars everywhere. “It’s getting worse,” he said of the area’s congestion. “It’s really bad.”

Steve Poftak said the ride-hailing apps are dampening bus ridership, but he didn’t think they would be around for the long haul give that their investors are incurring heavy losses subsidizing the fares. “I don’t think it’s a sustainable business model,” he said.

But Baker’s secretary of transportation, Stephanie Pollack, said she wasn’t convinced the ride-hailing apps were the cause of all the problems. She cited a study done by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies which laid the blame for lower bus ridership at the feet of poor people, not the ride-hailing apps.

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Bruce Mohl

Editor, CommonWealth
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About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.

About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.

The study indicated car ownership is increasing fairly dramatically, particularly among low-income, foreign-born residents. The study suggested bus ridership is going down in California because the people most likely to ride buses are opting for their own personal vehicles instead. Of course, driving your own vehicle instead of riding on a bus increases congestion.

Determining the impact Uber and Lyft are having on congestion and public transit in Massachusetts is a huge issue, but the Baker administration so far has shown little inclination to push for better data, let alone new revenues. Walsh said he and the governor have a lot in common, but not, apparently, on this issue.

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