MBTA OFFICIALS said on Monday they are struggling to come up with a pass that would be attractive to local universities and their students and at the same time produce significant revenue for the transit authority.
The current university pass, which offers an 11 percent price discount on various products, attracted 12,500 customers in the fall semester of 2016 and earned the MBTA $7.5 million. Emerson College had the highest percentage usage, at slightly over 14 percent of its students.
By contrast, Chicago’s U-Pass program offers a very low price (the equivalent of $1.07 a day) but requires mandatory participation by participating schools. The Chicago program serves over 100,000 students a year and generates $32 million a year in revenue.
Evan Rowe, the T’s director of revenue, acknowledged the university pass is probably not being marketed correctly. Bunker Hill Community College, which has its own stop on the Orange Line, had only 1.6 percent of its students participating in 2016.
Rowe also said students have to purchase the pass for an entire semester prior to the start of the term, and most new students decide not to make the purchase because they don’t know what type of transportation services they will need.
Rowe said Greater Boston university officials have shown no interest in a mandatory university pass and little interest in other options unless students receive a significant discount. However, he said, MIT and Harvard University are currently exploring student pass options.
Joseph Aiello, the chairman of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, wondered whether greater use of university passes would cut down on people sneaking on to the Green Line. T officials on Monday estimated fare evasion on the Green Line totals about $2 million a year, but they didn’t know how much of that total could be attributed to students at Boston University and other schools. Earlier estimates in 2016 pegged fare evasion on the Green Line at $1.3 million to $4.5 million a year.
Monica Tibbits-Nutt, a member of the control board who has sat in on some of the meetings with universities, urged Rowe to focus his attention on other types of fare passes with the potential to generate more money.
Meet the Author
Editor, CommonWealth
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.
Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack recommended that Rowe continue testing products with MIT and Harvard until the T implements a new fare collection system over the next few years. She said the information gleaned from the tests could help the T design a pass that would be more attractive to students and universities.
“We have a product-design problem,” she said.
SHARE
