The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is crashing and burning, sometimes literally. An Orange line train caught fire a few weeks ago. A Red Line train ran away out of control. The Orange line and parts of the Green line are in such bad shape that they have been shut down at least until September.
The Orange line in 1978, when it was in a lot better condition than it is today. Photo by Henry Petermann.
The situation is so bad that various think tanks have proposed putting the agency in receivership, which would mean taking control from its highly politicized board of directors. At least one member of Congress from Massachusetts agrees, saying that the federal government should take control. But it’s not clear that federal oversight of DC’s Metro system did much to solve that system’s safety problems a few years ago.
Critics say the MBTA lacks a strong safety culture. The MBTA’s problem’s go back many years, however, and aren’t going to be fixed by someone mouthing platitudes about safety. The idea that the feds can fix it is particularly absurd, as the Federal Transit Administration has encouraged and helped fund the MBTA’s descent into chaos.
The agency’s real problem is that it put construction of new rail lines ahead of maintenance of existing lines. This is largely because Congress and the FTA eagerly fund new rail construction, but have been reluctant to fund replacement of worn-out rail lines. If the $2.3 billion that the agency is spending extending the Green line by 4 miles had instead been spent on reconstruction and maintenance of older lines, many of today’s problems would have been prevented.
The political leaders who oversee these agencies seem to have the attitude that they should expand agency empires by grabbing all the federal dollars for new construction they can while they run the existing lines into the ground. The expectation is that if the infrastructure is in bad enough condition the feds will come to the rescue, an expectation that was partly proven by the recent infrastructure bill. However, that bill only provided something like 20 percent of the money needed to restore transit systems nationwide.
Meanwhile, Boston’s Mayor, Michelle Wu, is demanding that MBTA offer free transit, which is something like demanding that the Titanic serve free dinners as it was sinking. In 2019, the MBTA earned 45 percent of its operating costs out of fares, so free transit takes away an important source of revenue from the agency.
The MBTA gets most of its funds from sales taxes, which are regressive. In 2019, only 13 percent of Boston-area workers earning less than $25,000 a year took transit to work, compared with more than 15 percent for those who earned more than $65,000. Free transit would disproportionately benefit high-income workers while the cost of providing it would be disproportionately paid by low-income workers, 87 percent of whom don’t rely on transit.
Aside from equity concerns, transit fares provide an important feedback to agencies, telling them where people want to go and when they want to go there. Eliminating fares would make agencies even more captive of politicians than they are today, leading them to completely ignore the needs of transit riders.
Of course, ridership numbers and the share of workers taking transit have changed due to the pandemic, but if anything that made the taxes supporting transit even more regressive. Boston transit ridership in the first have of 2022 was less than half the first half of 2019, so what transit agencies really need to do is reinvent themselves for the 21st century.
An important part of that reinvention is to convert worn-out rail lines to buses. Buses cost far less to maintain in the long run, can move more people to more destinations and often at faster speeds than trains, and their routes can quickly be changed in response to new transportation patterns. But having an obsolete rail transit system, even one that crashes and burns, is too important a source of pride for politicians for them to ever consider the bus option.
Better question is why agency if largely public financed needs a Board…….
A president/CEO a VP and on-site general manager and a labor and equipment manager and financial manager is all needed to run the office affairs.
The real solution is not just ” buses” …
The real solution to fixing transit use in America is to…
– Privatize it, contract transportation services to individuals using buses, vans which can offer point to point services or close proximity.
– Cut transportation spending (including highways) and keep spending within approximate revenues, allocate transit spending on per capita mile basis.
– deregulate it’s extremely agregious work/labor rules and allow people to run their own small competitive businesses like jitneys or shared taxis.
– eliminate/reduce subsidies to transit, get the federal government OUT of the transit industry. Since most transit is not interstate related commerce/activity hence makes NO Sense to have a federal middleman pay for overpriced, poorly used systems. OUTSIDE a few major cities Rail Transit is OBSOLETE……
In any case transit has taken an about face…. providing largely free service….at expense of third party taxpayers…. cost efficacy went out the window….. transit agencies will get worse. Service will get worse. The solution is to stop reinforcing an obsolete business model.
Here in New Hampshire, we are on “track” (heh) to get 30 miles of commuter rail up from Lowell MA to Manchester. To be run by the MBTA. What could go wrong? https://www.nh.gov/dot/projects/nashuamanchester40818/index.htm
The saga continues. Jalopnik reports, “But since work started on the aging transit system, it hasn’t gone off without a hitch. On Monday, one of the trains carrying equipment for engineers derailed.
The Boston Globe reports that the “rear wheels of a stationary piece of construction equipment slipped off the rails” near Wellington station in the north of the city. Experts investigating the incident said rain could have caused “slick conditions” that could have contributed to the derailment.”
https://jalopnik.com/boston-s-orange-line-shuts-for-30-days-for-five-years-1849450329
”
Meanwhile, Boston’s Mayor, Michelle Wu, is demanding that MBTA offer free transit, which is something like demanding that the Titanic serve free dinners as it was sinking. In 2019, the MBTA earned 45 percent of its operating costs out of fares, so free transit takes away an important source of revenue from the agency.
” ~anti-planner’s
What’s the chances Wu just sees it as an opportunity to make MTBA all the more dependent on her funding?
The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the
Electorate
Edward L. Glaeser | Harvard University
James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor.
As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence.
saying that the federal government should take control. ……..
Just like college loans and food?
The POINT IS federal govt should never have gotten in student loan business 1st place. Who would make a loan without some confidence it would be paid?
It was green light to increase costs of higher education. Have you heard of any university admin reducing costs? Never…..
Who would make a loan, subsidy for a money living transit system…….
Speed limiting tech on cars is now mandatory in the European Union.
“From July 2022, Intelligent speed assistance (ISA) will be mandatory for new models/types of vehicles introduced on the market.”
https://twitter.com/grescoe/status/1563222193567252487
Speed limiting tech on humans is now mandatory in the European Union. “Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
Harrison Bergeron
By Kurt Vonnegut
janehavisham, there is zero mandatory speed limiting tech in the EU.
The only thing they’ve mandated is giving the driving some feedback when they’re speeding. There is nothing in place to require such a thing because such technology doesn’t ( quite ) exist.
Road Transportation Emerges as Key Driver of Warming
In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100218a/
janehavisham, no sane person would want to counter attack a warming earth. Cold kills.
report has leaked. it isn’t good. rumor is there will be no federal takeover, probably because even the feds don’t want to deal with the mbta.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/31/metro/sweeping-report-federal-transit-officials-decry-ts-lack-safety-focus-feckless-state-oversight/