MBTA Proposes Eliminating Weekend Commuter Rail Service, Cutting Disabled Services

by | Mar 13, 2017 | Newton | 7 comments

MBTA weekend commuter rail service and transit services for individuals with disabilities are on the Baker administration’s “menu” of potential service cuts to help close a $42 million gap in the transit agency’s $2 billion budget.

“This is really about resetting the MBTA’s budget in a way that is financially sustainable not just for fiscal 2018, but over time,” Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack told reporters before a presentation to the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board on Monday. She said, “We need to ask questions, hard questions, about what we want to run.”

Suspending weekend service for a year and making capital upgrades to the rail lines during that time would save the MBTA $10 million, T officials said.

Full story is on State House News Service (behind a pay wall).

7 Comments

  1. Yuppie Scum
    Yuppie Scum on March 13, 2017 at 7:27 pm

    The Ride can certainly be replaced by Uber subsidies. Commuter rail not so much.

  2. Greg Reibman
    Greg Reibman on March 14, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    Cutting back any public transit options or service in 2017 is going in exactly the wrong direction.

  3. Ralph Ranalli
    Ralph Ranalli on March 14, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    What Greg said. The political shell game that is public transit funding in Massachusetts needs to come to a merciful end. Public transit is an environmentally-sound public policy priority and should be funded in a straightforward, transparent, responsible manner.

  4. Mike Striar
    Mike Striar on March 14, 2017 at 1:42 pm

    Cutting jobs is Charlie Baker’s m/o. Cutting services for people in need… that’s the Republican way.

  5. Tom
    Tom on March 14, 2017 at 5:50 pm

    Horrible .

  6. Anne
    Anne on March 19, 2017 at 7:53 pm

    I am cautiously infavor if it truly allows 5 years of capital improvement projects (including the long-promised modernized train control system) in one year.

    In the slides I’ve seen the average weekday ride subsidy is $5/ride. Weekend service started at something like $34/ride and went up to $150 (although I am not sure how annual O&M costs were distributed there). The goal, as stated is to subsidize weekend service at about $15/ride. I’m not sure that’s possible, so we need to discuss a) what is the appropriate level of subsidy, and b) for zones 1-3, is something like an expresss bus a long-term acceptable replacement if we can’t run rail with that level subsidy.

    For this year, we should be focusing on how to fix and improve as much as possible – and holding the governor to it – to improve ALL commuter rail service.