Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is expanding on her growing fare-free bus initiative to explore partnering with neighboring cities. Should Newton support this policy by making Newton-Boston routes fare-free? Which routes? And how much would you be willing to pay to support this?
Should Newton-Boston bus routes be fare-free?
by Nathan Phillips | Nov 21, 2021 | Newton | 21 comments
The MBTA should be free on all routes.
Fund it by doubling the tax on gasoline. Any driver who doesn’t believe that it’s in their best interest to get OTHER drivers off the road is crazy. I’d happily pay another $0.24/gallon to get more people off the roads.
Why shouldn’t the people who use the buses, pay for using the busses? Socialism isn’t free! Someone still
has to pay for the busses, their fuel, and their drivers.
Donald Ross: You do understand that every increase in fuel prices, that come from taxes, or
politicians playing games with fuel availability effects our entire economy. The fuel is used to deliver
everything you eat, use, wear, as well as travel. This is how the Democrats have caused the current
inflation crisis and the more taxes you give them the more they seem to throw away.
Improving bus frequency would be a greater benefit. 40 minutes between #59 buses during rush hour (5 pm to 7 pm) is poor service.
@Laura
I’m an unashamed driver. I don’t think I’ve been on the MBTA since I was in high school (a long long time ago).
But don’t you understand, I AM using the MBTA for my own selfish benefit. More people on the train/bus is fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars means that I can more reliably get where I want to when I want to without dealing with the economic tax of heavy traffic. Trucks that deliver goods can accomplish their routes faster, adding efficiency to the system.
I spend about $2,500 a year on gasoline. Would I spend another $200 to significantly reduce traffic and improve my driving experience, while creating an economic engine by freeing up roads for commercial traffic? Absolutely.
Laura: “Why shouldn’t the people who use the buses, pay for using the busses? Socialism isn’t free!”
Hopefully we all recognize that drivers don’t pay anywhere near what it costs to construct and maintain our roadway network, and to clear the roads of crashes, snow, etc. Hundreds of millions of dollars every year just to maintain MA roadways. And remember – drivers DON’T pay these huge costs – we all do, together, as residents and citizens. Motorists who don’t even own a car pay nearly the same amount every year to maintain our roadway network as people who drive 50,000 miles/year.
While I don’t use the bus regularly, I hope that we could consider how buses could be made free (probably not trains though). Free buses would benefit all of us. Free buses would shift riders away from a crowded subway system, would remove cars from our roads, would help to reduce pollution, and would help to encourage a shift away from automobile use/ownership. If we can figure out a way to make the buses free, the MBTA would not need to invest in its new fare cashless technology system, would not need to hire new enforcement staff to ensure that the fares have been paid, and would not need to locate, install and maintain all of the planned “off the bus” fare payment kiosks, all over the Boston region. Free buses would certainly speed up bus service, which will definitely help all of us.
Let’s not dismiss the idea of free buses so quickly – think about all of the positive implications!
To add to what Donald said, if more people take public transit so there’s less traffic on the roads, your own gas mileage will increase and usage go down because you won’t be wasting as much gas idling in traffic.
As Al says, drivers don’t cine close to paying for road construction or maintenance through the gas tax. Politicians are loathe to increase this tax to meet the growing expenses of our aging infrastructure – the federal gas tax has remained the same since 1993.
When tapping the general tax fund to pay for roads, politicians rationalize it by saying, as Laura suggests, that roads benefit everyone by providing goods, services, and mobility to our society and our economic engine. (Funny, we don’t seem to call that socialism.)
Using this same logic, public transit also benefits society and our economic engine, but in a different way. It brings workers to jobs that we need performed. It brings opens up many more businesses to potential customers. It complements our investment in roads by greatly improving the efficiency of mobility.
At the same time, public transit more widely distributes the benefits of economic prosperity and can target pockets of economic inequity. A comprehensive transportation system can (or should) provide reliable transportation for those communities that least have access to it, either because of personal financial limitations or through historical systemic inequities of service to whole communities.
You can view that as a social benefit (providing opportunities that lift people up) or as a cost reduction (people who have access to job opportunities and medical care through reliable transportation are less reliant on welfare and other social service programs).
As for making the system free, free AND reliable AND extensive transit allows us to consider transportation access as ubiquitous. All sorts of assumptions and mechanisms we have set up fall away (like spending like a billion dollars for a new fare system).
The biggest near term challenge of a free system is that our existing transit system isn’t really designed for a big upswing in ridership. Most lines (pre-pandemic, at least) are at capacity or beyond. Free means more riders without a proportional increase in revenue. You can’t just add capacity to a rickety system without risking major delays or systemic gridlock. We would need a plan to address that. Free cannot mean crappy.
We don’t need a free transit system. We need a great transit system that’s equitable, ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, convenient, and economical for everyone. One path to such a system could be a free system. If we are thinking big, we should also understand that such a system may look very different from today’s public transit system – imagine an MBTA integrated with NewMo-like convenience.
On the other hand, the alternative, where the price of living and working includes the requirement to own a car and drive everywhere (or pay the full price of transit) isn’t viable. Our road system simply doesn’t have the capacity for that level of transportation inefficiency. At the same time, the broad working class has the least financial capacity to support the costs of care ownership.
Without affordable public transit, then, we artificially limit our region’s economic engine while at the same time denying many of our citizens the empowering access to mobility. Call that whatever names you want.
What shouldn’t be free?
How about food? Pretty important for workers. Healthy food will reduce illness. Make people more productive and happier. Let’s make it free.
How about shelter? Better living conditions will lead to better mental health and have people more prepared to succeed in the professional and personal lives. Should be free as well.
How about internet and cell phones? Without good connectivity how can we expect anyone to succeed in their professional life? Should be free. Phones and the service.
All of these things are good for people and it is easier for rich people to pay for them than it is for those that are struggling. I bet we can name many more things. Clearly they should be free for all.
Awesome whataboutism, with points for expansiveness!
Public transit is almost exclusively government provided or enabled. We charge for some government services and we give others away and pay for them by taxes. Some services pay for themselves, and some have huge administrative costs (like the new billion dollar MBTA fare system).
The debate about what to charge for transit is no different than debating the gas tax. Which, by the way, we can’t debate, at least at the federal level, because it’s too unpopular. So it doesn’t nearly pay for roads.
Unless I’m mistaken, all I hear is that the mbta is mired in debt- it’s hard to understand how we can make it free without first getting the funding to make it whole.
Boston is paying a fixed price to the MBTA for several routes. Routes going through multiple municipalities could be paid for by rolling rider count. These steps can be done now, without the system being free.
Cost is just one factor in transit choice. You also have to consider comfort, convenience and speed. I think the biggest problem with the Boston bus is speed. It’s no faster and no more dependable than driving since it’s stuck on the Pike with all the lower occupancy vehicles. The commuter is much more dependable in time because it’s not stuck in traffic. A separate lane for busses, making them a speedier way to get into Boston, that would be more of a game changer than just removing the fare.
Express lanes would definitely make buses more appealing. Even when stuck in traffic, though, not having to drive means you can do other stuff during the trip (or just zone out).
As you imply, though, the bus still has to be on time, be available when you need it, and be somewhat pleasant.
In Massachusetts, gas taxes, license fees, and tolls pay for about 50% of highway spending (I don’t believe this includes policing the roads or ambulance/emergency services). https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ or https://www.mass.gov/doc/fiscal-year-2022-operating-budget-presented-to-the-board-on-06212021/download
The other 50% comes from taxes in general – ie subsidized by the government.
According to a Harvard Research paper, if you add in police, emergency services, etc., MA taxpayers subsidized 55% of MA highway costs. https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=3856
I have a few thoughts on this.
My bottom line is: As a commuter rider with financial stability, I have no issue paying usage fees that reflect a premium service and offering free fares for those who need them. In an ideal world, these usage fees should be less than what it would cost for me to drive.
Public transportation does not need to be a second-class form of transportation. It is liberating and pleasant when transit provides a viable and comfortable alternative to driving. However, right now taking the MBTA is not a premium service, and it costs more than driving by the two most obvious metrics – time and money. It costs $2.50 to drive round trip Newton to Cambridge, but closer to $20 for a commuter rail + subway transfer. Instead of departing at your leisure in your car and arriving in 20 minutes, you may need to wait up to an hour to catch the next commuter train.
First, on the commercial side, businesses should have to pay more based on their usage of the transit network, which is a public service they rely on to make a private gain. I am sure it would be controversial, but there is a way to create a regional surtax levied on businesses in communities with high transit usage.
Second, the subsidization of transit and driving should be more equitable. As others have noted, there are more subsidies for roads than there are for railroads and buses. if we value the positive externalities that subsidized transportation provides, then we should also subsidize public transportation proportionally as we do other modes of transportation. If we believe in a progressive tax structure, we should fund transit at a higher proportion than we do driving, because people who choose to own private vehicles are more financially well off compared to those who have no choice and must rely exclusively on public transportation.
Additionally, if we also believe that users of a transportation network should pay for a portion of the operating costs for it, then this should also apply to drivers. Maybe there should be more taxes on heavier vehicles that cause more wear and tear on roads? maybe tolls should be higher? but overall by far the easiest way to account for all of this is through the gas tax, which others have astutely pointed out is politically impossible to accomplish.
Finally, we should be creating incentives to take greener forms of transportation and creating disincentives for car trips that could be transit trips. One method to accomplish this is congestion pricing, which creates price incentives to take alternate forms of transportation by introducing variable tolls on certain roads based on their capacity and current utilization. The higher the utilization, the greater the cost. This is also politically exceedingly difficult because people like to drive, and I do not blame them given the state of our transit network which feels like a punishment to use it compared to driving.
So how do we get there? The first step is making our transit network a premium service that people want to use. I am hopeful there will be federal $$ we can use in BIF and BBB to make improvements to the MBTA. If we are wise, we can leverage that cash infusion to improve services to the point they are a desirable alternative to driving and create a positive feedback loop. Once we have a better transit network, then congestion pricing becomes more palatable because transit is no longer such an undesirable alternative to driving.
I’m loving this idea. Perhaps Newton can try providing free ebikes to all its residents. The benefits would be worth it!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/opinion/free-ebikes-climate.html
Easiest way to make ebikes available would be through blue bikes, which are not currently electric. The reason is that ebikes currently require a license in Massachusetts. It that law were changed, you would likely see blue bikes transition (or at least augment) their fleet.
Source? Everything I find claims that they don’t fall into the MGL definition of “motorized bicycles.”
https://www.massbike.org/ebikes
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2020/09/08/on-bluebikes-batteries-wont-be-included-anytime-soon/
As a practical matter, in its waning days LimeBikes did offer ebikes.
E-bikes are not subject to the registration, licensing or insurance
requirements that apply to motor vehicles.
I should clarify. There is ambiguity in the current law. Lacking there own legal language, my understanding is that ebikes could be classified as motorized bicycles. That produces potential issues with insurance for rental fleets. Lime took the risk, blue bikes has not.
https://www.massbike.org/ebikes points out the need for more explicit language in Massachusetts. I heard changes could be happening, but haven’t heard that they have happened yet. If someone has more specific information please pass it on.
I love biking and bike to work regularly, but how many people can really do it? It is now cold and dark out at 5 pm. Bikes are hard to see, even with lights, and our roads are poorly light and ridden with potholes. Protected bike lanes are few and disconnected. Add to this, speeding cars and distracted drivers.
Biking is not a viable commuting option for most people, especially those over 50 who spend their days on their feet – teachers, cleaners, waiters, etc. or anyone who lives a distance from work.
If we truly wish to reduce our carbon footprints, etc., we need better mass transit and denser development. I love biking, but it is a distraction from more socially equitable and impactful transportation solutions.
Lastly, biker commuters are predominantly younger, whiter, and richer than average. In some communities bikers self-fund bike improvements, like bike bridges and paths.