It's really that simple.
Last year the T was put through a painful, unnecessary process. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority held a series of public forums to decide whether to cut service or raise fares. Many pointed out the obvious: If Massachusetts actually valued public transit, the state would be having a different conversation entirely.
In the end, we got our fare increase and we got our service cuts, along with a slew of one-time budget fixes. This year, we're going to have to go through the whole thing again unless something changes. And it has to.
Policy-wise, public transit is a slam dunk. It helps create dense, walkable cities built for people instead of for cars. It's an important tool in the fight against climate change. It's an essential service for those of us without access to a car, and it makes cities more attractive places to do business. From the lefties to the neoliberals, almost everyone agrees that supporting transit is something government should do and do well.
It is inexcusable that we don't and that the T doesn't have the money to maintain its tracks, vehicles and signaling, a shortcoming that results in widespread underperformance and delays. Boston and its surrounding suburbs and cities are large enough and dense enough to support a world-class public transit system. It's time we started paying for one.
Currently, the T gets 20 percent of sales tax receipts, and that's essentially it. It's not enough. The T, even as it has streamlined and cut essential services, has curtailed employee benefits, raised fares and fallen deeper and deeper into debt. It spends almost 90 percent of fare revenue on debt service.
The gas tax has been losing value against inflation for decades. It will be a real hardship for some, but outlandishly low prices mask gasoline's true environmental costs, and it's time to face them. Gas taxes should be increased and directed specifically toward funding public transit. Transit services across the state, including Western Massachusetts, should receive funding. Finally, the state of Massachusetts, as transit advocates have long proposed, should shoulder the T's debt. The state got the T into this, and it's the state's job to dig it out.
If we wait long enough, we'll be forced into building the transit we need. Cheap, dirty oil isn't going to work forever, and climate change will force governments to face that. More immediately, one report after another shows that at the current rate of population growth, cities will be strangled by congestion within a few decades. We can avoid this if we act now and build a transit system we can be proud of.
To make the legislators see reason on this, we need to engage. MassPIRG, the T Riders Union, the remnants of the Occupy movement - there are plenty of good organizations doing solid work on transit. We Massachusetts residents can lean on our representatives. All of us at Brown live within the T's service area, and all of us can play a role in this fight.
This is all part of a larger point: The presidential election is over, and for a lot of us, that means we'll disengage for the next four years. We shouldn't. We elected the lesser of two evils, but now is our chance to fight for things that are, for once, not evil at all. Massachusetts is Democratic through and through, but that hasn't led to sustainable transportation policy. It takes more.
The private interests pushing for roads - Ralph Nader's "auto, oil, tire and cement industries" - have long been stronger than anyone pushing for transit. It's on us to change that. The more we demonstrate we care about this, the more chance there is that politicians will start taking transit seriously.
The leadership is on message. Massachusetts Department of Transportation Secretary Richard Davey warned legislators that they need to act to avoid deep transit cuts. The T brought in a new general manager with a solid record of fighting for transit in Atlanta. And most encouragingly, as of last week, Gov. Deval Patrick's administration is putting together a funding package to actually give the T what it needs. There's hope that this is a fight we can actually win.
This isn't just a Massachusetts concern. The country is urbanizing, and transit is more important than ever. Rhode Island faces its own important fight over adequate RIPTA funding. New York is dealing with a fare increase. Los Angeles is building streetcars, and dozens of mid-sized cities are plagued by the mediocrity of their bus systems. Transit is the intersection of urban planning issues, social issues and environmental justice. All of us can contribute, and all of us should.
Daniel Moraff '14 can be reached at daniel_moraff@brown.edu.
