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The real question is how to apportion the state budget. Only 12% goes to transportation and little of that is commuter rail and subway. 34% goes to health care. ~25% of that is Medicaid spending. 13% goes to welfare. Of the 13% that goes to education, the lion's share is propping up K-12 in the poor cities and towns. Roughly half of state spending goes to prop up the bottom 20%. I don't think anybody wants the 5.05% state income tax rate hiked. I don't think anybody wants the sales tax hiked. The millionaire tax would be a mistake since most making that kind of income can move 30 miles to New Hampshire and avoid the tax completely. Right now, the 5.05% flat tax is a competitive advantage against NYC tri-state, California, and metro DC where the tax burden is lower for most tech, biotech, and finance people who earn into the 6 figures. Among the high cost of living regions with the high wage jobs, Massachusetts is now a low tax state for the 5%ers who drive the economy. Go figure.
I hate to sound like a Mitch McConnnell/Ted Cruz but if Massachusetts wants to keep the economic engine churning, money has to be diverted from propping up the bottom-20% to infrastructure projects. Transportation needs to be 25% of the state budget. If people can't get to work, those gold plated employers leave.
This thread has already identified where some of that money is (without raising taxes).
1. The $2billion spent on illegals. Of course we can't eliminate all of that burden, but ending the state's sanctuaryesqe status will make a dent in that for sure. Mass. has the fastest growing illegal population in the nation. #1! Why are they going there??? First person who says "due to the state's economic success", there is no need to embarrass yourself. It's not the low cost or weather either. It's another major challenge where Gov. Numb Nuts talks out of both sides of his mouth.
2. Infrastructure waste and corruption. Unions, "Pacheco" and Prevailing Wage laws continue to cripple the state and its ability to get its citizens around. The amount of money spent per mile of road/railway is STAGGERING compared to the average state, yet at the end of the day we are left we are left with 3rd world infrastructure. You CANNOT say it's a lack of money spent.
It’s kind of a shame that the state can’t get any tax money from its universities. I suppose the arguments against a millionaire tax also apply to the universities: they bring a lot of business and talent to the area. Still, while the income and property taxes generated by companies lured to the area by the schools or by companies produced by the university professors or incubators wind up in state coffers, the success of the universities themselves doesn’t directly help fund K-12 education or public transportation in the state. And it’s not like the Worcester, Amherst, or Boston area colleges and universities seemed strapped for cash right now.
Wasn’t there talk a few years ago about renaming stations after private companies in exchange for donations? Back when that story came out, I found the idea kind of revolting, but in light of the recent derailments and the worsening traffic in the area, I’d be willing to rename Copley Square “McDonald’s Square” if it meant even a moderately sized private donation for the T.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
The real question is how to apportion the state budget. Only 12% goes to transportation and little of that is commuter rail and subway.
It’s a shame considering the amount of tax money generated in and around Boston that most transportation funding is funneled out of the city.
How about a modest proposal to shutter the unprofitable portions of transportation. MBTA only earns $1 for every $3 in expense and has to be shut down. The state routes without tolls are also a massive fiscal black hole. Local residents can pay for road improvements privately if so desired. Funnel the proceeds to reduce incomes above $1 million from 5.05% to 2% since they are the business owners creating jobs in Mass.
Quote:
Originally Posted by massnative71
This thread has already identified where some of that money is (without raising taxes).
1. The $2billion spent on illegals. Of course we can't eliminate all of that burden, but ending the state's sanctuaryesqe status will make a dent in that for sure. Mass. has the fastest growing illegal population in the nation. #1! Why are they going there??? First person who says "due to the state's economic success", there is no need to embarrass yourself. It's not the low cost or weather either. It's another major challenge where Gov. Numb Nuts talks out of both sides of his mouth.
2. Infrastructure waste and corruption. Unions, "Pacheco" and Prevailing Wage laws continue to cripple the state and its ability to get its citizens around. The amount of money spent per mile of road/railway is STAGGERING compared to the average state, yet at the end of the day we are left we are left with 3rd world infrastructure. You CANNOT say it's a lack of money spent.
This thread has already identified where some of that money is (without raising taxes).
1. The $2billion spent on illegals. Of course we can't eliminate all of that burden, but ending the state's sanctuaryesqe status will make a dent in that for sure. Mass. has the fastest growing illegal population in the nation. #1! Why are they going there??? First person who says "due to the state's economic success", there is no need to embarrass yourself. It's not the low cost or weather either. It's another major challenge where Gov. Numb Nuts talks out of both sides of his mouth.
2. Infrastructure waste and corruption. Unions, "Pacheco" and Prevailing Wage laws continue to cripple the state and its ability to get its citizens around. The amount of money spent per mile of road/railway is STAGGERING compared to the average state, yet at the end of the day we are left we are left with 3rd world infrastructure. You CANNOT say it's a lack of money spent.
How about a modest proposal to shutter the unprofitable portions of transportation. MBTA only earns $1 for every $3 in expense and has to be shut down. The state routes without tolls are also a massive fiscal black hole. Local residents can pay for road improvements privately if so desired. Funnel the proceeds to reduce incomes above $1 million from 5.05% to 2% since they are the business owners creating jobs in Mass.
Then you'd close it all. Public transportation is not profitable and isn't supposed to be profitable.
The problem isn't profit, it's cost. The MBTA has outrageous labor costs and anyone running yellow construction equipment or wearing a hard hat doing infrastructure improvements is outrageously expensive. We need the equivalent of "get rid of the toll booth attendants". I have no problem with the budget but I want bang for the buck.
How about a modest proposal to shutter the unprofitable portions of transportation. MBTA only earns $1 for every $3 in expense and has to be shut down. The state routes without tolls are also a massive fiscal black hole. Local residents can pay for road improvements privately if so desired. Funnel the proceeds to reduce incomes above $1 million from 5.05% to 2% since they are the business owners creating jobs in Mass.
That's not "modest," that's one of the most absurd and dangerous "solutions" to a problem that you could possibly come up with. It's so disastrously shortsighted that I'm not sure where to begin...
1) Let's start with this: transportation (roads as well as mass transit) is created as a service in response to need. It isn't and has never been created to be "profitable" in the sense of farebox recovery (i.e. make more money of fares than the cost of operations). How you determine "profitability" for public transportation is debatable (do you count it simply as revenue from fares and other income sources like advertising being higher than operating expenses, or do you factor in construction costs, equipment costs, etc?). Even in the most lenient of scenarios, there are only a handful of cities in the world that run "profitable" networks - Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, and depending on the year, Seoul. What do those cities have in common? They are far larger and denser than Boston meaning you have sustained ridership that we'll never be able to replicate here no matter how efficiently we fund and operate the system. We don't have enough people in the urban area to operate a profitable rail network with fares that make it accessible for the masses.
2) Mass transit is essential to enabling a growing population to continue to move. We're getting close to a point where we can no longer expand our road/highway networks. There are places we can do some widening/improving to help traffic flow better, but we're reaching peak highway and traffic inside 128 is certainly not getting better and it's likely to continue to get worse further and further outside of the city. If you remove "unprofitable lines" most of those riders will flood already crowded roads congesting traffic even more. Bad idea.
3) Transit is a catalyst for economic growth. This one is painfully obvious. There is billions of dollars of development clustered around our transportation hubs specifically because of the transit accessibility. It ranges in scale from developments like Assembly Row, the Hub on Causeway, New Balance/Boston Landing, Fenway Center, etc. to smaller scale developments outside the core like University Station, Alewife Developments, and even smaller scale development like Dedham Station Apartments, or Sterling Place/Kensington at Middleborough Lakeville. Many major companies seek out Boston partially because of our transit network. As bad as the T can be, it's better here than most of the country. Many cities who grew without transit networks are learning it's unsustainable and building new ones from scratch - see Norfolk, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Denver, etc. If you start cutting lines and serves, Boston loses one of it's many advantages over peer cities.
4) The reality of this mess is that we can't allow deferred maintenance to happen. We need more investment into the system and we need it consistently. Our rail network is really the only place we have a lot of room to increase capacity. If you want to continue moving people throughout the region, we need to invest appropriately.
Also, re: tolls, I agree we should toll all major roadways in/out of Boston and that money should be divided among roadway maintenance and transportation funding.
Well, this thread is certainly all over the place and seems to be wildly detached from reality in many posts.
The T has been largely neglected and inconsistently funded for a half-century, over many different administrations. No one, public, private, Democrat, or Republican is going to be able to just wave their hands and fix it and make everything perfect and modern. It will take many years, and money is not a substitute for the time it takes to do things.
On that same note, it takes time to build up the people and organization to do things. If your organization is staffed to handle $100m worth of projects a year and I start handing you a billion dollars a year, it's going to take years to hire new staff, have them gain experience and knowledge of the system, and so on before you can actually manage a billion dollars a year worth of projects.
This is where the T is at today. Post-2015 meltdown, they now have the budget, and repair/modernization spending has been rising around $100m/yr since FY16 and is projected to continue doing so over the next 5 years (so by FY24 they'll be spending around $1.4bn/yr, from the $600m/yr in FY16).
They actually have another billion available in funding that they don't expect to be able to spend over the next 5 years (see above), they do not need more capital funding at the moment.
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Now that they have funding, there's also a giant pile of projects in progress. Most of which will not produce a noticeable benefit to a rider for a few years because that's how long it takes to actually go from start to completed. One set of those solves the original issue in this thread:
The full Red and Orange Line fleets (much of which date to 1969 on the Red and 1979 on the Orange) are getting replaced, as are all the signals, and all the maintenance facilities are basically getting rebuilt too. Blame administrations over the last 25 years as to why it's taken until now to do it, but the contracts are out and funded. Within 5 years, the lines will be basically brand new. Orange will start seeing benefits this year, but the full benefits on both won't be realized until 2023 or so.
^All very true, and I agree. But even though I'm well aware of all of that (and you left out the GLX which will also help alleviate Red Line crowding as well as provide new Green Line vehicles, nor did you mention the new fare collection system which will make boarding vehicles and entering stations faster and easier), as a daily rider, I can fully appreciate the frustration now.
As we (barely) crammed onto an Orange Line train our of Sullivan at 8am this morning and I mentioned to my girlfriend that the new Orange Line vehicles are coming this summer and will improve headways and alleviate the crowding, she said "It doesn't really help us now, does it?" And she's right. The vast majority of the issues are from decades of deferred maintenance and neglect, but when actual human people are using the system today and feeling the effects right now, they're going to be frustrated now. No amount of highlighting what's coming (regardless of what's right now and what's 10 years down the road) will make waiting 20 minutes only to squeeze into a rickety old red line car any better today. But I'm happy that we're trending the right direction. It's still, honestly, not enough though.
Now that they have funding, there's also a giant pile of projects in progress. Most of which will not produce a noticeable benefit to a rider for a few years because that's how long it takes to actually go from start to completed. One set of those solves the original issue in this thread:
The full Red and Orange Line fleets (much of which date to 1969 on the Red and 1979 on the Orange) are getting replaced, as are all the signals, and all the maintenance facilities are basically getting rebuilt too. Blame administrations over the last 25 years as to why it's taken until now to do it, but the contracts are out and funded. Within 5 years, the lines will be basically brand new. Orange will start seeing benefits this year, but the full benefits on both won't be realized until 2023 or so.
On this note: anyone know if headway has been made towards determining a root cause for the derailments? Furthermore, while new cars and signals on the orange and red lines will be great, I don’t see how those changes will make the D line safer to ride.
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