4 ms·

If only they’d make the T fare free and run more frequently and later into the night. The C line in Brookline has the potential to be extremely convenient, but

• tapoxi 10mo ago
  It's what, $2.40? I don't think they need to make it fare free.
  • vjulian 10mo ago
    Free fares would significantly increase ridership, no?
    • chollida1 10mo ago
      Yes, and reduce its revenue that it needs to properly run and upgrade its existing infrastructure. Why do you think they charge in the first palce?
      • venturecruelty 10mo ago
        Because governments aren't allowed to simply provide services for free anymore. It is inconceivable that something like moving around on mass transit would be free at point of use.
        • anthonypasq 10mo ago
          brother the MBTA arleady bleeds money at an astounding rate despite a large budget and fairs. Why would your solution to be to make the rest of the state pay more for services they cant even use rather than make the people that use it pay the true cost it take to run it? People that drive cars actually pay most of the cost to upkeep car infrastructure. people that ride the T dont.
          • venturecruelty 10mo ago
            Call me crazy, but maybe mass transit doesn't need to make money to be useful. Maybe the entire point of government is to provide services to its citizens. I mean, I don't pay $2.40 every time we drone strike some Yemeni wedding, right? Why should I have to pay to take a train in a city, which is about a thousand times more useful to me? >People that drive cars actually pay most of the cost to upkeep car infrastructure. people that ride the T dont. This is... so ridiculously untrue. Most car-dependent infrastructure is funded with federal dollars, the vast majority of which are conjured up out of thin air and vibes.
            • anthonypasq 10mo ago
              > Call me crazy, but maybe mass transit doesn't need to make money to be useful. This is such a heinous non-sequiter i dont even know where to begin. Government services take money to operate. Government services are paid by taxes. In a democracy, you need to make people agree that they want to pay taxes for particular services. The 60% of massachusetts residents who dont live in teh greater boston metro area do not want to pay for a service they dont use, so it is nearly politically impossible to raise the budget of the MBTA. So if you are a massachusetts state legistlator you have a couple options. you can allow the MBTA to continue to deteriorate while also going over budget every year (current state) or you could increase the fare to compensate for the actual cost it takes to run the service, or your third option, which is to decrease the amount of money that goes to an already deteriorating public service. edit: 50-55% of car related infrastructure costs are paid by gas taxes, tolls, excise taxes etc. currently <30% of the mbtas budget is covered by fares.
              • Arainach 10mo ago
                Services have costs. They don't lose money. No one says the US military "loses hundreds of billions of dollars a year" or expects them to cover it back.
                • anthonypasq 10mo ago
                  ??? did you actively not read my comment before posting this?
      • pugworthy 10mo ago
        Rider fair is only one way to fund transit. My city (Corvallis, OR) provides free bus service city wide since 2011. The newest addition is free bus service to surrounding cities (up to McMinville and down to Eugene). It's paid for with state and federal grants, university (OSU) contribution, as well as a utility fee.
    • bluGill 10mo ago
      Probably not. For most people cost is not the issue of why they don't ride. Free would increase a little, but most people are not riding because the service isn't there. Service can be one of Frequency, speed, or ability to get to the destination. Transit needs to: Get you from where you are, to where you want to be, when you want to go, in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable cost. If you lack any of those things and transit isn't useful. Generally cost is the only part of transit that is reasonable (but not always) and so it isn't something to focus on. People who ask for free transit are really saying transit is for the poor and "normal people" should just drive.
      • bombcar 10mo ago
        Worse, free fares can cause undesirables to cluster and abuse the system. Transit begin able to be paid with a phone has removed most or all the "friction" arguments, the need is to make it reliable (arrive on time) and frequent (so you don't have to meticulously plan your day).
        • AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
          > Transit begin able to be paid with a phone has removed most or all the "friction" arguments That's the sort of thing that would get many people to avoid using it because of the growing (and accurate) sentiment that anything that requires you to use your phone is using it as a tracking device.
          • potato3732842 10mo ago
            You're not wrong. But the MBTA went to phones because an insane fraction of the cash they handle "goes missing".
            • AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
              Another problem solved by setting fares to zero.
          • 10mo ago
    • pugworthy 10mo ago
      Speaking generally, free fairs also provide various benefits to a community such as reduced use of cars and easier access for lower income access to jobs and services.
      • anthonypasq 10mo ago
        you probably dont live in Boston, because there is no one on the planet that drives into boston rather than taking the T because its too expensive. people drive downtown and pay $40 for parking instead of taking the T.
        • AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
          That's assuming there is nothing else on the ledger. Suppose you have to choose between a suburban house without any convenient access to mass transit (i.e. you're going to have to drive everywhere) or a more expensive unit which is closer to the city and is near a transit stop. Paying $40 for parking is going to offset the cost advantage of the less expensive housing and leave a lot of people near the breakeven point, and then a $100/mo difference in transit fares could be the deciding factor.
          • anthonypasq 10mo ago
            theres plenty of essentially free park and ride stations. theres commuter rail access in basically a 1 hour drive radius of the city. nothing about what you said is relevant. rich people (of which boston has plenty even in the burbs where average house prices are 800k+) pay to avoid existing near poor people. they think they are going to get stabbed on the subway. if the subway was faster, safer, cleaner, but more expensive, more people would use it.
            • potato3732842 10mo ago
              There is nothing convenient about doing park and ride. It's something you do because whatever your other options are suck worse. Commuter rail inevitably dumps you somewhere you don't need to be so then you have to take the T from there. There is no way not to make it a slog of a commute with that many transitions.
    • AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
      > Free fares would significantly increase ridership, no? It's not just about that. Higher transportation costs are heavily regressive. People with less money can't afford to live in the city and have to commute and then anything they pay to commute is independent of their wages, so $100 in fares is $100 whether you make $200k/year or $20k, whereas even the taxes like sales tax labeled as "regressive" would have the former person paying ten times more than the latter. Moreover, fares are often heavily subsidized to begin with -- in large part because of the above -- but then not zeroing them out requires you to still pay the full cost of the collections infrastructure. Which is actually really expensive, because then you need turnstiles, payment processing equipment, security to prevent theft or card skimming, billing departments to deal with credit card fraud or chargebacks, customer service when people have problems, enforcement against people who skip the fare, etc. None of those costs go away if the fare is even $0.01, but they all disappear when it's actually zero. And people who have never used it before then wouldn't have to figure out how to set it up, which is a significant source of friction independent of the fare and can cause people to just get an Uber (which they've already set up) or rent a car etc. Which causes people to never even try using mass transit, and then regard it as that thing they never use so why is the government spending money on it, instead of that thing that was convenient to use when their car was in the shop and made them realize that they can get by as a one-car household instead of two, or at least something worth supporting because they remember actually using it. On top of that, removing the fares is better for privacy because then you're not tying your movement history to your payment card.
• anthonypasq 10mo ago
  the MBTA already absolutely bleeds an incredible amount of money. No businesses in Boston are even open late, theres no night life. 90% of the young people in the city are nerds doing Phds. I loved living right on the red line, but its just not worth it unless we figure out how to make it not cost a fortune.
  • fragmede 10mo ago
    Why does it have to make money? We don't ever expect the welfare department to suddenly turn a profit, do we?
• mindslight 10mo ago
  I haven't been there in a while. Is one of the four bars in Brookline now open past 8PM or something?
  • paleotrope 10mo ago
    There are a few, but they are trying to fix that since no one stays up that late.
    • vjulian 10mo ago
      The Abbey is often buzzing until 2am. Food served after midnight, too.