The Modern American takes exception to my post on T expansion, accusing me of, variously, of not realizing the budgetary crisis of the MBTA, of being undemocratic in wanting to go against the popular will, and of quixotically wanting T expansion in a low-density city like Boston. Now, part of our differences are difference may lie in differing political assumptions, part in my not being clear enough, part in straw man argument, and part, well, we don’t actually disagree on everything. So let me take each of MA’s objections in turn.
There are many different people weighing in on why nobody likes to use the T. They all seem to agree that if you make the T bigger, it will instantly attract tons of people.
To be clear: I don’t think expansion is a solution to any near-term shortage, real or perceived, in T riders or T revenues. What I’m talking about is a long-term investment in the city’s infrastructure, one which in my mind would have done more for the buck than the Big Dig. The idea would be to suffer a little now - through higher taxes, through disruption to our daily lives - in order that ten, twenty years from now and down the road, we’ll have a transportation system better able to handle and increased population, increased urban density and potentially higher transportation fuel costs, with less negative environmental impact.
It’s not that the T needs to be bigger; it’s that the entire Boston area (Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville) need to grow up. I mean that literally. Boston needs to grow up.
For example. My entire neighborhood, with limited exception, contains the following domiciles: single-family houses, duplexes and triplexes. Unfortuanately, you can’t reliably fill buses and trains when people live in such low-density arrangements. Also, it’s rather cheap to keep a car. Many people, myself included, will pay to avoid the difficulties associated with the T.
If you had a neighborhood grocery and local stores, you wouldn’t have to haul yourself all the way to Porter Square to go to Stop & Shop. That would solve #1. But guess what? Local stores only exist where there’s sufficient urban density. It’s time to knock down some of those precious houses and build multi-story apartment complexes.
I’d like to see greater urban density, at the very least because it seems necessary to address a housing shortage that’s only going to get worse. Of course, in center city there are geographic constraints, and high rises can be built only on the narrow isthmus, not on landfill. Equally, there are political oppositions to high rise constuction every bit as fierce as opposition to transit expansion or to tax and fare hikes. I see increased density, particularly in the inner suburbs, as desirable (I think the eastern half of Cambridge has the right balance and sense of urban scale), but it’s going to be particularly tricky politically and logistically to achieve. Whose houses does MA propose tearing down?
Furthermore, we shouldn’t sell Boston short on urban density. If you look at the 2000 Census figures, Suffolk County is the seventh densest in both population and housing units per square mile in the country, after the four mainland NYC counties, Hudson County, NJ (Hoboken, Jersey City), and San Francisco. And we’re pretty much on par with London in density. Neighborhoods of tightly packed triple deckers can and often do support local retail, walkable neighborhoods and public transit.
[Andy] also mentions Commuter Rail difficulties. Thankfully I don’t have too much experience with that, but I will say this: if parking was prohibitively expensive in and near Boston, more people would take the Rail. This in turn will increase money available to hire more drivers and trains. But how do you make parking more difficult and expensive? Economics. Make it easier for parking lot owners in the business districts to convert to buildings.
Great idea.
"Increased revenues," indeed!
By increased revenues there, I was referring to the Commonwealth, i.e. higher taxes. I don’t want to sell expansion as something for nothing.
This is perhaps a bad time to shine light on the T’s finances, but according to page 4 of the T’s own financial documents, they’re 5 billion dollars in the hole, Mr. Cagle. Something like 20% of their income is spent on debt repayment. Expanding will only aggravate the situation because he’s asking the T to take on yet more debt with no actual guarantee of increased ridership. Oh, and did I mention that the Commonwealth is no longer backing the T’s debt with the "full faith and credit of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?" Yup. It’s true. You can read it in the financial statement I’ve linked above. Apparently I’m not the only one who lacks confidence in the MBTA’s ability to pay up when the time comes.
The thing is, the MBTA has turned its fiscal house around to a large extent, prompted by the problems of the past and the State Legislature putting its foot down. Saying the Commonwealth is no longer backing the T’s debt after 2000 with full faith and credit is merely rewording the forward-funding law that provides yearly support from the state but not the budget overages of the past. There’s certainly room for improvement in the management of the agency, and I agree that it would be worthwhile for the agency not to be paying service on its pre-2000 debt indefinitely. But the T has cut service and raised fares so that operating revenues now cover around 43% of operating expenses, as opposed to the mid 30 percent range of the pre-2000 years. They’re not nearly self-sufficient, but I don’t know that we should blame the agency for that. But to get to MA’s point, it may be a matter of timing: we need to pay off that $4.6 billion of debt on past deficits, as painful as that is. If takes another 5 years before embarking on an expansion project while we do that, fine. But I think we should have it in our horizons and have a reasonable public discussion of how we can invest in the metro region’s infrastructure.
"How to get around political resistance," he wonders. Why do we need to "get around" resistance from the political sphere in the first place?
By "getting around opposition" I meant in part trying to persuade people to think differently about the issue. Nothing sinister about that. In part, I was referring to the sort of political deliberation that occurs around any public policy issue. The people don’t decide on appropriations directly, instead they stamp their acclamation on elected officials, who work within a range of what they see as their mandate. That range can vary widely. Currently, the legislature does allot money for capital improvements and expansion on the MBTA, separate from operating expanses. I’d like to see it pushed to more investment in public transit or, barring that, smarter investment than these piddling "rapid bus" lines.
Perhaps because the T loses money hand over fist and nobody likes it to begin with? Subverting the will of the people and "getting around" them is not the answer. Most residents are not screaming for T expansion. They know that if something isn’t working, the answer is not to give it more money to do exactly the same thing, just on a bigger scale. That translates into bigger waste.
Sure, nobody likes the T. Some people hate it because they hate public transit. Some hate it because they like public transit but want to see it work better. Some people hate it because a 100-year old trolley line can’t get them to work consistently. Some people hate it because they’re New Englanders and like to carp about things. I’ve carped about it before. The question is: what is the alternative? If people hate the T, should we not fund it at all? People then may like the result even less than surly bus drivers or late trains. I’ve been to cities where the subway worked far better (New York, DC) and to cities (San Francisco, Chicago) where it was far less reliable. Certainly, I’d love to see an improvement of the MBTA where it’s more like the former, less like the latter, yet is as affordable as possible. I want the public debate to be as realistic as possible, but to push it as much as possible to investment in the future.
As a point in comparison, I’ll give the example of the Red Line. In the late 70s and early 80s, it was expanded from Harvard to Alewife, with major reconstruction of Harvard Station. At the time, it’s quite possible that the MBTA was a bloated agency, that it didn’t budget well, that service was shoddy, and that riders suffered all sorts of inconvenience that made them want to see public transit die a slow death. But are we really to think that the foresight of the Red Line expansion has not brought many more riders into the T system? That it hasn’t been part of an expanding infrastructure as the city has grown in the intervening years? That it wasn’t worth the cost?
No comments have been added to this post yet.