The MBTA is suggesting that if the cost for a daily ride can increase by 25%, then services can remain in tact, with no reductions anywhere.
This move is highly suspect because the T needs to raise enormous amounts of money to pay for two decades of excesses. Salaries are too high. Health insurance contributions are almost non-existent and there’s a whole culture of providing connected people with unsustainable pensions.
There is also a pile of debt that needs to be renegotiated but no one in state government seems capable of doing such a thing.
Bottom line, the MBTA’s plans to raise fares by 25% will not do very much to make the T’s profit and loss chart any more manageable in the years to come.
Unless and until things dramatically change over at the T, we can expect fares to go higher and higher.
No one at the MBTA wants to sacrifice or to lead the way or to change business practice.
Only the price we pay to travel on public transport will change in the future – nothing else.