MBTA then-interim General Manager Frank DePaola holds a CharlieCard in March 2015. MassDOT photo
Newly touting support from every Boston mayoral candidate, activists pushing for reduced fare or free rides for low-income MBTA users are ramping up pressure on state lawmakers as the issue gains more prominence in Massachusetts.
All six major candidates vying for Boston’s top job signed a petition, along with more than 600 other city residents, demanding that the legislature intervene and require the T to offer reduced-cost trips for riders who struggle to pay full price, although leaders on Beacon Hill have not signaled that it is a major lawmaking priority in the 2021-2022 session.
The Public Transit Public Good Coalition, which circulated the petition, linked its latest effort to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the economic upheaval over the past year-plus exacerbated inequity and exposed the importance of affordable and accessible transit for front-line workers.
“Even before the pandemic, many riders were struggling to afford bus and train fares,” petitioners wrote. “Structural racism and economic exploitation have created deep inequalities in Massachusetts as elsewhere, leaving working families and communities of color struggling to make ends meet. COVID-19 has thrown even more of us into economic insecurity, as nearly one million people in Massachusetts have lost their jobs.”
Backers have been arguing for low-income fares for years, and for much of that span, the idea struggled to gain traction outside of labor and rider groups or politicians who stand to the left of Beacon Hill leadership.
In recent months, though, the T has crept toward embracing at least a test run, and reduced or free fares has emerged as a point of consensus in the high-profile mayoral race.
Boston’s Acting Mayor Kim Janey has suggested using federal aid to make some bus routes entirely free of charge. Fellow City Councilor and mayoral candidate Michelle Wu has been advocating for fare-free transit, and another councilor vying for the mayorship, Andrea Campbell, supports offering free buses for passengers.
The MBTA, a linchpin of the metropolitan Boston area that hosted roughly 1.2 million trips on an average weekday last year before ridership cratered during the pandemic, appears headed for continued budget strain even after receiving nearly $2 billion in federal emergency aid to help bandage COVID-19 impacts.
By fiscal year 2025, MBTA officials expect the agency to have exhausted federal stimulus and face a $300 million to $450 million budget gap.
Agency officials have been studying low-income fare options since at least 2017. Estimates the MBTA produced in May pegged the costs for a means-tested fare program at $29 million to $44 million to implement and then $72 million to $112 million per year, assuming eligibility was set at 200 percent of the federal poverty level and that the T increased service to meet growing demand.
For some, that price poses too large an obstacle amid the MBTA’s current financial outlook.
“The benefits of these programs are obvious and true and real, and I wish that we lived in a society and in a state where these things could become a reality and were funded,” MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Brian Kane, whose group represents cities and towns that help fund the T, said earlier this month. “But that is not where we live right now. Without new revenue, these programs can simply not be afforded by the MBTA. The T cannot and should not be expected to pay for social service programs alone. The T is not a social service agency. It is a public transit provider.”
A 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study provided MBTA tickets at a 50 percent discount to individuals receiving SNAP benefits and found they took about 30 percent more trips compared to a control group. When the city of Lawrence ceased charging fares on three bus routes in 2019, ridership jumped 24 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
