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We said earlier that the T may have to cut service drastically if the state doesn't help subsidize its budget. Now, the Globe adds details, and they are frightening. Commuter rail folks will never be able to get home after 7pm. Three stops each on the B and C lines will be gone. The E line will stop running past Brigham Circle and stop running altogether on weekends, with the C line going up to Lechmere to compensate. It's really quite a crazy collection of cuts. Full details from the Globe below and after the jump.
Subway
- Eliminate customer service agents in subway stations
- Eliminate Mattapan trolley after 8 p.m. weekdays and all day weekends
- Eliminate selected Green Line B branch surface stations: BU East, BU West, and Pleasant St.
- Eliminate selected Green Line C branch surface stations: Brandon Hall, St. Paul St., and Hawes St.
- Eliminate E branch on weekends; extend C Line to Lechmere
- Eliminate E Line service beyond Brigham Circle
- Reduce weekday midday light rail and heavy rail service by 50 percent from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
- Reduce weekday evening light rail and heavy rail service by 50 percent after 8 p.m.
- Reduce weekend light rail and heavy rail service by 50 percent
Bus
- Reduce weekday evening bus service by 50 percent after 8 p.m.
- Reduce weekend bus service by 50 percent
- Eliminate service at Quincy and Lynn bus garages after 9 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends
- Eliminate highest net cost per passenger bus routes
- Moderate "surgical" cuts to bus service
- Eliminate routes due to network redundancy
- Reduce THE RIDE service area
Commuter Rail
- Eliminate weekday commuter rail service after 7 p.m.
- Eliminate all Saturday and Sunday commuter rail service
- Eliminate 16 commuter rail stations due to low usage or network redundancy
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I am 100% down with the B line cuts. Cutting E line service from Brigham Circle to Heath Street makes sense, too, but only if there is no reduction in 39 bus service. (Of course there's something to be said about the neighborhood where they chose to cut stops: Mission Hill/JP on the E line rather than, say, Riverside on the D.)
I am also down with eliminating dumb bus routes.
Everything else is looney tunes. This is simply not a credible public transportation strategy. 52 million annual rides cut? Really? That is 8 rides a year for everybody who lives in Massachusetts.
I can only imagine that the Commuter Rail cuts are a bid to threaten the suburbs into supporting the gas tax.
Where did they get the people who drew this up, and can they be fired in some publicly humiliating way?
People have been asking for those B-Line cuts to be made anyways for as long as I can remember. I'll vote for that.
Agreed 100% on every Rick says above.
The way to fix the MBTA is pretty clear, but the unions are standing in the way. The MBTA really hast to stop offering its generous pension package. Find a way to grandfather in the current batch of workers (perhaps with some reductions) and just stop offering the incentive to new employees. Maybe work out some kind of savings plan that will contribute to a retirement account but not continuously cost the MBTA money. The current system is a pyramid scam in many ways; it requires continuous hikes, continuous injections of money, and will collapse.
There's nothing mysterious about this. The math is simple. Sure, it sucks, but there's Happy Lollipop Dreamland and then there's the real world where accounting and bookkeeping matter. You can't keep sending more money out than you bring in. Period.
The e line cuts are insane, especially for the MFA and Northeastern.
I frequently use the D line to Riverside or the commuter rail to get in/out of Boston. I can't comment on the B/E line cuts as I just don't enough about what the real effects would be, but the commuter rail plan is ridiculous. No weekend service? No service after 7pm? Thank the gods that everyone works M-F 1st shift and there aren't thousands of hospital workers using those lines working 2nd and 3rd shift.
The asshat-ery of some of the things done here is staggering.
This is a ridiculous scare tactic. I'm tired of these big businesses abusing the system. MBTA needs to get their heads out of their a**es. This is little more than a terrorist ultimatum. "Give us money, or we will do something horrible".
MBTA keeps raising prices, and now it wants subsidies. So the government gives in, and then raises taxes some more to cover the demands. Nothing's free folks. You're all gonna pay for it one way or another, because you bet your sweet behinds that the rich folks won't.
While this may not concern SOME people, it would prevent anyone from commuting to the city on weekends, which is bad for the economy because if people can't get to boston, they can't spend money. Sound familiar?
Moreover, all of this is asinine and won't actually solve any problems. For a lot of these cuts to make sense, it would have to mean things like, for example, that the commuter rail actually loses money on weekends. this sounds highly unlikely, and if it's not true, then that means it makes money, so there is no reason to cut it.
The green line stops for traffic lights in many places anyway... I feel like cutting low-volume stops won't make a significant difference in the speed of the green line (call it the round-trip speed). Besides, who believes that making a stop costs MBTA precious money?
There are tons of stops right now that are only available on demand. It seems like it would be sufficient to, instead of removing the stops, have them only be headed on demand. but that would seem less scary, and then the gluttons at MBTA wouldn't get their precious bailout.
There's more stupidity in this article, but you'll have to figure it out yourselves.