Weekend train service will be slashed for all but five commuter rail lines as part of the first MBTA service cuts to go into effect next week.
Beginning Jan. 23, the commuter rail will only offer weekend service on the Newburyport/Rockport, Framingham/Worcester, Fairmount, Providence, and Middleborough lines. Trains will be added to the Middleborough, Fairmount, and Newburyport/Rockport lines to fill in previous service gaps and maintain more consistent train intervals.
The service cuts were approved last month by the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, following backlash from several advocacy groups and the public. An earlier version of the service cuts was first presented in November as part of the MBTA’s Forging Ahead proposal, which was rolled out to address lower ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The MBTA projected a budget deficit of $580 million for its next fiscal year, according to assistant general manager for policy Laurel Paget-Seekins. She said that although the MBTA has been working on controlling their costs for years now, there were no plans to implement service cuts before the pandemic, only ones to add services.
“The budget deficit comes from lost fare revenue due to ridership going down primarily and also our parking revenue from the parking lot and our advertising revenues because that’s based on equal movement in the systems. So it’s based on the pandemic,” Paget-Seekins told Sampan. Fare revenue composed 40% of their pre-pandemic funding, she said.
Following their initial Forging Ahead proposal, the MBTA spent a month collecting public feedback over 10 meetings and one hearing. A MassINC poll of Massachusetts residents found that 64% of respondents opposed the original “forging ahead” service cuts. The feedback from those sessions led the MBTA to reverse course on some of its previously proposed changes — suspending fewer bus routes, maintaining partial ferry and weekend commuter rail service, and continuing to run bus and subways until 1 a.m.
Still, transit activists within the Transportation for Massachusetts and Transit is Essential coalitions believe the modifications are insufficient. Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, which is part of both coalitions, fears the cuts will have an outsized impact on people who need the public transit system the most right now. She said many unknowns still exist in service cuts as they stand, pointing out that it remains unclear how much money the T will save.
“Even if a limited number of riders, the people who are riding transit right now need it. They’re individuals who have no other option,” Thompson said.
MBTA partnership director Josh Ostroff echoed Thompson’s sentiments in an email statement, “The agency is still serving essential workers such as doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals, as well as people making essential trips to grocery stores and medical appointments.”
Angela D. Johnson-Rodriguez, statewide organizing director for Transportation for Massachusetts, said, “If the campaign succeeds, this will be a signal to Massachusetts residents that the MBTA is listening to the needs of its most vulnerable riders. It will also be a signal towards preserving the future of our economic landscape.”
“Public transit is a public good,” Jim Evers, president of the Boston Carmen’s Union, Local 589, said in an interview with Sampan. “I just think it’s premature of what they have done prior to getting some of these federal monies and waiting on maybe some other alternative funding from the legislature as well.”
Paget-Seekins added that the MBTA is thinking of the service cuts in terms of a two-year budget. Their board plans to save as much money as possible this year to place into reserve funds for next year’s anticipated gap in ridership.
The problem, said Evers, is that “if they want to reimplement some schedules that they cut the service to, they have to rehire, retrain, and go through a rigorous medical process. The costs that are associated to it with unemployment are huge and never mind the timing. The timing would take months and months.” A second challenge with reimplementing a line is that there is no way to measure future demand.
“That’s if they’ll even reimplement the service at all,” he added. “We’ve seen it in the past. They’ve cut the routes and service and never reimplemented it back into the communities.” Johnson-Rodriguez explained that to certain communities who depend on the transportation services, “This decision will reverberate for at least a generation, if not more because this is not just about physically cutting service, it’s also about severing trust. And often, like service, trust never returns.
The MBTA plans to use public input gathered in November when determining how to proceed with future funds. “The other thing we’ve been asking in the community outreach is as revenue comes back, whether it is through fares, or it’s through additional revenue from the federal government, how should we prioritize adding service back of the things that we’re proposing to cut?” Paget-Seekins said.
On Jan. 6, state lawmakers approved a $16.5 billion transportation bond bill that Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law on Friday, Jan. 16. Before signing, Baker vetoed a proposed increase in service fees for rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. Those generated funds would have been reinvested into public transportation programs.
Additionally, the original bill required the MBTA to implement a low-income fare program, which Baker also removed, calling the provision premature.
“More study is needed to understand how transit authorities can implement fare systems that depend on gathering information about riders’ incomes and to understand what the revenue loss would be and how that revenue would be replaced,” Baker said. “No means-tested fares can be implemented until the MBTA and RTAs have a financially sustainable plan in place to replace the lost revenue.”
The program, which would have established fares based on the rider’s income level, has long been a priority of transit advocates. In an interview before the bill’s signing, Evers expressed hope that the governor would be mindful of not cutting out certain line items: raising fees on Uber and Lyft rides, establishing means-tested fares on public transit and decriminalizing fare evasion on the MBTA.
When searching for a sustainable, long-term funding solution to the T’s budget shortfalls, it is important to focus attention on the state legislature to increase funding to the MBTA in addition to focusing on the MBTA’s board, Thompson said.
For transportation activists, a major area of long-term concern is that T officials said the cuts could ultimately include employee layoffs. Paget-Seekins confirmed this possibility. “We are working with our unions to try to figure out the best way to make sure that our employees are, again, impacted the least amount,” she said. “We’re hoping that we’re being sort of as transparent as we can with everyone about how we’re making a decision.”
Evers has not heard of any layoffs from Local 589, which represents over 6,000 transportation professionals, as of yet. He said, “My union is open to negotiations and more than willing to do anything we can to help the riders be able to get back on their feet and get the service up and running.”
As of now, the long-term outlook remains unclear, and officials plan to push off discussing whether to keep cuts in place, expand them or reverse them until February, when the MBTA begins to plan its fiscal 2022 budget.
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