Michelle Wu, the city’s newly elected mayor, has made free public transportation a rallying cry and a personal mission, calling it a tool for social justice and tackling climate change.
“It’s hard to miss the fact that we have historically underinvested in transit in these communities of color,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s chief of streets, transportation and sanitation. “So partly this is about saying, ‘How do we right that wrong?’”
There was one important drawback: About two-thirds of the passengers said the free bus service didn’t save them any money, either because they use a monthly transit pass or because they transfer from the bus to a train and must still pay a fare for their journey. Meanwhile, some experts areBoston’s MBTA is open to experimenting with fare-free rides — provided someone else is sponsoring the cost.
To fully “free the T” would be an expensive proposition. Before the pandemic, the MBTA had a $2.3 billion budget and collected about $700 million in fare revenue, said Poftak. “If folks want to make all modes of transportation free … not only does that revenue need to be replaced, we probably need additional revenue because of the effect” on rides for people with disabilities, he said.
Eliminating fares also removes the primary source of friction between drivers and riders and allows drivers to spend less time at each stop, he said. “The key will be how do we sustain it,” Berger said.
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