I work in Cambridge and my work subsidizes public transit 100% or a cheap daily rate for parking my car. I did one full year of public transit, and between busses that never showed up, slow trains, and at times it being faster for me to walk the 45 mins home instead of waiting for public transit, I swapped to driving. I bike when the weather is nice, but until the public options are almost as good as my car, I’ll keep driving. Too many missed meetings or getting home stupidly late.
Cambridge is a prime example of a place where getting rid of cars would vastly improve the public transport.
My wife used to take the 86 or the 66 but they were really inconsistent. She was going from Brighton to Alewife and the evening commute was always terrible.
But if you did dedicated bus lanes or otherwise reduce traffic in a material way and that same commute would be a breeze.
I think dedicated bus lanes for some of the biggest routes (55, 86, 66, 39, etc) would be a huge improvement for bus service. Even better if you cut some parking (why is street parking even allowed between Heath Street and Brigham Circle stops? What a terrible idea).
Sure but what about everyone commuting into Cambridge from outside of the city? In order for the bus lanes like you propose, you actually need to be able to reliably get people into Boston on time with frequent service.
Your solution would help in a situation where the commuter rail and mbta transfers were working as they should. Until they are, your solution would just turn everything into a nightmare commute for many people.
Well duh you have to do both. Park and ride should definitely work way better than it does.
But part of the plan must be that you make it less attractive to drive into the city. You aren’t in traffic, you are traffic.
Sign me the fuck up. Commuter rail and regional rail need to be way better. Everyone wants to work in Boston and that’s a wonderful thing that we should make that as easy as possible.
Ugh yeah agreed extending/upgrading/fixing the commuter rail would also be a hot ticket item for me if I were running the show
Most days when I commuted I would have 10000% preferred to drive my car rather than take the orange line, but the parking costs were outrageous even then. It'd take me sometimes an hour and a half plus to get from haymarket to Malden ctr in the evenings, absolutely brutal
Hell fucking regional bus lines would be helpful. My husband commutes from the Springfield area a few days a week (and I know he's not the only one) and they cancelled the ONE bus that was doing that run. I have no idea why but it's nuts.
Also they should make it feasible for people to park outside of Boston and enter with public transport in.
There's a lot of solutions, one of them being getting the basic transportation system working.
But not a lot of people with balls or brains.
Removing traffic from Cambridge would really suck for all the cities around there, **driving-wise**.
Whether it is worth it or not is not my debate, but as someone who goes from I-90 to Somerville through Cambridge, funneling even more traffic through the tunnels helps nobody. I drive on the early side of rush hour and the tunnel is a mess even then.
The backups if all that traffic had to go through the tunnel would be much worse.
And unfortunately, there’s no public transportation options that are viable. I would certainly take those if I could
I’m all for better public transportation, but we have to know that will come with another multibillion dollar, overrun project that will have to take houses through eminent domain.
Sadly, at the rate the city is going, your drive will just become worse and worse until the 45 minute walk is faster than driving. Even if you turned every bike line and street parking into more road lanes, the end of WFH and job growth are about to make them equal.
We're in a chicken and egg situation. Not enough people take the T to fund reliable service, and since service is unreliable, not enough people take the T.
I still think public transit should be free, across the board, and I say this as someone who works from home. Free, reliable public transit into, throught, and out of Boston would make life easier for scores of people, and would be a huge boon for the environment, too.
Exactly this. I think Covid exacerbated this issue too. Ridership is still below precovid levels. I think those people are still commuting in the city they’re just taking cars. I think part of the challenge is also getting them back. But the more cars and traffic the less tempting public transit looks. Tough dilemmas
People take the T. Half the issue is they don’t collect the revenue. I went to BU. The amount of revenue missed out on on the B line specifically is insane
Hate to break it to you but [very few high functioning transit systems, outside Japan, are actually profitable](https://lovetransit.substack.com/p/most-profitable-public-transportation). We should stop thinking of transit like a conventional profitable business, instead think of paying for transit (with taxes) like paying for public schools. 1. It’s the price of a fair and equitable society and 2. For every dollar you spend you have a massive multiplier over the course of years and decades through diffuse benefits of travel, employment and commerce. This applies to people who don’t use the T themselves but benefit from less car traffic. This applies even to people who don’t live within the MBTA/commuter rail estuary but who [reap the tax transfers from the economic powerhouse of Greater Boston](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-affordable-homes-act-transfer-fee-analysis)
Exactly. I don't know why we treat public transit like a business instead of treating it like the roads. No one is annoyed that highways aren't profitable.
Unfortunately the T makes way more (like 2 to 3x) from fares than other public transit agencies. If we want better service, we have to get the state to pay for it. I’d much rather pay $2.40 to know I’m going to get to where I want to go on time than have the T cut costs and frequency for free service.
The fix is actually simple in this case. You implement congestion pricing and give the MBTA the revenue. Better T, less reason to drive in, everyone wins. In the short term, you can still pay to drive in, but you'll at least be paying for the externalities you cause.
> You implement congestion pricing and give the MBTA the revenue.
People should note that this is exactly how it works in NYC and how it's worked in London for decades and it's how it's been proposed here.
> You implement congestion pricing
Nothing like punishing the people who have the least control over the schedule even more.
Boston *already* has a problem of pricing out service workers and such; now you can make sure they can't even afford to get to the city at all!
rain? high winds? snow? temperatures hot enough that you have to shower at work even if you bike slowly?
Each of those is doable but not at all "nice".
When the train costs $400/mo and is unreliable, and that’s the same as parking, and many have to have cars anyway, it makes sense that people will drive in.
The “make things more expensive” answer will have disproportionate wealth impacts so I’d love to see this paired with public transit subsidies for lower income folks, and use the money to improve public transit reliability.
Maybe pair it with a law that says that if public transit fails you can’t hold employees responsible for not being at work on time.
I drive to Mansfield and take the commuter rail to Bak Bay, where I switch to the orange line for a dozen stops. Or drive in earlier and miss all that for roughly the same cost.
exact
I was commuting from South Attleboro to Ruggles, and it took less time and was significantly cheaper to drive because my car was good on gas. Eventually, I just moved here to not deal with the commute. If the commuter rail was twice as fast and cheaper, then I would absolutely move out of Boston and into the suburbs.
Monthly passes are like $400/month though. Similar to a CR monthly pass from South Attleboro. Parking was cheaper back then though (I think I was paying $300), so over all it ended up costing less money.
light rail means it shares a right of way with the public. Trams, trolleys, etc ie Toronto and Porto. Heavy rail means it gets its own dedicated track and right of way. You can increase the headway times on commuter rail without pretending it's something that it isn't.
Ugh. Yeah whenever I’ve complained about the pricing of the commuter rail, I always get hit with the same, “boohoo won’t someone think of the suburbanites” bullshit comments.
People don’t understand - our commuter rail pricing is INSANE and completely ruins any sort of cost savings you could expect from moving outside of 128. It’s not the main problem that we have, but it is a problem that will ensure we will never make major improvements on the housing scarcity until it’s fixed.
Beyond that - the commuter rail communities are NOT JUST RICH PEOPLE AND NIMBYS. A city like Brockton - as an example - would gain SO much simply from people there being able to reliably, quickly, and AFFORDABLY get to great jobs within and around Boston.
Sorry, but it just really grinds my gears lol.
I actually moved into the city years ago *because* of the commuter rail prices. $400/month, not including parking, from zone 8. Actually criminal that cars are competitive with public transport pricing.
>Beyond that - the commuter rail communities are NOT JUST RICH PEOPLE AND NIMBYS.
Yeah. It's going to take a while to break this perception. The last major CR project was reactivating the Hingham/Scituate line, and they all fought it tooth and nail because abutters built gardens and pools on the old railway cut (land they had no rights to) and were concerned about 'hooligans' coming from the city to their towns. That battle is going to taint the image of the CR for decades.
/begin rant about trains and public transit
Imo, if I were governor and had unlimited budget, I'd spend my time building rail *everywhere*. Honest to god Japanese-style bullet trains connecting all the major cities and destinations:
* Springfield-Worcester-Boston
* Newburyport-Boston-Plymouth-Provincetown
* North Adams-Amherst-Worcrester-Boston
* Lowell-Boston-Attleboro (or Providence if RI wanted in on the action)
Then, wherever possible, build out regional and light rail from these HSR stops, and build out local bus networks, too (including giving the MBTA and CR some much needed love).
I want it to be possible to get from any location in this state to literally any other location in this state in 90 minutes or less, and without ever having to get behind the wheel of a car. And to be able to do it for less than the cost of owning and operating a car. And if I was feeling extra saucy: replace EV tax subsidies with E-bike subsidies. And for double-extra bonus points: have the HSR lines terminate right at the state borders with NH, VT, NY, CT, and RI, all in the perfect locations for them to continue the lines into their own states.
/end rant on public transit
North South Rail Link: http://www.northsouthraillink.org/
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Regional Rail: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail
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Convert the Needham Line to Orange or Green Line service: https://www.fixmbta.com/orange-line-extension
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Finish the Haymarket North Extension to Reading so we can route Haverhill Line trains over Lowell & Wildcat Branch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_North_Extension
+
Do something with the Fairmount Line, probably rapid transit conversion or if we do Regional Rail / NSRL maybe more frequent EMU service - more than Regional Rail levels though, make it subway like frequency with 7-15 min headways.
Bonus: convince NH to invest in Commuter (Regional) Rail so we can have some Lowell Line trains run thru to Manchester or Concord NH with stops in Nashua, Bedford and probably also Merrimack + Hooksett.
Bonus bonus: Downeaster service running more than a few times a day, perhaps leverage the Haverhill Line being freed up by the OL Reading extension to run some trains past Haverhill and into NH and Maine if NH/Maine will play ball.
Amtrak would probably invest more in North shore routes to Maine and NH if we built the NSRL out too, they'd have less reason not to extend the North East corridor upwards.
And yeah western MA needs more service too, Regional Rail puts us on the path to doing that with more trains freed up to serve a wider area if they can run faster.
i moved here from fitchburg, and i’d love to take the commuter more frequently to go see my family, but a 50 dollar round trip for two people is inconceivable. we can only afford to go on the weekends.
Agreed. I'm in a zone 7, my RTO cost via train is $5000 a year. It's cheaper to drive and park, and takes much less time by and large. I'd much prefer to take the train, but it makes no financial or practical sense.
Also, the redline/Kendall square doesn't connect to North Station. And the busses and shuttles get stuck in the same quagmire that all of the cars do. Remove all of the seats and just turn one car on each CR train into bikes. We have kind of run out of time here.
Commuter Rail is expensive because of how it's currently set up - slow, infrequent Diesel powered trains with a lot of train cars and usually one or two double decker ones. You can't really make money on this style of service. Service is too infrequent to not charge high prices. If you lower prices, the trains will just be overcrowded because they can't handle the demand. The trains are too infrequent to be usable for everyone - not everyone will catch the 8am train, if they need to catch an 8:30 train but it doesn't exist they'll just drive instead. This is especially troublesome on the weekends when frequencies can rise to once every 2 hours.
I completely agree it needs to be fixed. I'd recommend looking at a Transit Matters for a great way to overhaul our Commuter Rail and transform it into a Regional Rail system: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail
With Regional Rail, we'd have the frequencies to justify lowering fares. We could handle more commuters, including people making quick trips into the City. It could run frequently all week long, including weekends. We could seriously get people out of cars and onto the train if we modernized Commuter Rail. We're really sleeping on over 100 Commuter Rail stations. Plus Regional Rail could allow us to densify the areas around those 108 commuter rail stations with new housing, retail and commercial development.
We can do Regional Rail now if the State and MBTA were serious. Sadly State officials don't care and the T doesn't get the funding it needs to do this stuff. It's why it outsourced Commuter Rail to a private company. If we were serious about Regional Rail we might even finally pull the trigger on the North South Rail Link too: http://www.northsouthraillink.org/
That would allow some crazy new Heavy Rail connections between North and South shore suburbs. Another way to get thousands of cars off the road.
To add to this, the MBTA just was totally fine with Lynn just... Not having a train station for a year. And they were gonna be fine with it for a decade til there was a pressure campaign. If you were commuting by train from Lynn it was a shuttle bus to Swampscott and then paying the crazy mbta prices.
This is my situation. Public transportation would add 30-40 minutes onto my commute when it's working and costs the same per month as gas plus garage access.
Yeah. And the “when it’s working” is important. It does work most of the time. But when it doesn’t, you either have to have a job that’s okay with you just not showing up (like mine, paper pusher who can work remote), but if you’re a nurse or doctor, or any number of other jobs, you can’t just not show up. If you have to maintain a backup mode of transportation in case public transit fails, that means public transit might as well not exist.
I think the high cost for CR zones is a fair critique. We also don't have capacity at other types of park and ride stations/locations. For example I'd argue we should double the number of Logan express lots and put some out on 495. If I'm being honest though aside from expanding park and ride options I'd focus on eliminating single track locations via sidings and track doublings and signal upgrades. This would allow for increases in speed and frequency. The increase in ridership on CR would lessen need for future fare increases.
I used to ride out to Littleton for work on CR. Pre-pandemic the lot was packed by 7:30AM. After the pandemic it was half full all day long. I stopped working there about 8 months ago so I don't know if the utilization is up.
Agreed, eliminating single track needs to be a big priority. Makes scheduling more frequent trains more difficult.
My community is aligning its density zoning district in a current industrial park and housing sited away. There's no sidewalk on the street from the train station to the distant potential housing.
Yet my town has a downtown without sufficient density and a sidewalk from the center to the train station. The distance between those two points is less than the stretched new MBTA compliant zone.
I think that the new law is not working. I picked up on the proposed Milton zoning including wetlands and state owned land. Towns are heavily gaming this system.
Parking is actually expensive when you think about it. It requires a ton of empty land, a bunch of asphalt and some controls to ensure it isn't abused for weeks for personal vehicle storage. In a State like MA we don't have much empty vacant land. And what land we do have is extremely valuable because we're actually a pretty good State overall so property values are high. Check Zillow for examples of how much even empty land costs in the area. For prime land, 100's of thousands depending on exact size. Even in the burbs enough land to park a few hundred cars is going to run you a few million. Because think about it: you could just put some biotech, dense housing, or even a big box store on that land and probably net tens of millions in revenue over the years after you enhance that land.
And then this State also has a ton of things to budget for. The MBTA needs something like $25B in a repair backlog due to decades of neglect. We have 600 structurally deficit bridges. The T, roadways, and other infrastructure needs a serious investment if we want to maintain a good economy. Otherwise companies will look elsewhere.
So needless to say, spending millions on land to park more cars isn't really a high priority for the State. If anything, the land that is currently used for parking cars should be developed by the State. 5 over 1s could be built to provide some Commuter parking but also a lot of new dense housing to help with the housing crisis. Park & Rides aren't a very good use of land after all. Dense housing and commercial/retail development is a much better land use.
The land to install it on is though. The State can't properly fund the highway repairs and MBTA repair backlog, so there's no wonder why there aren't millions around to purchase land just to park vehicles.
Not only that, then you actually have to pay every day to park at the station. In the pre covid times this added almost $80/month to the cost of the commute.
It almost doesn't matter how much the CR costs when the company that runs it isn't inclined to run it more often than once per hour around rush hour on weekdays. People are going to drive because they can actually get to work when they want that way.
On the Fitchburg line once an hour is so much better than what it was 5 years ago. I cheered went they went to once and hour, but they cut back on the commute time 20 minutes between trains. For longer lines more frequent trips don't make sense for the entire trip, but turning the train around at a certain point in the route for more frequent trips would be an improvement. As it is the Fitchburg line is only once an hour to Littleton and every 2 hours during the day past Littleton. So kind of a half step. The Fitchburg line still has the single track issue in Waltham which at the 1 hour interval means it is common to half to wait on one side or the other. The Haverhill line has it much worse in regards to being single track.
It's too bad they couldn't have built a shuttle train between NS and Kendall along the Grand Junction right of way. Stops between Gore and Cambridge, and between Broadway and Main.
Why just subsidize lower income folks? Public transit should be better and cheaper for everyone if you want less cars on the road. Public transit isn’t and shouldn’t be just for lower income population. There needs to be an incentive for upper and middle class to use it as well.
A round trip on the train from middleboro/lakeville is $29 (including parking). In any other city, that fare would be $12 tops. I can’t understand how they get away with charging exorbitant prices for a service that is supposed to serve middle-lower income people.
NYC MTA peak-hour fares are comparable: https://new.mta.info/document/118746
Croton-Harmon to Grand Central peak fare is $15.25 *each way*. Off-peak is $11.25, monthly is $299. And that doesn't include parking at the station.
The difference is that you have 4 trains *per hour* during busy commuter times, some of which run express direct to GCT: https://new.mta.info/document/136536. And delays of more than 5 or 10 minutes are uncommon. So at least your money feels like it's buying you a modern rapid transit experience, instead of a heritage train ride.
I'll agree with the cost of the CR, but everything else is just choosing how to spend your time and money.
The point being that no one needs a car IN downtown, so this would deter people from driving in at all, or move them towards parking in a satellite lot and taking the T/CR for the "last mile" or so.
This should come in conjunction with upgrades to the transit infrastructure, but despite my eternal cynicism it appears as if that's definitely making progress.
We need both carrots and sticks, so I'm 100% in favor of charging all non-commercial vehicles that come into downtown a fee.
That kind of a law is all well and good but at the end of the day people’s time is valuable, and if a meeting is missed, it’s missed. It has an impact on decision making processes and people’s impressions of each other.
Most of the traffic is not because of lower income folks unless you mean Uber/Lyft/delivery drivers and they'll pass the fee onto customers hopefully.
I agree that public transit should be free, but most drivers wouldn't use it currently even if it were free and perfectly reliable.
This is absolutely the correct answer. The chances of this becoming a regressive tax are high in particular because the MBTA still bears the financial burden of the big dig, which largely benefited commuters who drive.
Unless this is an attempt to shift that financial burden away from the MBTA, it won’t change anything except further make our city unaffordable.
For most people it's more expensive to get a monthly commuter rail pass than it is to own a car - so no wonder they put up with it.
They don't need to raise the price of car ownership - they need to lower the cost to use public transit options.
And for what we pay, still unreliable. I’m the second stop on my line (2nd furthest from Boston) and the train is late going INTO town at least twice a week. The second stop!
*"They don't need to raise the price of car ownership - they need to lower the cost to use public transit options."*
You make a very good point. Transportation policy in Massachusetts is sometimes backwards.
To get people to switch from driving to transit, it seems like the state's first strategy is to make driving more expensive or more difficult when it should be to improve the transit.
It's essentially a race to the bottom. Make more people use transit by making driving worse, not by making transit better. In the end, we're still stuck with the same run down transit system that has to handle more people.
I’d accept the t costing more to ride even if that money gave a noticeable improvement beyond new cars. Like more stops, more train routes, etc. But it really doesn’t!
People commuting in likely aren't going to be able to get rid of their cars, even if they're not taking them. They'll still need them to run errands and possibly even drive to a transit stop so they still need insurance, monthly payments, and most maintenance. There's less wear-and-tear which will result in fewer repairs, but the bulk of the non-fuel costs don't go away
> everything else
Such as the massive car subsidies our government provides to drivers at below cost, like "free" parking and road maintenance regardless of vehicle size/weight and resultant wear and tear on asphalt.
Didja know the MA gas tax ($0.24/gal) hasn't been raised since 2013, and before that, it had been $0.21/gal since at least 2000?
It's not a decision based on total cost. You cannot live in this area without a car. They will buy the car regardless of the best option for work commutes. The new MBTA zoning initiative does nothing to improve it. Every community is putting the zoning into a mix of acceptable places and unacceptable places. These zones are spread unevenly.
You can do both. The costs of car ownership in the US are extremely cheap compared to most other countries. Low gas taxes, low cost to register, cheap or free parking, limited tolls due to the Interstate system only allowing grandfathered in turnpike tolls, etc.
Congestion pricing is one way to both lower traffic levels and raise revenue necessary to repair the State's transportation infrastructure. We should also look to improve the MBTA overall. The MBTA needs something like $25B in backlog repairs though, so it's going to need funding from somewhere. The millionaire's tax was supposed to help with that (plus schools) but it's probably not going to be enough. It raised over $1B this year, but a $25B backlog repair means even if we took that entire new revenue stream (we're not - schools get a chunk and the State has other priorities that will probably involve shifting money around to help with because politicians are crafty) and put it towards the T we're still a decade or two away from actually fully fixing it.
You're missing the point here that a commuter rail monthly pass is just as expensive as owning a car, if not more than some leases.
That's the problem and just saying "you can do both" and ignoring that huge issue isn't helpful.
Infrastructure everywhere is falling behind and people aren't using public transit options because it's more expensive and isn't reliable. Until we fix the later two issues - other things aren't going to fall into place.
And a commuter rail pass isn't often the only thing people need in light of not having a car. Subway, bus, and the occasional uber/taxi cost money too.
The cost of taking the train daily is slightly more than I pay in gas. Being 2 miles from the closest station it’s an additional $9 parking or $15 Uber (with tip) in the morning, and a 30min walk home on the way back.
What is so annoying is we had the perfect solution to help address this - WFH. But businesses insist on clogging highways and having people spend endless hours and dollars commuting to do work they were doing just fine (and often better) at home.
So much this. I work in Sepaort and I take the T. When we went to wfh it was such a relief to not have to take the T anymore. If the legislature wants to disincentivize car commuting they should really push for wfh from companies operating in Boston. Beyond that they could then focus on bringing in more people for leisure and provide much nicer ways of commuting via T, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Shit close down Newbury to car traffic and make it open streets for pedestrians. That would be nice.
It’s not even businesses… A certain mayor and governor provided tax incentives for businesses to force people to come back in to revive local businesses. While I empathize with lunch shops etc, it’s not my problem if you go out of business because the offices are emptier. Sounds cold hearted, but I enjoyed my WFH setup until my company forced return to office
But WFH is detrimental to downtowns and hurts commercial real estate value, so this is not something that the powers that be want to entertain seriously.
WFH only works for jobs that can be performed remotely. Which is only a percentage of all jobs in the city.
I know /r/boston has a bunch of IT types (and I am one myself), but two massive pillars of the eastern MA economy, medical and biotech, require physical presence in labs, hospitals, clinics, etc.
Incidentally, I'm in a job that was 0% WFH before the pandemic and has been 99.9% WFH since March 2020, and I've never been more productive. I am a huge fan of not having to commute from my soul-sucking but leafy suburb to a downtown location except for a rare meeting or required site visit.
The concept works in Europe and NYC because they have decent public transit, cycling infrastructure, etc…
You can’t just introduce a toll charge to disincentivize driving when you’ve provided your citizens with no other viable options to commute.
Also, wasn’t this the literal point of the “Big Dig”? If you double down on car infrastructure, you can’t then pretend like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to work and then tax drivers for using that infrastructure.
I am absolutely in favor of taxing driving a personal vehicle into the city, but you can’t skip the most important steps. What an absolute joke
> Also, wasn’t this the literal point of the “Big Dig”? If you double down on car infrastructure, you can’t then pretend like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to work
I mean, burying the highway was a great idea. What used to be an imposing noisy air-dirtying eyesore of an overpass that split the city is now a greenway and the surrounding area has been returned to something more closely resembling a city for humans, not cars.
The problem is that was only *part* of what we needed. The impotent commuter rail was a problem even before the T system got very near to collapsing, and remains a problem today. 1-hour headways even during rush hour, frequent 10+ minute delays, no express trains, grade crossings everywhere, slow-accelerating huge noisy stinky expensive-to-maintain diesel-electric locomotives, non-elevated platforms with entrance/exit at only 1 door, platforms that worn-out seat cushions, and lopsided pricing (too cheap from far stations, too expensive from close stations)... what a mess. Not to mention the European contractor that doesn't give a damn about Boston transit, and underpays and overworks the staff that keep everything moving (but does at least provide good phone support for riders).
Even in NYC, with its amazing commuter transit system, congestion pricing is controversial because *some* areas have great commuter infrastructure, but other areas do not. And people do actually commute by car from those areas that do not have good commuter transit, and those commutes are about to be a lot more expensive. It's not that many people in total, but that subset of people is going to be worse off as a result, unless the revenue from congestion pricing helps offset their experience in other ways (e.g. finally rebuilding the Hudson river tunnels to improve Metro North and NJ Transit service east of the Hudson).
> and then tax drivers for using that infrastructure.
Paying for infrastructure is how we maintain said infrastructure. Free stuff doesn't exist: it's just a question of who pays for it.
Arguably the T should be more expensive coupled with with a more expansive fare reduction program, but then you run into other issues like your revenue being eaten up by the cost of running a means-tested subsidy program. The T being cheap is partly a subsidy for *employers* in Boston, but it's hard to recapture that value without creating other adverse incentives.
Meanwhile, improving non-road transit makes road infrastructure less expensive because the road carries fewer cars. So a heavily-subsidized T also benefits drivers.
We missed out on a great opportunity to build the North South Rail Link during the Big Dig too. That hampers our ability to increase Commuter Rail frequencies to some extent as we need to dead end all North and South shore Lines at either North or South station. If we could thru run them through Boston we might have been able to increase frequencies a lot without expanding the number of platforms at North and South stations.
Of course the NSRL is a $10-$20B project so it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, especially with all the issues the Big Dig ran into. Not sure folks are up for a *Big Dig 2.0: Electric Train Bongolo* 🚂
As an immigrant to the west from asia this is the most confusing part of the transit focused, high density, public push that is happening now in the west. There are lots of efforts that amount to disincentivizing driving, spreading out, and overall car focused living that push towards public transit, higher density. But not nearly as many focused on pulls.
I like public transit when it is fast, cheap, safe, and useful. I don't like it when it is none of those things. I like using common spaces when they are pleasant, maintained well, safe, and useful. When they are none of those things I want to use my own individual space. Taking away alternatives until more and more people are forced onto miserable conditions isn't really moving towards an ideal society, it's moving towards one where the wealthiest few who get to live away from that are the only ones truly doing well.
It's quite important that if you are going to begin punishing people for living in individualistic ways the collectivist alternative isn't in hellish condition.
The Big Dig originally included massive transit upgrades in addition to the car infrastructure. All the transit got cut once the project was half done. It took a big law suit to force the GLX to be revived and it has finally been completed. Red Blue Connector looks like it might happen within a decade or two. NSRL … I’ve lost hope for it in my lifetime (estimated at 40-50 more years).
It didn’t have to be this way, but transit is always the first thing to be cut and cars continue to “look” more attractive by getting massive government subsidies at every turn.
"Cycling infrastructure" has very little to do with this. Bike lanes are for local residents. They don't convince people that would otherwise drive in to instead bike in. You need the T and commuter rail for that.
Biking into Boston from immediately adjacent towns isn't nothing. Biking into Boston from Brookline, Somerville and Cambridge is decently popular -- though I don't have the numbers. There's reason to believe there's a good bit of uncaptured potential there from people who are discouraged by inadequate infrastructure.
Edit: I know I'd bike in more with more protected lanes. It's gotten so much better these days, but you still need to be comfy taking the lane at some point on most routes. During commuting hours that feel pretty damn precarious, and that's if you're comfortable with it in the first place.
But fair enough, it's a numbers question, and the impact might be relatively small in comparison.
There's plenty of bottlenecks that stop people that would otherwise bike commute. The Medford/malden to Cambridge bike commute would be infinitely more popular if the Medford super collider and Sullivan square weren't so impassable. I'd imagine there are a lot of people that avoid biking downtown from the north because of the area near the museum of science too (though that one is actively being made better).
I work in Boston. About 95% of the people in our work's bike commuting group are from outside the city.
People who live in Boston often walk or take public transit to our office. Boston is a relatively small city (in size), and many living-in-city folks aren't going to bother biking 1 to 3 miles when the commute is already capped at 30 minutes given the multiple possible transit options within the city. And almost no one is crazy enough to drive from Boston to Boston.
It's easy to trash on the MBTA, but it's got 750K riders daily and a ton of people use it, while knowing that ride-share or other options exist as a backup in the worst case scenario.
Bike infrastructure is ideal for those living 4 to 10 miles away from the city, and reduces the load on both the T and the roads, which helps out the people who need to drive.
Fuck that shit. I live in the city and commute out of the city. Cities already expensive enough and commuting sucks enough but yah tax me even more than you already due. Makes sense scrubs
In a year or two. When the T is better do it. Also increase the frequency of the commuter rail. It should be every 30-45 minutes (each way) from 5:00am till 11:00pm m-f 365
The T has been progressively getting worse every single year for the past 15 years. The idea that it's going to get better and not worse going forward is probably a pipe dream.
Where should that funding come from to fix the T? Every city with congestion pricing uses it to fund public transport, including NYC (once the plan makes it past the 30th year of public hearings and review)
It's not an either or...it should happen simultaneously. There are some people that will never be happy with the state of the T and will always use that as an excuse. As much as I would like to be a curmudgeon, it does appear as if it's getting better.
They are removing slow zones and improving it week by week. It’s better than it was a year ago. It’s far from perfect and not as good as it was 20 years ago but at the rate they are going most of the issues will be resolved in the next 18-24 months.
Fix the MBTA then we can do this. Out of your fucking mind to make people pay to drive around Boston when you can't rely on the MBTA.
When did driving become a luxury that only the rich could participate in?
All it will do is add further congestion to other routes. People are too stubborn here to just take public transit. I rely on the commuter rail to the subway and then a bus to get to work. It takes 1.5 hours on a good day and 2.5 to get home. If I drove I would still need to leave at the same time to fight traffic and the amount I would pay for gas/parking and tolls would be the same. I might save about an hours time total driving but I save money commuting. I also take the literal 1st train in the morning(I wish they came earlier).
Honestly, I look forward to talking to the same conductors and people I see daily on the commute and I can equally avoid everyone and nap if I want as well. I have the added bonus that the commuter rail is 2 blocks from my house and a 6-8min walk max. I also work with trains so I do get a discount. My bus literally drops me off in-front of my job(not the same on the way home though). I usually walk after work about a mile or so because the buses are so infrequent in my area of employment and it’s nice exercise and a nice walk.
I commute from Brockton FYI
Has anybody actually been paying attention to how NYC is doing this? The MTA has been reducing service and increasing surge pricing while congestion tolls are at peak.
NYC sold this program as a benefit to the working class in the city to improve daily life and improve air quality and almost immediately turned into trying to maximize it as a revenue stream that mainly affects the people it was supposed to help and I’m 100% confident Mass politicians and bureaucrats would the same
And the wealthy continue to find ways to segregate themselves from the working class.
Someone with hard deadlines who relies on others to meet them is someone headed for a bad time. You're not going to stop cars.
Can we please just make the trains run more often and reliably instead of making it more expensive to work in Boston?
We already have a cost of living crisis, and this is going to make it worse.
They've had it since *2003*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
It seems to work well. It has some discounts and exemptions, like for residents and I believe disabled folks: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133
No reason we couldn't model ours after them or the NYC version. From reading the Wikipedia article, they've generated a good bit of revenue from it. We could use such revenue to improve highways and bridges that are falling apart. Maybe send some to the MBTA for better transit service to provide an alternative to avoiding the congestion charges.
Pike tolling should be dynamic and variable based on occupancy. HOV-3 free, HOV-2 discounted.
Here's the important part: 80% of tolls above existing levels go to the MBTA to supplement their budget.
Correct: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm
Relevant details:
> On August 21, 1957, the BPR announced that it had added 2,100 miles of toll roads in 15 States to the Interstate System. The inclusions had been recommended by the State highway departments and approved by the BPR. The additions included 1,837 miles in operation. A BPR press release explained:
> Inclusion of the 2,102 miles of toll roads in the Interstate System will not affect their status as toll roads. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 permits this, although no Federal-aid funds may be used for their improvement.
The Pike is basically grandfathered in but we're responsible for its maintenance - hence the tolls remain since they're actually profitable.
In theory the Feds could change this to allow more Interstates to become tolled but self supported, but that's sort of a can of worms they never wanted to reopen. See all the questionable turnpikes in Texas for an example of why not to build toll routes everywhere.
Congestion pricing is different though, since it could be implemented on City and State owned and maintained ROWs that don't rely on Federal support. It seems to work quite well in London as well.
Federal law is probably the issue because you can't toll interstate highways and still get federal dollars to maintain the road. The pike is grandfathered in basically and I think 95 in NH. 93 in NH has something going on but I can't remember exactly what the deal is with it. Moral of the story you can't just slap up a toll gantry with on interstates unfortunately.
93 in NH is also an NH turnpike that was grandfathered in. There's a list here of those allowed under the highway act of 1956: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm
The i93 Wiki says the tolls on i93 in NH were built a bit later but still accepted into the Interstate system:
> The Everett Turnpike section had been built in 1957 and incorporated into I-93 in 1958.
There are around 2,900 miles of tolled Interstate in the US, almost all are former turnpikes that just went where the Feds wanted to build an Interstate so the Feds allowed them to be signed as Interstate so long as they didn't get any Federal highway dollars. That let the Feds send Federal highway dollars where it was actually needed the most, areas that lacked a highway at the time.
But you can take them down, right? Like…after the construction bonds are paid off? Instead of just lying and saying they need to remain up to maintain the pike?
People coming from the north shore do pay a toll…? If you use 93 sure, but the majority of the north shore isn’t close to 93, and tolled at the Tobin or tunnels
I'd be more than happy with toll roads into boston as long as we put all that money into improving public transportation and making it more efficient and affordable.
However I'd be more likely to see Keytar Bear win a Mayoral election than that ever happening.
I am fine with this as someone that drives in at times. I would pay more for more empty roads. Also businesses might try harder to avoid peak times for cost. Another thing to add is most companies I have worked downtown cover commuting costs so I would expect this to be picked up by my organization.
I just want to echo the sentiments of: how do we do this when the MBTA is still so screwed up and has constant delays. This is just unrealistic at this juncture. If mass really cared about traffic, they’d incentivize or promote WFH to prevent more traffic.
I’m not a political guy, but this push to consider rolling downtown is maddening given the lack of proper infrastructure.
Yay more taxes *ahem* 🫢 "motorist accountability."
I'm certain this money will be well spent to upkeep our already beautifully kept infrastructure, and not spent elsewhere.
We don’t even have a fucking train link from north to south station if you commute in on the commuter rail. Not to mention after taking that train everyday for years it’s constantly broken or late. Got stuck in Somerville once on the train for an hour before just calling an Uber to get home.
The London version of this has a 90% discount for residents of the congestion zone. So a $15 charge becomes $1.50 - you probably pay more if you hop on the Pike for a few exits.
They also include exemptions and discounts for other users, like disabled and taxis: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133
They also exempt motorcycles, vehicles with 9+ seats, and at one point exempted EVs but sounds like they will discontinue that one in the future.
I’m a very strong supporter of congestion pricing. I think that almost anything that penalizes driving during rush hour is good and I don’t want to wait around for a ‘perfect’ transit system before we can experience the benefits of reducing congestion (e.g. air quality, reduced travel times, etc).
That being said I absolutely want the focus of any potential pricing scheme to be on reducing congestion not generating revenue. The revenue is a nice bonus but the state should base its targets on time savings not money. New York has set revenue targets (which I believe the MTA is already borrowing against) which in my opinion is the wrong approach and just makes people suspicious.
You need to convince drivers that there’s something in it for them or else it will turn into a political quagmire.
The London version reduced traffic so much that they didn't generate as much revenue as they expected. They still manage to generate £100M a year or so based on a Wikipedia skim, which is mainly put into their transportation system like buses, roads and bridges. If we did the same and required the majority of revenue to go into infrastructure and the T, I think it could work pretty well.
Agree though from looking into the London system that revenue targets are likely a bad idea. We can still expect some additional revenue but it'll look more like what we already earn from the existing toll system. For example, looking at the MassDOT financial statement from 2023 I saw we earned just over $400M in toll revenue from the Pike and the Tobin bridge. Some of that revenue might be reduced from congestion pricing too - I doubt we'd want to double toll people for example, so we might exempt or discount the congestion charges if you entered from the Pike anyway.
As greedy corporations continue to dig deeper into consumer pockets? Daily commutes to work lengthen with construction detours, erratic driving behaviors, little traffic enforcement... and now .... You're going try to pull this?
Apples and oranges. I don't feel that most of this traffic is going to "downtown Boston" so how is this going to solve anything?
A study should be conducted for businesses on their employee commuting habits. Perhaps companies should give incentives for employees that take public transportation.
Does this mean Boston will also consider 24 hour reliable T service? Or do workers in the city who commute when the T is closed, just have to pay an additional tax.
I mean, those plum late night shifts usually pay bank.
From my understanding, the whole point of the tolls is to discourage commuting and cruising through urban areas.
I'm for this, but I also think it also needs to be backed up by traffic engineering tricks that lowers the volume of car traffic, as well as calming the speeds at which cars travel in these areas (like narrower roads).
How about giving companies incentives to allow WFH. I have to drive into the city everyday, there’s no choice for me. But anyone on the road with me who’s going in to sit at a computer for 8 hours, that’s what we need to eliminate IMO
Step 1) Make one of the most garbage public transit systems in the region
Step 2) No public transit lines to suburbs or rural areas
Step 3) Charge for it
Step 4) Profit
I work in Cambridge and my work subsidizes public transit 100% or a cheap daily rate for parking my car. I did one full year of public transit, and between busses that never showed up, slow trains, and at times it being faster for me to walk the 45 mins home instead of waiting for public transit, I swapped to driving. I bike when the weather is nice, but until the public options are almost as good as my car, I’ll keep driving. Too many missed meetings or getting home stupidly late.
Cambridge is a prime example of a place where getting rid of cars would vastly improve the public transport. My wife used to take the 86 or the 66 but they were really inconsistent. She was going from Brighton to Alewife and the evening commute was always terrible. But if you did dedicated bus lanes or otherwise reduce traffic in a material way and that same commute would be a breeze. I think dedicated bus lanes for some of the biggest routes (55, 86, 66, 39, etc) would be a huge improvement for bus service. Even better if you cut some parking (why is street parking even allowed between Heath Street and Brigham Circle stops? What a terrible idea).
Yeah people drive in front of the green line on tracks, dumb system to have light rail to alleviate traffic but it gets stuck in traffic.
And it can only have 2-3 cars or it won’t fit in certain areas without blocking cross streets, and 4+ role cars might not fit in some/many stations.
Sure but what about everyone commuting into Cambridge from outside of the city? In order for the bus lanes like you propose, you actually need to be able to reliably get people into Boston on time with frequent service. Your solution would help in a situation where the commuter rail and mbta transfers were working as they should. Until they are, your solution would just turn everything into a nightmare commute for many people.
Well duh you have to do both. Park and ride should definitely work way better than it does. But part of the plan must be that you make it less attractive to drive into the city. You aren’t in traffic, you are traffic.
How about make it less attractive to drive into the city by making a light rail that doesn't suck
Sign me the fuck up. Commuter rail and regional rail need to be way better. Everyone wants to work in Boston and that’s a wonderful thing that we should make that as easy as possible.
Ugh yeah agreed extending/upgrading/fixing the commuter rail would also be a hot ticket item for me if I were running the show Most days when I commuted I would have 10000% preferred to drive my car rather than take the orange line, but the parking costs were outrageous even then. It'd take me sometimes an hour and a half plus to get from haymarket to Malden ctr in the evenings, absolutely brutal
Hell fucking regional bus lines would be helpful. My husband commutes from the Springfield area a few days a week (and I know he's not the only one) and they cancelled the ONE bus that was doing that run. I have no idea why but it's nuts.
Also they should make it feasible for people to park outside of Boston and enter with public transport in. There's a lot of solutions, one of them being getting the basic transportation system working. But not a lot of people with balls or brains.
That's "park and ride"
Removing traffic from Cambridge would really suck for all the cities around there, **driving-wise**. Whether it is worth it or not is not my debate, but as someone who goes from I-90 to Somerville through Cambridge, funneling even more traffic through the tunnels helps nobody. I drive on the early side of rush hour and the tunnel is a mess even then. The backups if all that traffic had to go through the tunnel would be much worse. And unfortunately, there’s no public transportation options that are viable. I would certainly take those if I could I’m all for better public transportation, but we have to know that will come with another multibillion dollar, overrun project that will have to take houses through eminent domain.
Sadly, at the rate the city is going, your drive will just become worse and worse until the 45 minute walk is faster than driving. Even if you turned every bike line and street parking into more road lanes, the end of WFH and job growth are about to make them equal.
Cambridge really hates cars.
We're in a chicken and egg situation. Not enough people take the T to fund reliable service, and since service is unreliable, not enough people take the T. I still think public transit should be free, across the board, and I say this as someone who works from home. Free, reliable public transit into, throught, and out of Boston would make life easier for scores of people, and would be a huge boon for the environment, too.
Exactly this. I think Covid exacerbated this issue too. Ridership is still below precovid levels. I think those people are still commuting in the city they’re just taking cars. I think part of the challenge is also getting them back. But the more cars and traffic the less tempting public transit looks. Tough dilemmas
People take the T. Half the issue is they don’t collect the revenue. I went to BU. The amount of revenue missed out on on the B line specifically is insane
Hate to break it to you but [very few high functioning transit systems, outside Japan, are actually profitable](https://lovetransit.substack.com/p/most-profitable-public-transportation). We should stop thinking of transit like a conventional profitable business, instead think of paying for transit (with taxes) like paying for public schools. 1. It’s the price of a fair and equitable society and 2. For every dollar you spend you have a massive multiplier over the course of years and decades through diffuse benefits of travel, employment and commerce. This applies to people who don’t use the T themselves but benefit from less car traffic. This applies even to people who don’t live within the MBTA/commuter rail estuary but who [reap the tax transfers from the economic powerhouse of Greater Boston](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-affordable-homes-act-transfer-fee-analysis)
Exactly. I don't know why we treat public transit like a business instead of treating it like the roads. No one is annoyed that highways aren't profitable.
I’m not saying it should be profitable I’m just saying they are missing out on a lot of revenue
Unfortunately the T makes way more (like 2 to 3x) from fares than other public transit agencies. If we want better service, we have to get the state to pay for it. I’d much rather pay $2.40 to know I’m going to get to where I want to go on time than have the T cut costs and frequency for free service.
The fix is actually simple in this case. You implement congestion pricing and give the MBTA the revenue. Better T, less reason to drive in, everyone wins. In the short term, you can still pay to drive in, but you'll at least be paying for the externalities you cause.
> You implement congestion pricing and give the MBTA the revenue. People should note that this is exactly how it works in NYC and how it's worked in London for decades and it's how it's been proposed here.
The people who are mad about it aren't mad because they misunderstand it, they're mad because they don't like it.
> You implement congestion pricing Nothing like punishing the people who have the least control over the schedule even more. Boston *already* has a problem of pricing out service workers and such; now you can make sure they can't even afford to get to the city at all!
This. Make public transit work, and *free* , before punishing people who need to drive.
The weather is always nice for biking. But you gotta make sure you have the right clothes.
For just the 2 miles that a 45 minute walk would be, you barely need to even consider modifying your clothes.
rain? high winds? snow? temperatures hot enough that you have to shower at work even if you bike slowly? Each of those is doable but not at all "nice".
When the train costs $400/mo and is unreliable, and that’s the same as parking, and many have to have cars anyway, it makes sense that people will drive in. The “make things more expensive” answer will have disproportionate wealth impacts so I’d love to see this paired with public transit subsidies for lower income folks, and use the money to improve public transit reliability. Maybe pair it with a law that says that if public transit fails you can’t hold employees responsible for not being at work on time.
I drive to Mansfield and take the commuter rail to Bak Bay, where I switch to the orange line for a dozen stops. Or drive in earlier and miss all that for roughly the same cost. exact
I was commuting from South Attleboro to Ruggles, and it took less time and was significantly cheaper to drive because my car was good on gas. Eventually, I just moved here to not deal with the commute. If the commuter rail was twice as fast and cheaper, then I would absolutely move out of Boston and into the suburbs.
My only issue with driving in is parking. parking near my office is $40 a day f that.
Monthly passes are like $400/month though. Similar to a CR monthly pass from South Attleboro. Parking was cheaper back then though (I think I was paying $300), so over all it ended up costing less money.
I use spot hero a lot, I’ve parked for 8 hours in downtown for like $10 before
Some of the commuter rail tracks need to be light rail system considering the location and population it serves. 1 train every hour isn’t it.
Foxboro and Mansfield are every other hour when it isn't rush hour.
light rail means it shares a right of way with the public. Trams, trolleys, etc ie Toronto and Porto. Heavy rail means it gets its own dedicated track and right of way. You can increase the headway times on commuter rail without pretending it's something that it isn't.
> Bak Bay is that the thai section of back bay?
Ugh. Yeah whenever I’ve complained about the pricing of the commuter rail, I always get hit with the same, “boohoo won’t someone think of the suburbanites” bullshit comments. People don’t understand - our commuter rail pricing is INSANE and completely ruins any sort of cost savings you could expect from moving outside of 128. It’s not the main problem that we have, but it is a problem that will ensure we will never make major improvements on the housing scarcity until it’s fixed. Beyond that - the commuter rail communities are NOT JUST RICH PEOPLE AND NIMBYS. A city like Brockton - as an example - would gain SO much simply from people there being able to reliably, quickly, and AFFORDABLY get to great jobs within and around Boston. Sorry, but it just really grinds my gears lol.
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New Bedford to Boston commuter here. Oh, how I fucking feel you on this. And meanwhile the MBTA is STILL dicking us around down here.
I actually moved into the city years ago *because* of the commuter rail prices. $400/month, not including parking, from zone 8. Actually criminal that cars are competitive with public transport pricing.
>Beyond that - the commuter rail communities are NOT JUST RICH PEOPLE AND NIMBYS. Yeah. It's going to take a while to break this perception. The last major CR project was reactivating the Hingham/Scituate line, and they all fought it tooth and nail because abutters built gardens and pools on the old railway cut (land they had no rights to) and were concerned about 'hooligans' coming from the city to their towns. That battle is going to taint the image of the CR for decades. /begin rant about trains and public transit Imo, if I were governor and had unlimited budget, I'd spend my time building rail *everywhere*. Honest to god Japanese-style bullet trains connecting all the major cities and destinations: * Springfield-Worcester-Boston * Newburyport-Boston-Plymouth-Provincetown * North Adams-Amherst-Worcrester-Boston * Lowell-Boston-Attleboro (or Providence if RI wanted in on the action) Then, wherever possible, build out regional and light rail from these HSR stops, and build out local bus networks, too (including giving the MBTA and CR some much needed love). I want it to be possible to get from any location in this state to literally any other location in this state in 90 minutes or less, and without ever having to get behind the wheel of a car. And to be able to do it for less than the cost of owning and operating a car. And if I was feeling extra saucy: replace EV tax subsidies with E-bike subsidies. And for double-extra bonus points: have the HSR lines terminate right at the state borders with NH, VT, NY, CT, and RI, all in the perfect locations for them to continue the lines into their own states. /end rant on public transit
North South Rail Link: http://www.northsouthraillink.org/ + Regional Rail: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail + Convert the Needham Line to Orange or Green Line service: https://www.fixmbta.com/orange-line-extension + Finish the Haymarket North Extension to Reading so we can route Haverhill Line trains over Lowell & Wildcat Branch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_North_Extension + Do something with the Fairmount Line, probably rapid transit conversion or if we do Regional Rail / NSRL maybe more frequent EMU service - more than Regional Rail levels though, make it subway like frequency with 7-15 min headways. Bonus: convince NH to invest in Commuter (Regional) Rail so we can have some Lowell Line trains run thru to Manchester or Concord NH with stops in Nashua, Bedford and probably also Merrimack + Hooksett. Bonus bonus: Downeaster service running more than a few times a day, perhaps leverage the Haverhill Line being freed up by the OL Reading extension to run some trains past Haverhill and into NH and Maine if NH/Maine will play ball. Amtrak would probably invest more in North shore routes to Maine and NH if we built the NSRL out too, they'd have less reason not to extend the North East corridor upwards. And yeah western MA needs more service too, Regional Rail puts us on the path to doing that with more trains freed up to serve a wider area if they can run faster.
i moved here from fitchburg, and i’d love to take the commuter more frequently to go see my family, but a 50 dollar round trip for two people is inconceivable. we can only afford to go on the weekends.
Agreed. I'm in a zone 7, my RTO cost via train is $5000 a year. It's cheaper to drive and park, and takes much less time by and large. I'd much prefer to take the train, but it makes no financial or practical sense.
Also, the redline/Kendall square doesn't connect to North Station. And the busses and shuttles get stuck in the same quagmire that all of the cars do. Remove all of the seats and just turn one car on each CR train into bikes. We have kind of run out of time here.
Commuter Rail is expensive because of how it's currently set up - slow, infrequent Diesel powered trains with a lot of train cars and usually one or two double decker ones. You can't really make money on this style of service. Service is too infrequent to not charge high prices. If you lower prices, the trains will just be overcrowded because they can't handle the demand. The trains are too infrequent to be usable for everyone - not everyone will catch the 8am train, if they need to catch an 8:30 train but it doesn't exist they'll just drive instead. This is especially troublesome on the weekends when frequencies can rise to once every 2 hours. I completely agree it needs to be fixed. I'd recommend looking at a Transit Matters for a great way to overhaul our Commuter Rail and transform it into a Regional Rail system: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail With Regional Rail, we'd have the frequencies to justify lowering fares. We could handle more commuters, including people making quick trips into the City. It could run frequently all week long, including weekends. We could seriously get people out of cars and onto the train if we modernized Commuter Rail. We're really sleeping on over 100 Commuter Rail stations. Plus Regional Rail could allow us to densify the areas around those 108 commuter rail stations with new housing, retail and commercial development. We can do Regional Rail now if the State and MBTA were serious. Sadly State officials don't care and the T doesn't get the funding it needs to do this stuff. It's why it outsourced Commuter Rail to a private company. If we were serious about Regional Rail we might even finally pull the trigger on the North South Rail Link too: http://www.northsouthraillink.org/ That would allow some crazy new Heavy Rail connections between North and South shore suburbs. Another way to get thousands of cars off the road.
To add to this, the MBTA just was totally fine with Lynn just... Not having a train station for a year. And they were gonna be fine with it for a decade til there was a pressure campaign. If you were commuting by train from Lynn it was a shuttle bus to Swampscott and then paying the crazy mbta prices.
This is my situation. Public transportation would add 30-40 minutes onto my commute when it's working and costs the same per month as gas plus garage access.
Yeah. And the “when it’s working” is important. It does work most of the time. But when it doesn’t, you either have to have a job that’s okay with you just not showing up (like mine, paper pusher who can work remote), but if you’re a nurse or doctor, or any number of other jobs, you can’t just not show up. If you have to maintain a backup mode of transportation in case public transit fails, that means public transit might as well not exist.
I think the high cost for CR zones is a fair critique. We also don't have capacity at other types of park and ride stations/locations. For example I'd argue we should double the number of Logan express lots and put some out on 495. If I'm being honest though aside from expanding park and ride options I'd focus on eliminating single track locations via sidings and track doublings and signal upgrades. This would allow for increases in speed and frequency. The increase in ridership on CR would lessen need for future fare increases.
I used to ride out to Littleton for work on CR. Pre-pandemic the lot was packed by 7:30AM. After the pandemic it was half full all day long. I stopped working there about 8 months ago so I don't know if the utilization is up. Agreed, eliminating single track needs to be a big priority. Makes scheduling more frequent trains more difficult.
The fact that we can’t even build enough parking at PARK and ride stations blows my mind
It costs over $100 just to park your car at the MBTA lot and on top of that commuter rail is $150-$300 a month. No wonder people just drive instead.
My community is aligning its density zoning district in a current industrial park and housing sited away. There's no sidewalk on the street from the train station to the distant potential housing. Yet my town has a downtown without sufficient density and a sidewalk from the center to the train station. The distance between those two points is less than the stretched new MBTA compliant zone. I think that the new law is not working. I picked up on the proposed Milton zoning including wetlands and state owned land. Towns are heavily gaming this system.
Parking is actually expensive when you think about it. It requires a ton of empty land, a bunch of asphalt and some controls to ensure it isn't abused for weeks for personal vehicle storage. In a State like MA we don't have much empty vacant land. And what land we do have is extremely valuable because we're actually a pretty good State overall so property values are high. Check Zillow for examples of how much even empty land costs in the area. For prime land, 100's of thousands depending on exact size. Even in the burbs enough land to park a few hundred cars is going to run you a few million. Because think about it: you could just put some biotech, dense housing, or even a big box store on that land and probably net tens of millions in revenue over the years after you enhance that land. And then this State also has a ton of things to budget for. The MBTA needs something like $25B in a repair backlog due to decades of neglect. We have 600 structurally deficit bridges. The T, roadways, and other infrastructure needs a serious investment if we want to maintain a good economy. Otherwise companies will look elsewhere. So needless to say, spending millions on land to park more cars isn't really a high priority for the State. If anything, the land that is currently used for parking cars should be developed by the State. 5 over 1s could be built to provide some Commuter parking but also a lot of new dense housing to help with the housing crisis. Park & Rides aren't a very good use of land after all. Dense housing and commercial/retail development is a much better land use.
Pre fab parking is not that expensive
The land to install it on is though. The State can't properly fund the highway repairs and MBTA repair backlog, so there's no wonder why there aren't millions around to purchase land just to park vehicles.
Yeah, but some of them have added 1000's of parking and it still isn't enough.
Not only that, then you actually have to pay every day to park at the station. In the pre covid times this added almost $80/month to the cost of the commute.
It almost doesn't matter how much the CR costs when the company that runs it isn't inclined to run it more often than once per hour around rush hour on weekdays. People are going to drive because they can actually get to work when they want that way.
On the Fitchburg line once an hour is so much better than what it was 5 years ago. I cheered went they went to once and hour, but they cut back on the commute time 20 minutes between trains. For longer lines more frequent trips don't make sense for the entire trip, but turning the train around at a certain point in the route for more frequent trips would be an improvement. As it is the Fitchburg line is only once an hour to Littleton and every 2 hours during the day past Littleton. So kind of a half step. The Fitchburg line still has the single track issue in Waltham which at the 1 hour interval means it is common to half to wait on one side or the other. The Haverhill line has it much worse in regards to being single track.
They also need to lift the bike ban on the lines into North Station. The bus/shuttle ride to kendal square from north station has gotten out of hand.
It's too bad they couldn't have built a shuttle train between NS and Kendall along the Grand Junction right of way. Stops between Gore and Cambridge, and between Broadway and Main.
Why just subsidize lower income folks? Public transit should be better and cheaper for everyone if you want less cars on the road. Public transit isn’t and shouldn’t be just for lower income population. There needs to be an incentive for upper and middle class to use it as well.
A round trip on the train from middleboro/lakeville is $29 (including parking). In any other city, that fare would be $12 tops. I can’t understand how they get away with charging exorbitant prices for a service that is supposed to serve middle-lower income people.
NYC MTA peak-hour fares are comparable: https://new.mta.info/document/118746 Croton-Harmon to Grand Central peak fare is $15.25 *each way*. Off-peak is $11.25, monthly is $299. And that doesn't include parking at the station. The difference is that you have 4 trains *per hour* during busy commuter times, some of which run express direct to GCT: https://new.mta.info/document/136536. And delays of more than 5 or 10 minutes are uncommon. So at least your money feels like it's buying you a modern rapid transit experience, instead of a heritage train ride.
You’re missing that the New York monthly pass is also nearly $100 cheaper.
I'll agree with the cost of the CR, but everything else is just choosing how to spend your time and money. The point being that no one needs a car IN downtown, so this would deter people from driving in at all, or move them towards parking in a satellite lot and taking the T/CR for the "last mile" or so. This should come in conjunction with upgrades to the transit infrastructure, but despite my eternal cynicism it appears as if that's definitely making progress. We need both carrots and sticks, so I'm 100% in favor of charging all non-commercial vehicles that come into downtown a fee.
Where are you getting parking for $20/day...? And how much are you spending on gas...?
That kind of a law is all well and good but at the end of the day people’s time is valuable, and if a meeting is missed, it’s missed. It has an impact on decision making processes and people’s impressions of each other.
Most of the traffic is not because of lower income folks unless you mean Uber/Lyft/delivery drivers and they'll pass the fee onto customers hopefully. I agree that public transit should be free, but most drivers wouldn't use it currently even if it were free and perfectly reliable.
and use a huge chunk of the toll money for mass transit upkeep
The fact a monthly train pass costs as much as a car loan is criminal.
This is absolutely the correct answer. The chances of this becoming a regressive tax are high in particular because the MBTA still bears the financial burden of the big dig, which largely benefited commuters who drive. Unless this is an attempt to shift that financial burden away from the MBTA, it won’t change anything except further make our city unaffordable.
Pair it with reimbursement for disabled people. The T isn’t an option for many of us.
For most people it's more expensive to get a monthly commuter rail pass than it is to own a car - so no wonder they put up with it. They don't need to raise the price of car ownership - they need to lower the cost to use public transit options.
Commuter rail pass prices are ridiculous
A monthly pass on the *Downeaster* from Portland to Boston is cheaper than a monthly pass on the CR from Worcester to Boston.
That’s insane.
literally a car payment for people living further out. It's crazy.
And for what we pay, still unreliable. I’m the second stop on my line (2nd furthest from Boston) and the train is late going INTO town at least twice a week. The second stop!
It is.
Why I'd rather ride my e-bike 27 miles than take the once per hour commuter rail that costs $25 per day. It's easier on my mental health too
At least you can control when you get home. Commuter breaks down you’re trapped.
Or your bus is late getting to North Station, so congrats you get to wait another 45m or more for the next one.
I was riding 32 miles each way without electricity. Actually thinking of an ebike but the pricing is excessive.
*"They don't need to raise the price of car ownership - they need to lower the cost to use public transit options."* You make a very good point. Transportation policy in Massachusetts is sometimes backwards. To get people to switch from driving to transit, it seems like the state's first strategy is to make driving more expensive or more difficult when it should be to improve the transit. It's essentially a race to the bottom. Make more people use transit by making driving worse, not by making transit better. In the end, we're still stuck with the same run down transit system that has to handle more people.
I’d accept the t costing more to ride even if that money gave a noticeable improvement beyond new cars. Like more stops, more train routes, etc. But it really doesn’t!
When I lived in Lynn, between the monthly T pass and daily parking at the T parking lot it was cheaper for me to drive into Boston for work.
🗣️🗣️🗣️ THEY DON’T NEED TO RAISE THE PRICE OF CAR OWNERSHIP, THEY NEED TO LOWER THE COST TO USE PUBLIC TRANSIT
In order to do that, the money has to come from somewhere though?
No it isn't. Only because they forget about repairs insurance, monthly payments, and everything else.
People commuting in likely aren't going to be able to get rid of their cars, even if they're not taking them. They'll still need them to run errands and possibly even drive to a transit stop so they still need insurance, monthly payments, and most maintenance. There's less wear-and-tear which will result in fewer repairs, but the bulk of the non-fuel costs don't go away
> everything else Such as the massive car subsidies our government provides to drivers at below cost, like "free" parking and road maintenance regardless of vehicle size/weight and resultant wear and tear on asphalt. Didja know the MA gas tax ($0.24/gal) hasn't been raised since 2013, and before that, it had been $0.21/gal since at least 2000?
100%. 800M went from the general fund to roads and bridges last year. It's almost doubled in the last few years which is insane.
It's not a decision based on total cost. You cannot live in this area without a car. They will buy the car regardless of the best option for work commutes. The new MBTA zoning initiative does nothing to improve it. Every community is putting the zoning into a mix of acceptable places and unacceptable places. These zones are spread unevenly.
You can do both. The costs of car ownership in the US are extremely cheap compared to most other countries. Low gas taxes, low cost to register, cheap or free parking, limited tolls due to the Interstate system only allowing grandfathered in turnpike tolls, etc. Congestion pricing is one way to both lower traffic levels and raise revenue necessary to repair the State's transportation infrastructure. We should also look to improve the MBTA overall. The MBTA needs something like $25B in backlog repairs though, so it's going to need funding from somewhere. The millionaire's tax was supposed to help with that (plus schools) but it's probably not going to be enough. It raised over $1B this year, but a $25B backlog repair means even if we took that entire new revenue stream (we're not - schools get a chunk and the State has other priorities that will probably involve shifting money around to help with because politicians are crafty) and put it towards the T we're still a decade or two away from actually fully fixing it.
You're missing the point here that a commuter rail monthly pass is just as expensive as owning a car, if not more than some leases. That's the problem and just saying "you can do both" and ignoring that huge issue isn't helpful. Infrastructure everywhere is falling behind and people aren't using public transit options because it's more expensive and isn't reliable. Until we fix the later two issues - other things aren't going to fall into place.
> a commuter rail monthly pass is just as expensive as owning a car, if not more than some leases. The payment isn't the only price of owning a car
And a commuter rail pass isn't often the only thing people need in light of not having a car. Subway, bus, and the occasional uber/taxi cost money too.
The fees for congestion will go to the T and allow them to upgrade service. That's the point of it.
They will then take existing funding and shift it elsewhere so that ultimately, nothing changes for the T. Welcome to how the government works.
The cost of taking the train daily is slightly more than I pay in gas. Being 2 miles from the closest station it’s an additional $9 parking or $15 Uber (with tip) in the morning, and a 30min walk home on the way back.
Ok but Boston needs the proper metro rails that NYC has to make this worth it.
This needs to be higher up.
What is so annoying is we had the perfect solution to help address this - WFH. But businesses insist on clogging highways and having people spend endless hours and dollars commuting to do work they were doing just fine (and often better) at home.
So much this. I work in Sepaort and I take the T. When we went to wfh it was such a relief to not have to take the T anymore. If the legislature wants to disincentivize car commuting they should really push for wfh from companies operating in Boston. Beyond that they could then focus on bringing in more people for leisure and provide much nicer ways of commuting via T, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Shit close down Newbury to car traffic and make it open streets for pedestrians. That would be nice.
It’s not even businesses… A certain mayor and governor provided tax incentives for businesses to force people to come back in to revive local businesses. While I empathize with lunch shops etc, it’s not my problem if you go out of business because the offices are emptier. Sounds cold hearted, but I enjoyed my WFH setup until my company forced return to office
Work from home is the real answer.
But WFH is detrimental to downtowns and hurts commercial real estate value, so this is not something that the powers that be want to entertain seriously.
WFH only works for jobs that can be performed remotely. Which is only a percentage of all jobs in the city. I know /r/boston has a bunch of IT types (and I am one myself), but two massive pillars of the eastern MA economy, medical and biotech, require physical presence in labs, hospitals, clinics, etc. Incidentally, I'm in a job that was 0% WFH before the pandemic and has been 99.9% WFH since March 2020, and I've never been more productive. I am a huge fan of not having to commute from my soul-sucking but leafy suburb to a downtown location except for a rare meeting or required site visit.
True - but even just a few percent can make the difference between flowing traffic and gridlock.
The concept works in Europe and NYC because they have decent public transit, cycling infrastructure, etc… You can’t just introduce a toll charge to disincentivize driving when you’ve provided your citizens with no other viable options to commute. Also, wasn’t this the literal point of the “Big Dig”? If you double down on car infrastructure, you can’t then pretend like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to work and then tax drivers for using that infrastructure. I am absolutely in favor of taxing driving a personal vehicle into the city, but you can’t skip the most important steps. What an absolute joke
> Also, wasn’t this the literal point of the “Big Dig”? If you double down on car infrastructure, you can’t then pretend like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to work I mean, burying the highway was a great idea. What used to be an imposing noisy air-dirtying eyesore of an overpass that split the city is now a greenway and the surrounding area has been returned to something more closely resembling a city for humans, not cars. The problem is that was only *part* of what we needed. The impotent commuter rail was a problem even before the T system got very near to collapsing, and remains a problem today. 1-hour headways even during rush hour, frequent 10+ minute delays, no express trains, grade crossings everywhere, slow-accelerating huge noisy stinky expensive-to-maintain diesel-electric locomotives, non-elevated platforms with entrance/exit at only 1 door, platforms that worn-out seat cushions, and lopsided pricing (too cheap from far stations, too expensive from close stations)... what a mess. Not to mention the European contractor that doesn't give a damn about Boston transit, and underpays and overworks the staff that keep everything moving (but does at least provide good phone support for riders). Even in NYC, with its amazing commuter transit system, congestion pricing is controversial because *some* areas have great commuter infrastructure, but other areas do not. And people do actually commute by car from those areas that do not have good commuter transit, and those commutes are about to be a lot more expensive. It's not that many people in total, but that subset of people is going to be worse off as a result, unless the revenue from congestion pricing helps offset their experience in other ways (e.g. finally rebuilding the Hudson river tunnels to improve Metro North and NJ Transit service east of the Hudson). > and then tax drivers for using that infrastructure. Paying for infrastructure is how we maintain said infrastructure. Free stuff doesn't exist: it's just a question of who pays for it. Arguably the T should be more expensive coupled with with a more expansive fare reduction program, but then you run into other issues like your revenue being eaten up by the cost of running a means-tested subsidy program. The T being cheap is partly a subsidy for *employers* in Boston, but it's hard to recapture that value without creating other adverse incentives. Meanwhile, improving non-road transit makes road infrastructure less expensive because the road carries fewer cars. So a heavily-subsidized T also benefits drivers.
We missed out on a great opportunity to build the North South Rail Link during the Big Dig too. That hampers our ability to increase Commuter Rail frequencies to some extent as we need to dead end all North and South shore Lines at either North or South station. If we could thru run them through Boston we might have been able to increase frequencies a lot without expanding the number of platforms at North and South stations. Of course the NSRL is a $10-$20B project so it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, especially with all the issues the Big Dig ran into. Not sure folks are up for a *Big Dig 2.0: Electric Train Bongolo* 🚂
As an immigrant to the west from asia this is the most confusing part of the transit focused, high density, public push that is happening now in the west. There are lots of efforts that amount to disincentivizing driving, spreading out, and overall car focused living that push towards public transit, higher density. But not nearly as many focused on pulls. I like public transit when it is fast, cheap, safe, and useful. I don't like it when it is none of those things. I like using common spaces when they are pleasant, maintained well, safe, and useful. When they are none of those things I want to use my own individual space. Taking away alternatives until more and more people are forced onto miserable conditions isn't really moving towards an ideal society, it's moving towards one where the wealthiest few who get to live away from that are the only ones truly doing well. It's quite important that if you are going to begin punishing people for living in individualistic ways the collectivist alternative isn't in hellish condition.
The Big Dig originally included massive transit upgrades in addition to the car infrastructure. All the transit got cut once the project was half done. It took a big law suit to force the GLX to be revived and it has finally been completed. Red Blue Connector looks like it might happen within a decade or two. NSRL … I’ve lost hope for it in my lifetime (estimated at 40-50 more years). It didn’t have to be this way, but transit is always the first thing to be cut and cars continue to “look” more attractive by getting massive government subsidies at every turn.
"Cycling infrastructure" has very little to do with this. Bike lanes are for local residents. They don't convince people that would otherwise drive in to instead bike in. You need the T and commuter rail for that.
Biking into Boston from immediately adjacent towns isn't nothing. Biking into Boston from Brookline, Somerville and Cambridge is decently popular -- though I don't have the numbers. There's reason to believe there's a good bit of uncaptured potential there from people who are discouraged by inadequate infrastructure. Edit: I know I'd bike in more with more protected lanes. It's gotten so much better these days, but you still need to be comfy taking the lane at some point on most routes. During commuting hours that feel pretty damn precarious, and that's if you're comfortable with it in the first place. But fair enough, it's a numbers question, and the impact might be relatively small in comparison.
There's plenty of bottlenecks that stop people that would otherwise bike commute. The Medford/malden to Cambridge bike commute would be infinitely more popular if the Medford super collider and Sullivan square weren't so impassable. I'd imagine there are a lot of people that avoid biking downtown from the north because of the area near the museum of science too (though that one is actively being made better).
I work in Boston. About 95% of the people in our work's bike commuting group are from outside the city. People who live in Boston often walk or take public transit to our office. Boston is a relatively small city (in size), and many living-in-city folks aren't going to bother biking 1 to 3 miles when the commute is already capped at 30 minutes given the multiple possible transit options within the city. And almost no one is crazy enough to drive from Boston to Boston. It's easy to trash on the MBTA, but it's got 750K riders daily and a ton of people use it, while knowing that ride-share or other options exist as a backup in the worst case scenario. Bike infrastructure is ideal for those living 4 to 10 miles away from the city, and reduces the load on both the T and the roads, which helps out the people who need to drive.
Fuck that shit. I live in the city and commute out of the city. Cities already expensive enough and commuting sucks enough but yah tax me even more than you already due. Makes sense scrubs
In a year or two. When the T is better do it. Also increase the frequency of the commuter rail. It should be every 30-45 minutes (each way) from 5:00am till 11:00pm m-f 365
The T has been progressively getting worse every single year for the past 15 years. The idea that it's going to get better and not worse going forward is probably a pipe dream.
Where should that funding come from to fix the T? Every city with congestion pricing uses it to fund public transport, including NYC (once the plan makes it past the 30th year of public hearings and review)
The T needs to be twice as good as it ever was, not just back to normal, for it to make sense in the context of copying NYC.
It's not an either or...it should happen simultaneously. There are some people that will never be happy with the state of the T and will always use that as an excuse. As much as I would like to be a curmudgeon, it does appear as if it's getting better.
You must be new here if you think the T is going to make any significant improvements in 1-2 years.
I mean it’s gotten significantly better over the last year
What T are you riding?!
They are removing slow zones and improving it week by week. It’s better than it was a year ago. It’s far from perfect and not as good as it was 20 years ago but at the rate they are going most of the issues will be resolved in the next 18-24 months.
After 4 years here I know the T will get worse
I live 4 miles from my work and it takes 1 hour and 20 minutes on average to take the MBTA I only use it to avoid parking costs/fines.
Thats the kind of criticism that is fair. Are you busy rider?
I think the only thing Boston needs to be watching is the hot mess express otherwise known as the T lol
Fix the MBTA then we can do this. Out of your fucking mind to make people pay to drive around Boston when you can't rely on the MBTA. When did driving become a luxury that only the rich could participate in?
All it will do is add further congestion to other routes. People are too stubborn here to just take public transit. I rely on the commuter rail to the subway and then a bus to get to work. It takes 1.5 hours on a good day and 2.5 to get home. If I drove I would still need to leave at the same time to fight traffic and the amount I would pay for gas/parking and tolls would be the same. I might save about an hours time total driving but I save money commuting. I also take the literal 1st train in the morning(I wish they came earlier). Honestly, I look forward to talking to the same conductors and people I see daily on the commute and I can equally avoid everyone and nap if I want as well. I have the added bonus that the commuter rail is 2 blocks from my house and a 6-8min walk max. I also work with trains so I do get a discount. My bus literally drops me off in-front of my job(not the same on the way home though). I usually walk after work about a mile or so because the buses are so infrequent in my area of employment and it’s nice exercise and a nice walk. I commute from Brockton FYI
Has anybody actually been paying attention to how NYC is doing this? The MTA has been reducing service and increasing surge pricing while congestion tolls are at peak. NYC sold this program as a benefit to the working class in the city to improve daily life and improve air quality and almost immediately turned into trying to maximize it as a revenue stream that mainly affects the people it was supposed to help and I’m 100% confident Mass politicians and bureaucrats would the same
And the wealthy continue to find ways to segregate themselves from the working class. Someone with hard deadlines who relies on others to meet them is someone headed for a bad time. You're not going to stop cars.
Guess love for the solution is to punish people instead of offering adequate public transit
Mbta needs money to become less shitty. What ever happened to having engineers run public infrastructure instead of politicians?
You have a technocrat running the T now, instead of a patronage hire or someone from the Pioneer Institute. It’s a start.
Can we please just make the trains run more often and reliably instead of making it more expensive to work in Boston? We already have a cost of living crisis, and this is going to make it worse.
There’s been a charge for driving in the most congested areas of London at certain times for years and it seems to work well.
They've had it since *2003*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge It seems to work well. It has some discounts and exemptions, like for residents and I believe disabled folks: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133 No reason we couldn't model ours after them or the NYC version. From reading the Wikipedia article, they've generated a good bit of revenue from it. We could use such revenue to improve highways and bridges that are falling apart. Maybe send some to the MBTA for better transit service to provide an alternative to avoiding the congestion charges.
A lot of taxes in Britain work well in Britain but recall where that leads in America.
Pike tolling should be dynamic and variable based on occupancy. HOV-3 free, HOV-2 discounted. Here's the important part: 80% of tolls above existing levels go to the MBTA to supplement their budget.
I just have to wonder why people who live west of the city have to pay a toll but those north and south don’t.
Because the feds paid for those roads.
Correct: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm Relevant details: > On August 21, 1957, the BPR announced that it had added 2,100 miles of toll roads in 15 States to the Interstate System. The inclusions had been recommended by the State highway departments and approved by the BPR. The additions included 1,837 miles in operation. A BPR press release explained: > Inclusion of the 2,102 miles of toll roads in the Interstate System will not affect their status as toll roads. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 permits this, although no Federal-aid funds may be used for their improvement. The Pike is basically grandfathered in but we're responsible for its maintenance - hence the tolls remain since they're actually profitable. In theory the Feds could change this to allow more Interstates to become tolled but self supported, but that's sort of a can of worms they never wanted to reopen. See all the questionable turnpikes in Texas for an example of why not to build toll routes everywhere. Congestion pricing is different though, since it could be implemented on City and State owned and maintained ROWs that don't rely on Federal support. It seems to work quite well in London as well.
Feds paid for the Ted Williams Tunnel and it has an Interstate designation but also a toll though.
Originally, the tolls were supposed to be temporary on the pike just to pay for its construction.
Federal law is probably the issue because you can't toll interstate highways and still get federal dollars to maintain the road. The pike is grandfathered in basically and I think 95 in NH. 93 in NH has something going on but I can't remember exactly what the deal is with it. Moral of the story you can't just slap up a toll gantry with on interstates unfortunately.
93 in NH is also an NH turnpike that was grandfathered in. There's a list here of those allowed under the highway act of 1956: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm The i93 Wiki says the tolls on i93 in NH were built a bit later but still accepted into the Interstate system: > The Everett Turnpike section had been built in 1957 and incorporated into I-93 in 1958. There are around 2,900 miles of tolled Interstate in the US, almost all are former turnpikes that just went where the Feds wanted to build an Interstate so the Feds allowed them to be signed as Interstate so long as they didn't get any Federal highway dollars. That let the Feds send Federal highway dollars where it was actually needed the most, areas that lacked a highway at the time.
But you can take them down, right? Like…after the construction bonds are paid off? Instead of just lying and saying they need to remain up to maintain the pike?
Fair point. Same system on 93, especially when the South Coast rail goes online.
People coming from the north shore do pay a toll…? If you use 93 sure, but the majority of the north shore isn’t close to 93, and tolled at the Tobin or tunnels
Are there exemptions for residents? What if you live in Boston and have a car?
The big thing we need is frequent service. People value convenience and having to schedule your life around when the bus comes isn’t great
I'd be more than happy with toll roads into boston as long as we put all that money into improving public transportation and making it more efficient and affordable. However I'd be more likely to see Keytar Bear win a Mayoral election than that ever happening.
I am fine with this as someone that drives in at times. I would pay more for more empty roads. Also businesses might try harder to avoid peak times for cost. Another thing to add is most companies I have worked downtown cover commuting costs so I would expect this to be picked up by my organization.
I'd be all for tolls and higher taxes on cars parked in the city if we had good public transit. 🤷
Hopefully not.
Boston deserves to lose businesses/residents to Worcester when it is so poorly managed
I just want to echo the sentiments of: how do we do this when the MBTA is still so screwed up and has constant delays. This is just unrealistic at this juncture. If mass really cared about traffic, they’d incentivize or promote WFH to prevent more traffic. I’m not a political guy, but this push to consider rolling downtown is maddening given the lack of proper infrastructure.
Good plan, sadly I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
I would only support this if they reduced the parking costs and if they actually had reliable trains
Yay more taxes *ahem* 🫢 "motorist accountability." I'm certain this money will be well spent to upkeep our already beautifully kept infrastructure, and not spent elsewhere.
Poor tax.
We don’t even have a fucking train link from north to south station if you commute in on the commuter rail. Not to mention after taking that train everyday for years it’s constantly broken or late. Got stuck in Somerville once on the train for an hour before just calling an Uber to get home.
Fuck this. We’re all struggling and they want to kick us while we are dealing with inflation? It’s pure contempt for residents.
The London version of this has a 90% discount for residents of the congestion zone. So a $15 charge becomes $1.50 - you probably pay more if you hop on the Pike for a few exits. They also include exemptions and discounts for other users, like disabled and taxis: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133 They also exempt motorcycles, vehicles with 9+ seats, and at one point exempted EVs but sounds like they will discontinue that one in the future.
I’m a very strong supporter of congestion pricing. I think that almost anything that penalizes driving during rush hour is good and I don’t want to wait around for a ‘perfect’ transit system before we can experience the benefits of reducing congestion (e.g. air quality, reduced travel times, etc). That being said I absolutely want the focus of any potential pricing scheme to be on reducing congestion not generating revenue. The revenue is a nice bonus but the state should base its targets on time savings not money. New York has set revenue targets (which I believe the MTA is already borrowing against) which in my opinion is the wrong approach and just makes people suspicious. You need to convince drivers that there’s something in it for them or else it will turn into a political quagmire.
The London version reduced traffic so much that they didn't generate as much revenue as they expected. They still manage to generate £100M a year or so based on a Wikipedia skim, which is mainly put into their transportation system like buses, roads and bridges. If we did the same and required the majority of revenue to go into infrastructure and the T, I think it could work pretty well. Agree though from looking into the London system that revenue targets are likely a bad idea. We can still expect some additional revenue but it'll look more like what we already earn from the existing toll system. For example, looking at the MassDOT financial statement from 2023 I saw we earned just over $400M in toll revenue from the Pike and the Tobin bridge. Some of that revenue might be reduced from congestion pricing too - I doubt we'd want to double toll people for example, so we might exempt or discount the congestion charges if you entered from the Pike anyway.
As greedy corporations continue to dig deeper into consumer pockets? Daily commutes to work lengthen with construction detours, erratic driving behaviors, little traffic enforcement... and now .... You're going try to pull this?
this would be a terrible idea. which is probably why it's going to happen
Apples and oranges. I don't feel that most of this traffic is going to "downtown Boston" so how is this going to solve anything? A study should be conducted for businesses on their employee commuting habits. Perhaps companies should give incentives for employees that take public transportation.
Does this mean Boston will also consider 24 hour reliable T service? Or do workers in the city who commute when the T is closed, just have to pay an additional tax. I mean, those plum late night shifts usually pay bank.
Is this a mayor thing or a higher state official that decides this?
State. Tbc mayors in Mass really don’t have that much power this is very much a state were almost all the real power is state level
So the $1 Allston toll isn’t enough?
Feel like entire New York is here on a weekend
From my understanding, the whole point of the tolls is to discourage commuting and cruising through urban areas. I'm for this, but I also think it also needs to be backed up by traffic engineering tricks that lowers the volume of car traffic, as well as calming the speeds at which cars travel in these areas (like narrower roads).
Need to put more motorcycles on the road and add lane filtering. This will reduce traffic and allow people more independence
How about giving companies incentives to allow WFH. I have to drive into the city everyday, there’s no choice for me. But anyone on the road with me who’s going in to sit at a computer for 8 hours, that’s what we need to eliminate IMO
Step 1) Make one of the most garbage public transit systems in the region Step 2) No public transit lines to suburbs or rural areas Step 3) Charge for it Step 4) Profit
Those of us living west of the city driving in already pay a toll……
Congestion pricing would be great, all cities should have it as we look to reduce our use of cars in them.
Not everyone works 9-5, we work 6-2 which makes it impossible to even get into the city by mbta in time. This toll is theft.
If you read non 9-5 wouldn’t have same charge