diburning wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 3:03 am Well, I can see a few issues with making the MBTA fare free.The state government paid for the new cars out of MassDOT capital funds https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/201 ... r-patrick/
1. For rapid transit, fares paid at fareboxes, as well as tap ins with charlie cards and charlie tickets, are the way that they measure ridership right now. If they make fares free, they'd lose this source of rideship data, and would have to either invest in equipment to count ridership, or pay people to physically count (whether in person or through a camera).
2. When funding gets tighter or costs increase beyond what the funding can pay for in the future, this incentivizes cutting service to balance a budget over investment and improvement.
3. The MBTA has already spent money on AFC 2.0. Making the MBTA fare free would render this investment worthless. I suppose they can hold onto it, or even install it anyway in case the fare free system doesn't work, so that they can immediately start taking fares again.
4. The MBTA is able to order new vehicles such as the red and orange line cars from foreign companies because they paid for them with proceeds from fares collected. If they go fare-free, relying on government funding for everything, the MBTA will be subject to the Buy American Act which limits where they can source even simple things like spare parts, and opens them to be strong armed by the smaller pool of eligible vendors.
While the contract was awarded to a foreign company, the assembly of the cars is in Springfield, MA. The shells are fabricated overseas as I recall and then completed here.
Either way, fares amount to a small portion of the T's revenue and have no impact on the new equipment procurement.
