BOSTON MAYOR Michelle Wu is a fan of doing away with fares on the MBTA, but over the last month she has been outmaneuvered by Gov. Maura Healey who favors charging low-income riders a half-priced fare.

Wu’s appointee to the MBTA board raised concerns at a meeting last month about a low-income fare and urged the T’s senior director of fare policy and analytics to do more research on whether it makes sense to offer low-income passengers a half-off discount or to dispense with fares for everyone.

Fast forward a month and the debate seems to be over. In her budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1, Healey proposed spending $40 million of millionaire tax money to cover the cost of introducing a low-income fare. Steven Povich, the T’s fare expert, told the board the issue will be put to a vote in March and rolled out later in the spring.

Povich in his presentation ignored the concerns raised last month by Mary Skelton Roberts, Wu’s appointee to the board. Only when she reiterated some of those concerns — and noted how she first raised them last month – did he respond.

Roberts said the cost figures for a low-income fare seemed high and suggested it might make more sense to let passengers ride for free.

The cost is fairly high, but mostly because the T is required to offer eligible paratransit customers the same discount. The discount would lower the fare of an eligible Ride customer from $3.35 to $1.70, but more importantly it would spur more people to take advantage of Ride services, which cost the T $75 to $90 per trip.

The MBTA estimates the first-year cost of the low-income fare would range from $23 million to $26 million, with the Ride accounting for $14.5 million, or 55 percent to 63 percent, of the tab.

Povich said doing away with fares entirely would probably spur more people to use Ride services and drive up the cost even more. He also said the T spends $30 million to $50 million collecting its current fare revenue of $420 million. Doing away with fares entirely would put a big hole in the T’s budget, he said.

Roberts also said requiring customers to apply for the low-income fare seemed undignified. Povich said T staff went to great lengths to design an application process that is fast, simple, and respectful.

The T estimates 62,000 existing T riders age 26 to 64 would be eligible for the low-income fare. To qualify, a rider must earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $29,160 for a single person and $60,000 for a family of four.

T NOTES:

  • MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said the Green Line extension contractor is expected to wrap up reorienting 42,500 feet of train track to the proper width this weekend. Trains had been operating at slower speeds because the rails were too close together, a problem Eng said previous T management should have addressed earlier when it was first discovered. T officials have said the contactor will pay the cost of reconfiguring the rails to the proper width.
  • Eng said the T now has 106 of the 152 new Orange Line cars it ordered and 16 of the 252 Red Line cars. He said CRRC, the Chinese manufacturer of the rail cars, delivers two cars a month, all of which are meeting performance expectations.
  • MBTA safety officials reported several problems with subway doors on the Green and Red lines and a near miss on the Green Line in Medford.  Tim Lesniak, the T’s chief safety officer, said the near miss involved a train that inadvertent got a green light to enter an area where track work was being conducted. Lesniak said a passenger got her leg stuck in a Green Line train in Medford on January 1 when the driver shut off the train’s power to reverse direction. On the Red Line, a contractor got his hand stuck in a door and two passengers found themselves separated from their backpacks when a door closed over the straps. No one was injured in the various incidents and Lesniak said the train doors were all operating properly.