The world of high technology has transformed Massachusetts economically. Could fare collection at the T be the next inroad for electronica? Thanks to an overhaul this year in the way the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is funded, the Boston-area transit agency is making some changes. For one thing, the fares have gone up-the first across-the-board fare increase in nine years. As of September, the basic 85-cent subway fare went up to $1, and one-way commuter rail tickets increased from their previous range of 85 cents to $4.75 (based on location) to $1 to $5.75. Monthly passes went up even more, as much as 33 percent.
But the price hikes are just for starters. Magnetic cards that are read electronically could someday make tokens more likely to appear on Antiques Roadshow than in your pocket.
All of this stems from legislation signed by Gov. Paul Cellucci last year that changed the way the T is financed, with an eye to eventually making the MBTA into an independent, self-sufficient agency. Instead of receiving an annual–and open-ended–state reimbursement for the prior year’s expenses, the T will have to make do with a standard start-of-year appropriation, a long-awaited fiscal reform known as “forward funding” that figured centrally in the 1999 budget stalemate.
The financial makeover means that the T needs to get more of its revenue from sources other than Beacon Hill. According to a “blue ribbon” committee formed to help the MBTA deal with the budgeting change and improve its performance, raising fares (thereby shifting the burden from taxpayers to riders) and instituting automated fare collection are key to financial independence and stability. Indeed, the committee, established by Transportation Secretary Kevin Sullivan and headed up by former Senate Ways and Means chairwoman Patricia McGovern, called the electronic fare system the “highest priority” in the MBTA’s capital plan.
In the recommended “pay-by-swipe” method, riders would use a magnetically encoded ticket or “smart card”–not unlike the current T pass. But with the new cards, fare values would be deducted as passengers passed through ticket-operated turnstiles. At card vending machines, customers could add to the value of their tickets. Fares could also be charged based on the time of day or the distance traveled, arguably making the system more fair to users. Conversion to fare machines would also mean less waiting in line for consumers, McGovern says, because the machines could dispense tickets anywhere, not just in T stations.
Such a change is a big undertaking, especially for an agency not known for riding on the cutting edge. The move to automated fares could take five years and cost $100 million to $125 million, according to MBTA deputy general manager and chief financial officer John Davis.
But the financial benefits of such a system would be substantial, Davis says. Because the new system would ensure the collection of fares–no more swamped commuter rail conductors failing to punch passengers’ tickets–it would bring in an additional $5.9 million in the first year of implementation, according to the blue-ribbon panel’s April report. Redeploying workers would save $6.2 million in a year. Davis says any reduction in jobs would be accomplished through attrition.
Jim Lydon, president of the Carmen’s Union, is skeptical that the new technology would guarantee fare collection or save the MBTA money. “Just because they put in a machine, what would stop someone from jumping over the turnstiles?” he asks. But Lydon says he’ll go along with the automated-fare scheme, since he’s been assured that union members would not lose jobs as a result.
Given the hostility of the Carmen’s Union to earlier plans to allow token sales by non-MBTA merchants, union support may be the best measure of the plan’s popularity. “I have not heard one person in opposition to automated fare collection,” Davis says.
Among the advantages of the proposal is that it would make possible distance-pricing arrangements, doing away with the current system’s flat fee from downtown on subway and trolley lines. Automated fares would also allow for free transfers between buses and subways–the current lack of which is a particular source of resentment in the inner city. “It’s a major equity and ridership growth issue,” says Stephanie Pollack, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston. “The promise of automated fare collection really is the transfers.”
Several major metropolitan transit systems, such as Washington, DC’s, use “smart” fare cards, and McGovern says Boston is “probably 20 years behind on automated fare collection.”
In 1996, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority completed the switch from tokens to fare cards. Christopher Boylan, deputy executive director of the MTA, says the process of revamping the system was not without its difficulties, but that the results have been well worth it.
“I think people need to have a stiff backbone because, as with any new technology or system that you put in place, there are growing pains,” says Boylan. But he believes that the more attractive pricing options–such as free transfers–have proven beneficial to New York riders. Indeed, Pollack says that even though the MTA had fretted about losing money to free transfers, “ridership actually went up so much that total revenue rose.”
If the future of the T lies in electronic fare collection, one might think that the agency would use this fall’s fare increase to spotlight the financial incentive of monthly passes–the closest thing the agency currently has to the proposed smart cards. No such luck. The T raised pass prices proportionately more than it did on single-trip fares.
The single-ride T bus fare went up 25 percent, for example, and the price of a subway token rose 18 percent. But a subway pass went up nearly 30 percent. And while the one-way cash commuter-rail fares rose 11 percent for Zone 2 riders, for example, Zone 2 passes increased 30.5 percent.
Penalizing pass holders may be the result of “forward funding,” but it’s not exactly forward thinking.