Toll Road to Nowhere

The Massachussetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and the Massachussetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) are not generally known for their prudence. The half-baked Silver Line “bus rapid transit” project for Roxbury and the unending mess that is the Big Dig spring to mind, to name a just a couple of poor decisions. True to form, the recent decisions by the MBTA to raise public transportation fares and by the MTA to eliminate all turnpike tolls beyond Route 128 will prove to be a terrible tandem, encouraging people to hop off the T and back into their cars.

The MTA’s decision to drop tolls has been couched under the progressive rhetoric of giving long haul commuters a break. Gov. W. Mitt Romney has said that “the western drivers of Massachusetts have been ripped off,” and the abolition of tolls is his way of righting this wrong. But Romney has yet to suggest the means by which the funding for maintenance of highways provided by tolls will be replaced.

Even if the impetus for eliminating tolls was intended to be somehow progressive by helping low-wage commuters, toll prices have already been built into housing prices and wages, so it’s clear that this matter did not warrant such extreme action. In a choice to essentially grant a subsidy to either motorists or subway passengers, the state of Massachusetts has chosen the former, and in so doing, demonstrated its backwards priorities.

As the T becomes less affordable and motorists drive into town undeterred, we can expect pollution from fuel emission to rise accordingly. Though the MTA doesn’t claim to be a “green” organization, we had hoped that on balance, Massachusetts would lean in the direction of encouraging environmentally friendly T usage.

Meanwhile, as the MTA gives money away, the MBTA will be reaching even deeper into the pockets of its faithful riders. Given the large number of students living and traveling in and around Boston, it is unclear exactly who the MBTA thinks is in a position to help solve its financial problems by paying increased fares. Here’s a hint: It’s not students. We have even less money than they do, and it is unfair to expect us and other Boston-area residents to pick up the tab for poorly conceived expansion projects that were often opposed in the first place.

While the decisions by the MBTA and MTA were not made in coordination, both of them are destined to upset the motorist-T-passenger balance for the worse. The state of travel in Massachusetts is an increasingly sad affair, and if poor choices like these continue to abound, public faith in the MBTA and MTA will erode even further.