In early March of 2022, three bus lines running through predominantly Black neighborhoods of Boston were made completely fare-free. This program was launched by the City of Boston as a pilot of “Free the T,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s plan to make it free for Boston residents to use the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Greater Boston public transit system.
The plan to Free the T was a central pillar of Wu’s campaign for mayor. The symbol of the T ran through much of her campaign messaging, even appearing in her Twitter handle, @wutrain. Making the MBTA fare-free was a contentious idea, stirring heated debate about the feasibility of the plan and how it would be funded, and the launch of the pilot program has sparked a new round of controversy. However, in this moment of increasing economic tension, with inflation on the rise, it has become more crucial than ever to Free the T.
Boston is a city rife with economic inequality. As of 2018, the city ranked seventh in the United States for cities with the highest levels of economic inequality, with households in the 95th percentile making 14.8 times as much as households in the 20th percentile. This inequality often falls along racial lines. In 2016, the median income for Black households in Boston hovered around $40,000 per year, while for White households it was about $85,000.
With inflation in the U.S. currently hitting a 40 year high, these economic problems have been exacerbated as basic necessities like gas and food have become more expensive. The price of gas in June of 2022 is more than $2 higher than it was in June of 2020, hovering around $5 per gallon. Brian Bethune, a Boston College economics professor, explained in the Boston Globe that lower income households spend a larger percentage of their earnings on these goods than higher income households. Thus, when inflation rises and the price of these goods increases, low-income households are disproportionately affected.
According to a survey released by the Greater Boston Food Bank in early June, 1.8 million adults, or just under a third of the adults in Massachusetts, faced food insecurity in 2021. The results showed that the highest rates of insecurity were among the Latinx community at 61%, and the Black community at 53%. These rates are reflected in an influx of new families lining up at food pantries, putting charitable organizations that are also struggling with rising food prices under additional stress. The CEO of the GBFB, Catherine D’Amato, attributed the increase in demand at food pantries to the rise in inflation, suggesting that struggling pantries are symptomatic of Boston’s deeper problem of economic inequality.
Mayor Wu’s plan to Free the T aims to close these inequalities by addressing the racial wealth gap in Boston. Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s Chief of Streets, said in an interview with the Washington Post that Boston has “historically underinvested in transit in these communities of color.”
In 2014, households in the lower third of the national income range spent 15.7% of their income on transportation, while those in the upper third spent 8.2%. Analysis by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that these trends applied in the Metro Boston Area as well. As of 2014, they calculated that Black riders spend 64 more hours a year on buses than their White counterparts. As a result, MBTA fare hikes and the decreasing real value of the gas tax are actually exacerbating the disparities between what higher-income White populations and lower-income Black populations spend on transportation. Therefore, making transit more affordable most benefits low-income communities of color not only by making it more accessible to commute to work or school, but also simply by freeing up more disposable income. With inflation hitting low-income populations the hardest, these goals have become more important than ever.
However, there is still significant pushback to the plan that must be addressed, often surrounding the financial feasibility of fare-free transit. Before the pandemic, the MBTA had a total budget of $2.3 billion, with about $700 million coming from fares. A main concern of many critics is how that lost revenue would be made up for. On Wu’s plan to Free the T, Gov. Charlie Baker commented that “[t]here’s no such thing as a free T… [s]omebody’s going to have to come up with a lot of money from somebody.”
Other cities that have implemented fare-free transportation, however, have not struggled with making up for the lost fares. For instance, the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts recently expanded the fare-free policy to the Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority. According to Noah Berger, the authority’s administrator, for every dollar that was collected in fares, 76 cents went to the costs of collecting those fares, from fixing and maintaining fare boxes to physically counting cash. If the same is true for the MBTA, the revenue lost from transitioning to a fare-free system would hover around $168 million rather than $700 million.
Though the state government has seemed uninterested in funding a project like freeing the MBTA, additional infrastructure funding from the Build Back Better bill or the “billionaires tax” on the ballot in Massachusetts this November could be easily earmarked to fill this gap. Alternatively, communities served by the MBTA could vote to tax themselves through a local ballot initiative signed off by the state Senate. In 2020, 90% of such local ballot initiatives to fund transit-related projects were passed by voters.
In response to concerns about trains and buses being able to handle an increase in ridership, early results of the pilot program and fare-free transit in other cities have shown that eliminating the fare speeds up the boarding process because passengers no longer need to swipe their passes or struggle with cash or change. Even despite a 22% increase in ridership on the pilot bus routes, there has been no negative impact on service. Ultimately, Wu has argued that the investments in the bus pilot and eventually in a fare-free public transit system are long-term investments that will return themselves many times over.
While the bus pilot program is a welcome step toward a more equitable Boston, the current effects of inflection on low-income people in Boston and across the United States makes it even more clear why the city needs to go further to address economic and racial inequality. Many were excited to see the bus pilot program go into effect, but about two thirds of passengers said that because they still had to transfer to another bus or train, or because they used a monthly transit pass, the free bus pilot program was not saving them any money. The pilot program allows Boston to dip its toes into the water of fare-free transit, but without fully breaking down the barriers to transportation for much of the transit-dependent population, it fails to fulfill its goals. Until the T is completely free, access to transportation will continue to be a factor of inequality in Boston.
Ultimately, Boston needs to fully commit to investing in low-income communities of color. If the city cannot close its racial wealth gap, moments of economic tension will continue to push down low-income people of color while the wealthy prosper. Though Freeing the T is only one part of the journey toward a more equitable Boston, it is a crucial one.
Image by Aubrey Odom-Mabey is licensed under the Unsplash License.
