Trimess

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

"THE BEST IN THE COUNTRY'? I DON'T THINK SO!

The problem is . . . you keep losing. Money. My money, not yours. Because your fares don’t even cover half the T’s costs. The single biggest source of MBTA money comes from sales taxes paid by the rest of us.
So when one of the rider/whiners asked Monday, “How much do you expect the poor to pay?” she was right: How much do you freeloaders expect low-income Dorchester families to pay in sales taxes, subsidizing T rides for rich Boston College kids and downtown attorneys?
If the problem were temporary, if my T-dependent neighbors just needed a one-time handout, I’d throw a few bucks in their cup. But the MBTA has an addiction problem. It just keeps spending and spending and it can’t seem to stop.
Despite having the highest debt burden of any transportation system in America, the T plans to spend $161 million more this year than it takes in. It’s on track to keep spending itself into the red, hitting a projected annual loss of $308 million in 2016.
 MBTA mustn’t be a gravy train - BostonHerald.com

CHECK THIS OUT MR ANDERSON AND MS CHILTON:

 And where is the money going? With 631 T staffers making $100,000 or more last year in salary and overtime, it’s not too hard to figure out. If you’re still not sure, just ask one of the folks on the amazing MBTA pension system, who may have retired as young as 41 with health-care benefits for life.
THERE GOES YOUR BEST IN THE COUNTRY BALONEY!

3 comments:

Michael, Portland Afoot said...

Have I ever called TriMet benefits the best in the country? I think I've probably said that TriMet retiree health benefits are among the best in the country.

By the way, I did email CTA, MUNI, MBTA and MTA yesterday asking for contract specifics. Only response so far was from the MTA, which referred the question, bafflingly, to their union.

Al M said...

No you never 'said' that but I have read it several times in various posts of yours...

Your not particularly sympathetic to our point of view, which is simply that the big money makers (exes) need to take a hit if we are to take a hit!

Anonymous said...

Michael, I think your a smart guy and generally well-meaning, but I've ve been disappointed in your lack of curiosity when in examining the light rail singlemindedness of management and the ramifications of this on the budget and the TOTAL transit system(their words). We went from a light rail idealogue (Fred Hansen) who wouldn't use Federal Stimulus money to buy desperately needed new buses, to a light rail technocrat (Neil MacFarlane) who continues to be fixated with pushing thru new rail projects while dismantling the existing system. When the banks were loaning money to any Tom, Dick, or Harry to buy houses they couldn't afford, we all know what happened. Don't you see any similarity between that and Trimet taking Federal matching money for publicly unasked for rail lines like the Green and the Orange?