User:Lepperal/Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

Free Fare Movement
The MBTA has faced controversy for its fare increases since 2012. While there have been laws passed limiting the fare increases, other solutions have been proposed. One solution is to eliminate the fare for the MBTA altogether. Boston city council woman Michelle Wu took to the Boston Globe to publish an op-ed entitled ‘Forget fare hikes--make the T free,’ calling for making the T free in place of its continual fare hikes.

Since initially being proposed in January 2019 by Wu, former Boston city councilwoman and current Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district representative, Ayanna Pressley has publicly supported the movement to eradicate MBTA fares. In June 2020 Massachusetts Congresswoman Pressley and Senator Edward J. Markey announced their ‘Freedom to Move Act.’ The act proposes that public transportation is a public good and should be fare-free. The proposed reasoning for eradicating fares is largely based on affordability and accessibility for the constituents of Massachusetts. The average low-income person whose income is 30,000 dollars a year or less often spends 22% of their income on transportation, and in total nearly 16% of an average commuters budget is spent on transit. Senator Markey adds to his reasoning, arguing that making transportation more accessible would ultimately help move toward climate justice. He says that free transit would also help lower both traffic congestion and greenhouse gases because public transit, like buses, emits 50% less greenhouse emissions per passenger. Markey, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has also introduced the Green New Deal Resolution as a means of addressing the climate crisis. The three most prominent figures in the movement for free fare – Wu, Pressley, and Markey – all argue that transit justice is a means of economic and environmental empowerment.

The Freedom to Move Act establishes a $5 billion dollar competitive grant program for each fiscal year from 2021 through 2025. This would aim to offset the eliminated fare revenues for the MBTA. A large goal of the grant is to target equity gaps found in the current transit system and to improve the safety and quality of the system. In their public announcement of the act Pressley and Markey list out direct improvements that they want to achieve: hiring and training new personnel, investing in personal protective equipment and public health, bike and pedestrian safety, improving efficiency and redesigning bus routes, and alleviating traffic congestion.

Criticisms of the Freedom to Move Act argue that the movement is not feasible. Boston’s mayor, Marty Walsh, has been quoted as saying “It’s easy to throw ideas out there,” while pointing to the deputy director of the MBTA Advisory Board Brian Kane. Kane argues that the other solutions of paying for the free fares through a gas tax would pass on a ‘3 and a half cents’ raise on Massachusetts drivers.

The future of this free fare movement remains unknown as critics of the movement like Walsh are challenged for their positions by current city council members Andrea Campbell and Michelle Wu in the 2021 Boston mayoral Election, Wu who has remained the largest champion of the free fare movement within Boston.