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State considers 6.7% or 9.7% T fare increases
By adamg on Mon, 01/04/2016 - 3:53pm
WBUR posts a copy of the exact increases those would mean, starting July 1. More from WBUR.
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Fare Dodging
Let the games begin:
Every day I see people not paying their fares and on July 1, thousands more will refuse to pay.
this week
https://twitter.com/MBTA_CR/status/684116167846424580
Don't worry, for two days only, for two hours each day, Keolis personnel will ensure that the thousands of riders who board trains at North and South Stations each rush hour all have tickets or passes.
Are we surprised at how poorly the T is maintaining its equipment when these ridiculous exercises are seen as the answer to a commuter rail fare evasion problem that likely doesn't even exist?
Doesn't exist?
I don't know, Saul. I hear a lot of complaints from paying riders that their passes are never checked. One of the complainers is a State Senator.
While fare evasion is equally morally wrong (and unlawful) on any mode, if I were a finance guy at the T, I'd definitely want to make sure I was getting those higher CR fares.
Every college student should
Every college student should have a monthly bus/subway pass built into their tuition. That would take care of 90% of fare evasion in the city.
Ya no local/high school kids
Ya no local/high school kids are dishonest, its exclusively college kids. Blame and charge the only people making this hole not Detroit!
Based on my daily commuter
Based on my daily commuter rail riding, I'd maybe once a week my fare is not checked. That's a far cry from a given daily rider never being checked, ever. Perhaps others' experiences are different.
Regardless, do you ever see the masses who descend upon the platform when their track is called at North and South Stations? My point is that whether or not there actually is a commuter rail fare evasion problem, having a few employees attempting to validate fares as these masses board at rush hour is not the solution. And besides, it's not fare evasion to board a train without a pass or ticket: at North and South stations, you'll pay a surcharge, but if the T stopped a passenger from boarding without a ticket, that employee would be the one violating the fare rules.
Agreed, Saul, but...
I agree that attempting validation of the masses at the terminal stations is silly for the reasons you stated. That said, one of the things that has to happen is that there has to be a much bigger delta (than there is now) between buying a ticket on the train and buying one in advance. Particularly for trips beginning at the terminal stations.
I also think, however, that not having your pass checked once a week is a HUGE issue. Even presuming a middle of the road zone, that works out to a potential loss of something like ~$360-400 per rider per year (I understand it is difficult to calculate because of all kinds of variables, but that's a good starting number)
In any case, not having a pass checked on 4 out of 5 days is an invitation for fare evasion. I would only tolerate that level of checking if we instituted a proof of payment system with fines on the order of >$300 per violation and some kind of serious enforcement mechanism (on the CR, it would probably be a little easier, as most CR riders have driver licenses which could be hit on renewal).
Twitter & 111
I just posted to twitter about this. Hard to get behind a fare increase when I see drivers just wave on 40-60 people on one trip alone. I see this almost daily during rush hour on the 111 bus route alone.
Now for those doing math,..
it's roughly 119 dollars per trip.. (45 riders @ 2.65)
8 trips a day and you have $952
7 days a week and you have $6664 a week
30 days in a month and you have $199,920 a month
12 months in a year 2,399,040 or $2.4 Million
Of course this is making broad assumptions here.. everyone pays full fare. 8 trips a day fares are not collected. And it happens every day, including weekends.
Of course this is just ONE bus route. Now if we say this happens on ALL 15 key route bus lines at least 8 times a day, every day..... 15 routes times 2.4Million...
35,985,600 = ~36 Million.
Gee isn't that ABOUT (depending on which fare increase you look at).. a fare increase would rake in? (Was ~28 Million to 48 Million increase depending on option)
Of course this is all quick math off the top of my head using 15 key bus routes... real numbers would vary, but this should give you an rough idea of how much revenue is lost by fare jumpers and drivers who wave fares on.
Tell me how you want to increase fares again?
EDIT:
I'm going to revise this post even more after thinking about it and leave it as is.. however, yes I'm well aware my numbers are very skewed and probably on the very high side because I'm not taking in account for monthly pass holders and/or people who DID pay but some how were not counted, etc.
BUT I will say this.. even if that number is closer to, say, 10 mil in uncollected fares system wide in a year.. that's still a lot. 10-15 Mil would be enough to offset such a high fare increase.
I think your numbers are very high
On my bus route (35/36/37) I see a handful of fare evaders but nothing like what you see. Maybe 5-10 per week. You would probably cost the system as much as you took in if you sent cops all around to arrest fare evaders. Drivers shouldn't be responsible for this beyond a simple request to pay up. Otherwise, you're asking for violence and disruption that no paying rider wants to see.
Maybe cops enforcing fares at subway stations and bus hubs would help improve things though.
What should be done is run
What should be done is run the commuter rail on a Proof of Payment basis (as is done on, for example, Caltrain, which, it should be noted has a 25% better farebox recovery than the MBTA commuter rail while the average MBTA CR rider pays 40% more than the average Caltrain rider). In a Proof of Payment system, the conductor will ask to see proof that you've paid for your ride. If you can't prove that you've paid, you pay a penalty fare, which is substantially more than what you would have paid if you were honest. Make the penalty fare sufficiently greater than the single-ride fare (and perhaps even greater than the cost of a pass), and you can get by with checking only a small proportion of fares.
This already sort of happens with the MBTA CR: if you board at a station with a ticket office or a vending machine, you get charged $3 extra, so the penalty fare is the single-ride fare plus $3. All going full Proof of Payment requires is increasing the cash-on-board surcharge and charging it at every station; one could exempt over-55s and under-18s from the surcharge (they're less likely to have smartphones and credit/debit cards). For Zone 8 riders (e.g. Worcester), as long as there's a better than 52% chance of having the ticket checked, it's cheaper to be honest. Zone 1A riders only need to be checked 18% of the time. Since the general tendency is emptier trains the further out from Boston you are, the check rates are going to be much higher for Zone 8 riders than for 1A riders. It's almost certain to be a net increase in revenue, but the bigger thing is that it means fewer assistant conductors will be needed: considering that paying assistant conductors is a substantial part of the marginal cost of a train, the expense savings are where it's really at.
You can do the same thing on the surface Green Line, which would allow for all-door boarding (making the GL faster) and allow a GL train to be operated by one driver instead of the current 2 or 3 (which would allow a lot of the current roster of GL drivers to be let go). San Francisco's Muni Metro (which is by far the most comparable system to the GL) runs this way.
With proof of payment, nearly everybody who's not a member of the union whose membership gets more-than-decimated wins.
On a related note for the CR: raise single-ride fares by $1 across the board along with allowing mTicket to be linked to a CharlieCard; this would then allow free transfer to/from bus and subway for mTicket users. In a similar vein, offer volume discounts for the multi-ride tickets (Metra in Chicago does this): 10 ride tickets should be the cost of 9 single rides, 20 ride tickets should be the cost of 17 single rides. At the same time, tighten up the expiration windows for CR tickets. There's no reason a single-ride ticket should be valid for more than two weeks, or a 10 ride ticket for a month, or a 20 ride ticket for 3 months.
How about the transit police step in here?
In Minneapolis, the lightrail has a "a valid fare zone" marking as you enter the platform, but there are no fare gates on any of the platforms. Instead, the transit police have a presence throughout the city and randomly get on your train to check all fares.
Could we put out transit police to work in a similar manner on the commuter rail?
POP is absolutely the way to
POP is absolutely the way to go by all logic and research but it will never happen here because the sheer possibility that anyone could ever take the gamble, not get caught, and not get punished, enrages the latent Puritanical thinking that controls so many massholes.
>There's no reason a single
>There's no reason a single-ride ticket should be valid for more than two weeks, or a 10 ride ticket for a month, or a 20 ride ticket for 3 months.
Why? The T enjoys the float, and riders don't get penalized for losing a ticket in their purse for a week or going on vacation. We should be encouraging riders to buy tickets, not penalizing them for doing so. Yes, shorter expiration dates may address situations where tickets aren't collected on "4 out of 5 days," but those situations a) should be rare and b) would just result in evaders switching to cash fare instead of prepaid tickets with short expiration dates.
Also, due to railroad rules, I don't think you can have fewer than one conductor per two cars. While you might need an extra conductor to help collect fares at rush hour, that's relatively few man-hours you recover in exchange for a major shift in fare collection.
What I'd really love to see is a shift to free fare public transportation funded by taxes. It solves ALL of the fare collection issues, eliminates the need for things like the $75M spent on AFC (not to mention ongoing repair costs) and assistant conductors. And the "fare structure" winds up being progressive if it's funded by income tax. To collect the ~$700M the MBTA collects via fares would require increasing the income tax from 5.3% to 5.6%. And you get more transit riders and none of these annual fare hike headaches.
Angry little men being angry.
I go out of North Station and they always check tickets (they did not during last year's snowpocalypse due to packed trains.). Every time they check every person. 2 weeks ago they did the check on the platform thing and the porter said she wouldn't check because they were already checked, which made one miserable old bald guy's head explode.
There's an organized movement
There's an organized movement by anarcho-socialist-type groups in some countries to actually support and promote free public transit by promoting fair-evasion. Some of these groups even run a sort of insurance-like system where you can pay a membership fee and in return they'll cover your occasional fine when you get caught for it.
Maybe Boston needs one of these groups, at the very least to send the T a message.
So we are going to pay
So we are going to pay substantially more and get less in return when they cut late night service? Imagine if they raised the gas tax 10% every other year and shut down highways at night because highways don't make money and not as many people used them during those hours.
Bad analogy
Outside of winter plowing, highways don't incur labor costs when specifically open. In order for me to drive down I-93 at 2am, no-one else has to be working that specific piece of roadway.
Lots of good arguments about how public transit is funded vs. how public highways are funded - this isn't one of them.
Really? So if you're in a
Really? So if you're in a crash on 93 at 2 a.m., you'll just have to wait till 6 a.m. for the police and an ambulance to show up?
Or if emergency road repair needs to be done at 3 a.m., drivers will just make the repairs themselves, since no one at MassDOT is working till 6 a.m.?
The police would be the only cost
The EMTs and tow truck (you forgot them) will bill you personally (or your insurance) for their services.
The police are a sunk cost. I would bet they there are less working the overnight shift, and theoretically they could be gotten rid of if control of the highways passed to the municipalities. Therefore, BPD would respond to accidents on the Pulaski Skyway, for example.
I would also bet that not a lot of "emergency repairs" are made overnight. Ironically, the T now follows the MassDOT procedure of closing (lanes for highways, lines for subways) at around 9 to do scheduled repairs, so no difference there.
What if we went down the rabbit hole?
Who really pays the cost of insurance, lost wages, or more societal prices associated with car accidents?
In the case of car insurance, mostly car users. However, I think an argument could be made that health related costs such as health insurance or lost wages are borne by everyone.
...paid for, by everyone.
Yeah, but
Those would not be immediate costs borne by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (unless you were an employee of the Commonwealth or uninsured.)
Not shutting down highways at 1 every morning is still much more cost effective than keeping the T open 24 hours a day, which is where this started.
I suspect you don't need this spelled out...
but I will anyways.
Every single time a train or bus is driven on a route, there are specific labor costs involved to have staff on the bus or train, labor costs which also have secondary costs in pensions, health care, etc... That's not the case in the example of a highway.
Sure there are emergency repair crews for the roads but what happens if the T breaks down again? Do the drivers hop out and fix the equipment. I think not. It's a similar set-up for each type of transit I suspect - there are specialized teams needed for repairs.
Maybe not entirely true...
To keep a highway open you have to keep law enforcement operating. After all, night time is when the drunk drivers like to come out. And I'm not sure that saying "Outside of winter plowing" works since winter plowing 1) happens a lot in New England and 2) might even be cheaper if they closed the highways at night to do it.
Law enforcement operates
Law enforcement operates anyways. Also, look at some sleepy towns, the only "action" their local law enforcement gets is by the highway that travels through thier town.
Still a bad analogy. You're trying to compare apples to oranges.
you're barking up the wrong tree
Of course any analogy made by kinopio is going to be anti-car. Any comment, really. They can't stand the fact that some people get around (often out of necessity) by driving.
To hell with late night
To hell with late night service. The 2 a.m. crowd in Boston consists of students and younger residents who can either walk home to their dorms or apartments or take an Uber or whatever. They don't need the Orange Line to Malden. I'm happy I can take the Green Line home to Newton at midnight. I'm happy with my commute because I ride buses from Newton to Watertown, but given the subway problems I read about most days, we can't be wasting money on the late night stuff.
Well as long as you're happy
Everyone else who may have different needs can fuck off.
Wage increases?
Why don't we also get to see what wage increases will be? How much of the fare increase will actually go towards system costs for improvements and repairs?
Please try not to laugh too hard when you read this.
99% to the overgenerous
99% to the overgenerous underfunded benefits 1% to fixing the peeling lead paint poisoning kids at Boylston Street Station.
Automation and automatic fare collection (a decade late and counting) on the commuter rail can't come fast enough.
Because automated fare collection
has worked so well for the subway and bus services.
First, let's revisit the promises the MBTA made when the decided to force automated fare collection on us:
1) Will eliminate fare evasion. Wrong. Anyone who rides the system on a regular basis can tell you that fare evasion has significantly increased, especially in subway stations Of course, the T will tell you otherwise, but that's only because - prior to implementation of AFC, the T never effectively tracked fare evasion.
2) Will reduce the work force. Wrong. All the former collectors who sat in token booths were made "customer service agents (CSAs)". Not only that, since the adoption of automated fare collection, the T has actually been hiring more CSAs. Add in the additional maintenance people that are required to restock the CharlieTicket machines, keep the faregates working, and otherwise repair the equipment, you actually have more people employed than in the old token and turnstile days.
3) Will make it easier and faster for people to pay their fares and enter the system. Wrong. Consider the constant faregate failures, especially when they go into "smart card only" mode (which affects nearly everyone on the commuter rail that uses a monthly pass), the frequent ticket dispensing machine failures, and the fact that even working faregates require you to deliberately pause - sometimes for up to a minute or more - before entering.
4) CharlieCard will be part of an integrated payment system that can be used for thing other than the T. An innovative concept that never went anywhere, largely because the T didn't provide any incentives for local merchants to join the program.
Let us also not forget that the cost of implementing the current system, which is still incomplete, addled the T with approximately $125 million in debt that they still haven't yet recovered in alleged cost savings.
Now let's look at what changes would need to be made to Commuter Rail to effectively implement automated fare collection in a way that would allow the T to reduce staffing to two people (engineer and one conductor) per train.
1) Construct high level platforms at all stations. Apart from the large design and construction expense, getting the local approvals would likely take at least 10 to 20 years, and it's possible that not all communities would agree to the necessary changes.
2) Provide fare dispensing machines at all commuter rail stations. Largely due to the cost, the MBTA has already indicated they have no interest in doing this, even though it would effectively serve 100% of the riders (I for one would love to be able to renew my monthly pass at my remote station) - that's how we wound up with the smartphone app - which wrongly assumes that a) everyone has a smartphone, and b) everyone who has a smartphone is willing to use it to pay their fare.
Should we take steps to make the T and Commuter Rail more efficient, especially in how their labor is deployed and what tasks they actually do? Absolutely. But proposing a course of "as much automation as possible" is not the answer, and most of the current problems lie with management decisions - especially the over-reliance on outside contractors for everything from station cleaning to design services.
Prior to Charlie Cards and
Prior to Charlie Cards and the new fareboxes, the old fareboxes used to SHRED the majority of the cash put into them and the Green Line couldn't even be bothered to collect outbound fares.
Do you have any idea how much money was being lost and literally destroyed by that?
The old turnstiles were easy to just walk through without dropping a token in with the right push-pull motion.
Tap and go with smart cards allows for much faster boarding IF drivers would enforce loading a minimum amount on a card at a time and not this one fare bullshit with dimes every @#@^@$&$& which cuts the line to get on has to pull.
About those outbound fares
No, but my gut tells me that not collecting fares outbound on the Green Line wasn't the huge impact that you seem to think it was. First, it wasn't really "outbound", it was surface stops outbound -- so it's not like every Red Sox fan got on at Park and paid nothing. Next, with the exception of the Longwood Medical Area commuters (who would have been pass users, so no loss there), the "lost fares" were from people who had already paid an outbound fare and got off at a stop to do an errand, then got back on to continue to their destination.
Lots of transit systems work on a time basis rather than a "rides" basis (for example, Portland) and seem to work a lot better than the MBTA. Why not do that here?
And boarding would be even
faster if adding fares on the vehicle was not permitted at all. That was also part of the original automated fare collection plan, that you could reload your card at stores or kiosks at certain bus stops.
about those high-level platforms...
This was a thoughtful comment on many fronts (and I would encourage you to register a handle for that reason), but I have time to ask about only one:
Can anyone (and I know that Ari O. has written about the numbers, but I don't remember an explanation) explain how it could possibly cost millions of dollars to erect a high level platform at a single CR station? Aren't we talking only about steel-reinforced concrete posts with steel-reinforced slab on top (plus railings, aides for blind riders and ADA ramps)? I imagine that once upon a time in America, this could be done in a week or less per station.
As for local permitting, that should not be an issue, because IIRC, the T is not subject to local control for that kind of stuff. In any case, I would think that most voters in the towns would be overjoyed to learn that their commute times would be significantly reduced by this capital improvement (imagine - all doors opening simultaneously at each stop without a conductor having to lift and lower a hatch at each individual door - what a novel concept!).
Freight and ADA access
Some stations require significant reengineering for appropriate ADA access (e.g. the Newton stations).
Some stations are on freight routes. Freight trains are wider than commuter trains, so you need a rail that's not adjacent to a high platform. If space is limited in the area around the station, this can be difficult to do.
Also, when the T constructs a new station, they tend to build a Brand New Station, with landscaping, signs, shelters, superstructures, etc. So while the cost of a high platform may not be higher than the cost of a low platform, it's the total cost of station reconstruction that stands in the way of widespread conversion.
Now, why the T doesn't start picking of high-value stations for platform raising...dunno. It's a crime that Back Back still has low platforms on tracks 5 and 7. Not only would that shorten the dwell time, it would give conductors more time to collect fares when coming out of South Station.
I actually posted that as an anon
only because I didn't realize my laptop hadn't logged me in under my handle until after I typed the missive.
As for the costs, time, and local permitting issues for high level platforms, I may have been too conservative in my estimates. However, if Greenbush and GLX (both projects where the T already owned most of the right of way) are any indication, some level of local opposition is inevitable.
Improvements and repairs?
Improvements and repairs? Please, this money goes to paying off Big Dig debt. Thanks Charlie! Add tolls to 93, especially the Zakim and O'Neil tunnel. Course Charlie will only increase the fees for transit riders.
you should stop posting this
I think this is the third time you've posted this. It's patently false. The T has doubled revenues over the past 15 years while their older debt has been paid down and interest rates have plummeted. The reason they are broke and broken is because almost every extra penny has been spent on salaries and bennies and almost nothing on capital. Making matters worse, apparently they even borrow money for operating costs. This organization is a poster child for government mismanagement.
Every T employee's salary is
Every T employee's salary is printed annually in the Herald. Is yours?
Deleo just said today there
Deleo just said today there would be no tax or fee increases for government services, doesn't that apply to MBTA transit users? Or just drivers?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/01/03/house-speaker-pledges-new-t...
I've already factored in a 7
I've already factored in a 7.5% increase when I did our family budget. An increase was no doubt coming. We'll cut expenses elsewhere, like our annual donations to Salvation Army or The Human Fund.
Or you could cut back on your
Or you could cut back on your Dunkin consumption...
To each his own.
Do what Sirius Radio did early on
They were up to their eyeballs in debt, so they offered $500 lifetime subscriptions.
What do you folks pay annually to use the T? $1,000? $1,200? Would you pay $5,000 today to ride the T for free for the rest of your life? 1,000 people do that, boom, five million up front to fix problems.
Thats called eating your seed
Thats called eating your seed corn. Fee years doen the road the solved problem suddenly gets worse.
TiVo
Interesting concept but doesn't work. This will backfire on SiriusXM.. much like it did for TiVo.
TiVo was notorious for offering cheap lifetime service on their boxes for many years. Well many people did. Now TiVo has so many, many customers who have exceeded the 'lifetime expectancy' of their TiVo box (~2 years) and now using up services that TiVo cannot charge them for (i.e. guide data, software updates, etc etc).
And now that TiVo is losing market share (due to people cutting the cord, and cheaper streaming hardware), they are in a real pickle because they are losing $ left and right and not gaining any new customers and still having to support customers who have long since (essentially) stopped paying eons ago.
TiVo service is too expensive
Not sure about others, but choosing to get a DVR from Comcast/RCN/FiOS instead of TiVo has always been a no-brainer. The TiVo monthly fee is as much or more than the cable co, and you have to buy the box. Oh, and you have to rent a cable card. If you pay for TV, it's really hard to make the case for TiVo from a price standpoint.
It worked for SXM (they don't
It worked for SXM (they don't offer lifetimes any more (except for a lifetime subscription when you buy a new Rolls Royce or Bentley) and only 5% at most of their 28 million subscribers are lifetime)
The difference from TiVo is that the marginal cost of the lifetime subscription is zero (since the only marginal cost is royalties, but that's a percentage of revenue for SXM). The folks who got them also understood that if Sirius/SXM went tits up (which they very nearly did at various points), they weren't going to get anything (they'd be the last-in-line unsecured creditors).
SXM also makes a small amount of money on the lifetime subs to this day; they make about $0.28/month per subscriber selling advertising on the non-music channels (and they also took back the free streaming from the lifetime subs; further, when the Sirius platform (which has the vast majority of the lifetime subs (they weren't available on the XM platform except for a few years after the merger)) is retired in the next few years, a lot of those lifetime subs will disappear (having exhausted their $75 receiver swaps (which aren't available for the in-car radios)).
The lifetime subscription gambit works in SXM's case, because the marginal cost of a zero-continuing-revenue subscription is zero (the fixed costs are nothing to sneeze at, from hundreds of millions per decade for satellites, to a negative gross margin on radio sales that was at one point multiple hundreds of dollars (Sirius circa 2005 was paying Best Buy $100 per radio which cost $100 to make; the negative gross margin is now down to about $40 per radio)).
None of those really applies much to the MBTA; in any case, any lifetime pass sold for less than $15,000 isn't even covering that user's share of the T's debt, so the lifetime pass might only be reasonable at something like $30,000 (which takes 30 years or so to pay back, depending on assumptions around fare increases). And if the operating expenses aren't close to being covered by revenue (even wages and benefits aren't close to being covered by operating revenue), debt reduction from frontloading revenue isn't going to help.
MBTA Forever Stamps
Like other people replied, a lifetime membership would be the T shooting themselves in the foot in the long term (not that there's anything new about that with the T), but perhaps they could start selling year-long passes at an even steeper per-ride discount than monthly passholders get. Or, they could do something like the USPS did with "forever" stamps: Let people prepay for as many monthly passes (or rides, or whatever) as they want, right now, at the current fair price. I'm sure some commuters would buy years of passes right away, and this kind of pricing scheme would probably give the T an infusion of cash in the months before every future fair increase, as people go out and buy months/years of T usage at the current fairs before the higher fairs kick in.
Fix for Globe delivery problem?
Maybe Governor Baker could appoint a similar board to resolve the Globe delivery issues.
1. Shrink the paper more.
2. Increase the price more.
3. ?
4. Profit!
I'm glad they're planning to
I'm glad they're planning to do away with the Outer Express Bus zone. It makes no sense -- a trip from Waltham currently costs more if the first bus to show up happens to be one that hops on the pike in West Newton, rather than a Newton Corner route. And the North Shore express routes are all Inner Express, even though they're longer than the trip to Waltham.
It's too bad they aren't rethinking the Commuter Rail fare structure as well. It vies for highest in the country per mile (maybe NYC edged slightly ahead recently, but this isn't a contest we should be proud to be in). And except for monthly passes, there are *no* further discounts available -- no weeklies, no discount on a 10-trip. That's not the way to gain ridership from people who have alternatives.
Fiscal and Management Control Board
Baker's baby.
It's like they live in bizarro world.
Why are local bus pass increases nearly doubled?
While almost everyone else gets away with only about 5 or 10% increases, those of us who use local bus passes are going to get hit with either a 16% or (more likely) a 19.5% increase (students who use passes are the other ones going to get hit hard, with a 23.1% increase either way).
Way to discourage pass use, MBTA. Also, way to slow bus trips even further (as people will be priced out of the pass market, they'll be joining those who already load their Charlie Cards on the bus [the one part of the current fare paying system I despise], causing longer wait times at bus stops).
Well, bus passes are really
Well, bus passes are really cheap to begin with. What other big city has a monthly bus pass for $50? Even with the bigger proposed increase, $59.75 is still a great deal.
NYC: $116.50 (includes the subway)
DC: $17.50/week = about $70/month
Philly: $91 (includes the subway)
SF: $70 (includes trolleys)
Baltimore: $68 (includes the 1 subway line and 1 trolley)
Miami: $112.50 (includes the 1 subway line)
Los Angeles: $122 (includes the subway, such as it is)
Pittsburgh: $97.50 (includes 1 zone of light rail)
Seattle: $99 peak/$90 off-peak (includes 1 zone of the 1 light rail line)
And people in bus land who also ride the subway benefited greatly from the fare policy changes a few years ago. The bus+subway Combo Pass was replaced by a much cheaper Link Pass. And for people riding casually, free/discounted bus-subway transfers were implemented.
Here's my prediction.
What's the point of releasing the two different proposals? So when they go with the lower one, we'll all say, "Thank you so much for keeping the fare hike as low as possible! It could have been so much worse!"
Of course, it's not like we have much choice. We'll accept yet another hike that far outpaces inflation (not to mention any cost-of-living wage hikes we might be lucky enough to get). Just like we accept the ever-diminishing levels of service.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Another thing with fare
Another thing with fare collection: even if the rider has already pre-paid via a monthly pass, if they don't swipe their Charlie Card / get their CR pass checked, the MBTA completely misses out on important ridership data that can not only inform service planning but also demonstrate justification for improvement/expansion.
The T has other means of
The T has other means of collecting ridership data that are more reliable than farebox stats. Some vehicles have devices to count people boarding and exiting, and they have people counting from time to time.