I found an interesting article in Boston Magazine this month (the Feb 2011 issue) about the financial problem of the T (Boston's subway) and I'd link to it, but their website is useless.
If you go to the main site, bostonmagazine.com you find a list of articles but it's not complete. I didn't see the article listed. The tabs at the top are all guide (or maybe Best of Boston) stuff. To the right is a cover of this month's issue with text "Take a look inside our latest issue". If you click on the title "February 2011" you find it's a broken link "http://issues/in_this_issue.html/archive/index.html?year=2011&month=2". Yeah that looks like a DNS name. I also found one like this: "http://boston_home/issue/index.html/archive/index.html?year=2011&month=2"
And once you find the valid Table of Contents for the issue, the article isn't there.
Update: Maybe they heard me. I now see the article online here.
5 comments:
Too bad, because frankly I'd like to know more about the Boston T and why a typical Bostonite can get a pass for something less than $60 per month to go throughout the city via bus, rail, etc, yet a one-specific-route buss pass in Pitt costs 1.5 times that and keeps going up while services decrease.
Not sure about passes but they did say that our rides are $1.70 while others are: Chicago $2.25, Philadelphia $2, and NY $2.25.
I can't stand Boston.com itself - too much clutter, not enough decent content.
As for metro rides ... with current FX rates .... Paris is 2.35 for one-way and London is 3.07 (only for within Zone 1)
Both websites very good
I was curious too and poked around a little to compare rates. I came up with a report (http://dansweat.gsu.edu/atlantaissues/issue4.pdf) which suggest the MBTA gets most of its funding from the state subsidies (1% of the sales tax) rather than through fares.
See the Update for the link to the article. There's more to it than would seem obvious (of course). In 2000 the legislature changed their funding to use a new and flawed formula. Also, sales tax revenue has been flat and debt servicing costs have gone up. And they got saddled with $1.6 billion debt from Big Di. And of course the maintenance costs have been put off so there's more to do now.
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