May 5, 2008 8:49 pm US/Eastern
MBTA Gets Failing Grade For Financial Efficiency
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
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A WBZ investigation last week found many buses driving their routes, virtually empty.
WBZ
The "T" is on track to break the ridership record for this fiscal year. Despite these impressive numbers, the T is struggling to get by.
Yes, more people are taking the T these days -- and that's good for everyone, but the system is broke and the MBTA says they can't add additional service.
As we first showed you in a
report last week, there are a lot of questions about just how efficient the MBTA is with its resources.
There are no worries about getting a seat on some regularly scheduled buses WBZ found virtually empty. Last week WBZ showed you three MBTA buses from downtown Boston, to Jamaica Plain to Nahant -- going stop to stop with rows and rows of empty seats.
In fact, WBZ found that the MBTA has more than a dozen bus routes that service less than 100 people each day.
The head of the Mass. Taxpayers Association said that should not be happening.
According to Commonwealth Magazine, the Federal Transit Administration is giving MBTA buses a failing grade when it comes to efficiency.
The feds say nationally, transit fares cover, on average, 34 percent of the actual cost of each ride. The MBTA buses perform way below that standard -- covering only 21 percent of their cost.
That's the second worst performance of any major bus system in the country.
Regardless, MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas suggests you can't just look at buses, but the benefits the whole MBTA system brings to the region. "When you look at the investment you have with public transportation, it is an economic engine. We move 1.2, 1.3 million people every day. We have over 40,000 parking spots of our own that are filled with cars. All of those cars are not congesting the roadways."
As for those under-used bus lines, Grabauskas says it's the only transportation some people have, however; every two years the MBTA reviews all of the bus routes and eliminates the ones with little or no ridership.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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