State to Back Mass Pike Debt. WTF?!

I have nothing against commuters from the western suburbs and every so often I use the Mass Pike to travel to NYC. But after years of news about the MBTA's crushing debt, which has resulted in service cuts and fare raises, why is the Mass Pike getting state-backed debt relief? This comes after recent news that fewer people are using the Pike as more people are using the T. As state Treasurer Tim Cahill said, "the taxpayers deserve better than this."

Comments

[Bob]

The Pike's original mandate was to build and pay for the Mass Pike --- a road stretching from Downtown Boston to the New York state line. That mandate has been accomplished.

More recently, the Pike became a vehicle to pay for the Big Dig, and it's now responsible for I-don't-know-how-much of that project. That was an unfunded expansion of its mandate --- unfunded, because the Big Dig doesn't have any tolls from whence the Pike can collect revenues.

It's unfair, to say the least, to expect people from the Western Suburbs (or those who work in the Western Suburbs) to pay for the Big Dig in a way we don't expect others to pay for it.

I've long believed it's time to dump the Pike tolls, eliminate the agency, and raise the gas tax to compensate. That is the simplest, fairest way to pay for our roads. Either that, or put up tolls everywhere, at which point we'd suddenly find we have plenty of money to pay for this stuff.

[Rob]

My guess is it's much easier to pass in the Legislature as the Pike unites legislators from all parts of the state, while the MBTA is largely viewed as a Greater Boston entity.

[Bob]

Here's a good article on the background. We're so screwed...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/17/big_digs_red_ink_engulfs_state/

By the way, if we'd just raised the gas tax in the 1990's when gas was cheap and we could all afford an extra $1/gal, this probably could have been paid for. We could lower it again now.