Imagine for a moment that the MBTA was shut down tomorrow, the rolling stock sold, the land sold or redeveloped into highways, parking garages and bike paths.
Sales taxes could once again be appropriated to help bring about a brighter future for Boston.
Picture the city reclaimed for the automobile!
Think of traffic vanishing with the opening of the new Southwest Corridor Expressway!
Consider the joy it would be to have a few extra lanes on Commonwealth Ave! The mall replaced with more sensible (treeless, windswept, suburban office park, Rose F. Kennedy Greenway-esque) landscaping!
More of the wasted space that is the Boston Common put to good use as a parking garage! (EDIT: Never mind)
We’ll call it The Menino Option.
Hate to break it to you folks, but this brilliant scheme would fall victim not only to the problem of Induced Demand (something anti-mass transit campaigners will never accept…*cough*CentreStinJP*cough*) but the fact that the T’s debt crisis is worse than I had imagined.
Let’s look at the agenda for the next Board of Director’s meeting this Thursday night. Sure there is really interesting stuff about buying seventy five new commuter rail coaches, but this is easily the most important snippet of info in the entire thing:
13. Authorization 1) to purchase a one year Property Insurance
policy, including Boiler & Machinery Insurance and Terrorism
Insurance, covering real and personal property including rolling
stock, having a total combined replacement value of $6.0 Billion,
subject to a blanket policy limit of $500,000,000, commencing on March
1, 2008, through Marsh USA, Inc. (insurance broker) and FM Global
(insurance carrier), subject to an annual cost (inclusive of broker
fees and membership credits) of $1,597,478; and 2) to continue the
Authority’s commitment to achieve and maintain Highly Protected Risk
(HPR) status, in our facilities and operations, which entitle the
Authority to significantly reduced insurance premium rates.
The MBTA’s debt is $8.1 billion (this figure includes interest), which means that even an overnight fire-sale wouldn’t even cover the outstanding bills. That figure – which has undoubtably grown since it was provided last June – is 133% of what the entire MBTA is worth.
Ouch.