Concerned citizen asks, “Charlie, what’s your plan for the MBTA?”
The Daily News of Newburyport recently published a letter from Amesbury resident, Marianne Rutter, asking Governor Baker how he plans to address desperately needed improvements to the state’s public transportation and roadways. The letter detailed the frustrations of commuters across the state with trains, buses and roadways that are in disrepair. The letter goes on to point out that Massachusetts is currently ranked 47th for commute times and 45th when it comes to quality of transit, with “275 disabled trains or signal problems on T lines” in 2018 alone.
Gov. Baker’s “solutions” to these problems are unremitting efforts to cut state funding for transportation and infrastructure, to raise fares and to privatize parts of the MBTA service.
As a result, if you drive to work, either you’ll have to put up with unacceptably bad roads and be very patient for repairs, or your city or town will have to pony up the money to repave streets and repair crumbling bridges because our state’s chief executive won’t support allocating the money to do so.
This is the response from the same leader who, as a key member of the Weld administration, bankrupted the T in the first place to help pay for the Big Dig. One wonders what benefits we could be enjoying today with improved trains and buses, roads and bridges, if those resources hadn’t taken a wrong turn back then.
