Fare and Balanced

South Station at rush hour can seem like an alien land for Boston’s beleaguered straphangers, accustomed as they are to slashed seats, cracked windows, and grimy, Metro-strewn platforms. Upstairs in the “Great Room,” a suburban mass makes its way to the commuter rail platforms beyond the food court. Some are carrying bags from Saks or Ann Taylor; others have briefcases or courier bags emblazoned with the names of their companies. It’s a presentable crowd, presumably making good money and siring cultivated kids who, they will come to believe after too many “are your children safe?” exposés, are being actively hunted by 90 percent of the world’s ambulatory population.

I look at this group, contemplate the T’s plan to raise fares across the board next year—merely to maintain its current sterling service—and think: “Somebody should hit these people with a gargantuan fare hike.”

Mean-spirited? Not when you consider that commuter rail, and the suburban communities that have benefited from its overexpansion, is one of the reasons the T is such a disaster. Since 1990, the transit system has expanded faster than any other in the country, mostly as an ultimately unnecessary environmental countermeasure to the Big Dig—a project largely drawn up, lest we forget, to reduce the traffic headaches of suburban commuters. Originally the state agreed to foot the bill for the T’s build-out. But in 2000, the legislature overhauled the T’s funding, making it tougher to fund the mandated projects.

Today, the T finds itself $8.1 billion in the hole, with a $2.5 billion maintenance backlog and a city full of commuters ready to start flipping over buses and setting them on fire, were the buses not already sorta doing that on their own. Key projects promised to urbanites—most notably the northward Green Line extension—are on hold. As a further indignity, Bostonians lost Night Owl bus service and gained the Silver Line, which is less cutting-edge rapid transit than running joke predicated upon the T assuming that poor people can’t tell the difference between a train and a bus.

So here’s my idea: Spare bus and subway riders the proposed 25 percent hike (Lord knows they’ve suffered enough), and stick the entire increase to the commuter rail crowd. Using the T’s 2005 financials, this would jack one-way commuter rail tickets by around 80 percent, sending them from between $1.25 and $6 to between $2.25 and $10.80. Taking the commuter rail would still be far cheaper than driving. It would also be more in line with rail service in other cities. A 20.5-mile rush-hour trip on the MTA from Grand Central station to Mamaroneck, New York, for example, costs $8.50. A similar trip on the T—say, from Sharon to Boston—would jump from the current price of $4.50 to $8.10.

Massachusetts has long prided itself on having the nation’s lowest transit fares. But now, with the Boston area among the country’s most expensive places to live and subway and bus fares approaching those of similarly sized transit systems in Philly and DC, what’s the sense of continuing to strangle the T’s urban lines to maintain cheap commuter rail rates? Instead of subsidizing everyone, we could have a truly progressive system, where the majority of riders subsidize their poorer peers.

As for concerns about deterring would-be riders—a report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation cautioned against raising fares because that may scare away commuters just when new customers are badly needed—those could be solved by borrowing a page from Virgin Atlantic. Which is to say, passengers could be pacified with free crap. Giving riders a complimentary cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee would be received as concrete evidence that they’re getting more for their money, and the T could work out deals that would keep the cost low: It gets points for improving the commuters’ experience, and Dunkin’ Donuts gets ads and a chance to hook even more people on its liquid crack. Or the T could rotate vendors. Each month there’d be a new surprise—hand lotion, magazines, energy bars, baubles, shiny things, whatever.

Of course, this would have to be a stopgap, part of a broader plan to bail out the T, modernize the system, and prevent it from devolving into some kind of Indian Railways scenario. Major pressure would have to be put on lawmakers to beat concessions out of the unions so that the T can cut costs. (Not being obligated to pay its employees well above the going rate for transit workers would be a good place to start.) In the meantime, for this lifetime subway rider, shifting the bulk of the newest fare hike to the ’burbs seems like a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it’ll avenge urban commuters who’ve been watching, with something approaching horror, their beloved public transit system fall apart before their eyes.