Word: mta
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...conducted in Boston department stores show that shoppers who come to the store in cars buy 40 percent more merchandise that those who arrive by bus or subway. Secondly, parking lots farther away then 800 feet from shopping centers have proven unsuccessful and discouraging. Motorists prefer to come by MTA channels rather than park this far away. Thirdly, surface parking lots have been voted much more efficient than either the subterranean or "skyscrapper" variety, especially for a highly transient trade...
...public levy problem, however, is not so easily solved. Since 1918, the cities and towns through which the El ran absorbed the yearly deficit. But these lesses had been reasonable; the towns could pay them off without too much difficulty. Now the towns cannot cover the MTA excess expenses without raising their own property tax rates. Consequently, they have rebelled against the old system...
Dever has offered two methods for reallocating the deficits but both have met loud protest from the groups who will have to pay. First, he wanted the State legislature to determine that the MTA lines and the subways were "highways" and, as such, were to be maintained by the receipts from gasoline and other automotive taxes. The car owners objected to this plan; they argued that persons who paid a gas tax were the least likely to use the MTA. And this program was disregarded entirely early this year, when the State Supreme Court ruled such action illegal...
When the gas tax solution fell through, the governor proposed his second alternative--the absorption of 12 1/2 percent of the annual loss by 14 "fringe" communities that do not actually have the MTA service but whose residents frequently use the MTA system. But these towns fail to see why they should have to pay such a percentage if the rest of New England, which certainly benefits from the MTA, has to pay nothing. Besides that, the metropolitan cities and towns will still have to cover 87 1/2 percent of the losses...
...best, operating a public transit line can never really show a profit--not in these days of so much private transportation. Yet the MTA remains for a large number of people a very necessary utility. The public therefore will have to pay either by higher taxes or a fare increase to keep the system running; and the sooner the State realizes that and sets up the mechanics for a more efficient MTA, the less the public will have...