Boston Globe Editorial

2/21/08 - THE MBTA Blue Line was refreshed by the addition of four new cars yesterday, the first of 94 that will replace the 70-car fleet on the Bowdoin-to-Wonderland run. But the T is a quirky, creaky system, as shown by the condition of the Blue Line, which was created by the fusion of a trolley service with a narrow-gauge railway. The T needs a financial renovation to match the quality of the cars.

"We're broke," said General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas earlier this month, explaining that the T faced a $75 million deficit for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. So how could it afford 94 cars costing $172 million? The federal government defrayed 80 percent of the cost, and the rest came from the T's capital budget. But federal aid won't pay the cost of maintaining the cars and stations, nor work down the $8 billion debt that consumes 27 percent of the T budget every year.

The Legislature thought it had solved the problem of T financing in 1999, when it allotted the authority 20 percent of sales tax revenue. That revenue source hasn't grown as expected. By maintaining the heavy burden of T debt and keeping in place expensive labor contracts, the Legislature guaranteed it would need to revisit the problem. At the least, the Legislature should consider moving some T debt to other state accounts, and reexamining the relationship between the authority and its employee unions.

The Patrick administration is also looking for new approaches to transportation funding, for highways as well as the T. While new cars are fun to ride and easy for public officials to celebrate, as they did at the Aquarium station yesterday, there is little glory in providing money to keep up day-to-day service.

All the Blue Line stations are being lengthened to accommodate six-car trains, instead of four-car ones. That will reduce rush-hour overcrowding but result in higher maintenance costs because of the expanded fleet. And the cars have to be specially designed at 48 feet long to cope with tight curves in 100-year-old tunnels designed for trolleys. The T cannot be run on the cheap.

A ceremony similar to yesterday's at the Aquarium station took place July 16, 1979, at Orient Heights, when the first 70 "Bluebell" cars went into service. They were an upgrade from the 55-year-old subway cars, oldest in the nation, that had replaced the trolleys that had run from Bowdoin through the harbor tunnel to East Boston. The trains reached Wonderland in Revere in the 1950s along an abandoned rail line.

Seventeen months after the Orient Heights gala, on Saturday, Dec. 6, 1980, the entire MBTA system shut down because of a lack of money. An energized Legislature got it back in operation in time for the Monday commute. The political leadership of Massachusetts shouldn't wait for a crisis to put the MBTA on a sustainable financial footing.

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