Last week, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration announced a fresh package of MBTA fare deals, including a sweet half-price monthly pass discount for commuter rail customers.
In rolling out the promotion, Healey made an appearance at a Belmont commuter rail station, stating that the “savings will put money back in people’s pockets while giving more riders the flexibility they need to get to work, school, and everywhere in between.”
That’s true, unless you happen to live in Boston’s neighborhoods served by the Fairmount Line.
It turns out that the sweetest part of the deal— the half-price monthly pass— has an exclusion for customers in Fairmount Line’s Zone 1A, which includes all of the stations in Dorchester and Mattapan. Monthly passes for everyone else— in Zones 1 through 10— will remain half-price through November.
The city stretch of the Fairmount Line is classified as Zone 1A, the same fare category as the subway. Its monthly pass will stay set at $90.
There are some perks of the Healey-MBTA promotion that will be offered to our communities. Beginning Sept. 1, bus and subway riders can make unlimited transfers during a two-hour window while paying only the highest fare. That could help someone who takes a bus to the Red Line, makes a quick stop, and returns home within two hours, for example. And Zone 1A Fairmount pass-holders can buy a ticket on weekends for $1 each way, just like everyone else.
A separate pilot that offers free MBTA travel for people 75 and older — and who have given up their driver’s licenses— is also universal.
But why not include city Fairmount customers? The state’s rationale appears to be that city riders already pay less than suburban riders and therefore do not deserve the same temporary relief. That’s a tone-deaf, callous position.
Fairmount riders pay less because they travel shorter distances. But they also live along a rail corridor that has historically received less frequent service, fewer amenities, and less attention than commuter lines serving wealthier suburban communities.
And just like our suburban neighbors, city riders were asked to adjust to big changes this summer to accommodate special FIFA World Cup trains that changed up schedules and forced some people to break up their daily routines to welcome fans from around the world. It’s part of the back-story on why the state is offering these deals to most commuter rail users.
Mela Bush, a longtime Fairmount Line advocate now active with the group Action 4 Equity, put it plainly: “We shouldn’t be nickel and dimed. Where is our mitigation and compensation?”
Bush raised the fairness issue last spring when MBTA board members were first briefed on the idea. She was essentially told that city residents already pay less than their suburban seatmates and therefore should not get the break now being afforded to the rest of the system.
“It looks a little like TR to me,” Bush said, using her own shorthand for “transit racism.” “This is not right.”
The fare snub also lands right after Fairmount boosters learned that we’ll need to wait longer for promised improvements. Plans to electrify the line—and provide cleaner, faster, more frequent service—have slipped further into the future due to a decision made by the MBTA board last spring.
Our friends and colleagues in the burbs deserve relief. But so do people in our community. The Healey administration and MBTA should extend the half-price monthly-pass offer to Zone 1A. A system that claims to value equity should not treat Fairmount riders as an afterthought.
