By Zac Estrada, News Staff
More than a dozen Northeastern students began organizing this week alongside an Emerson College student to voice their concerns about proposed fee hikes and service cuts to the Green Line E branch by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA).
The efforts stem from Emerson freshman Zach Tucker, who founded the website StudentsAgainstTCuts.org and corresponding Facebook page to gain support to protest two scenarios the MBTA is evaluating over the next few months to close a projected $185 million budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2013 by raising fees on the T and buses and reducing services such as 101 bus routes and E Line service on weekends.
Students Against T Cuts is already preparing to attend public meetings hosted by the MBTA through March, including one from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight at Roxbury Community College.
“These scenarios are not set in stone, but they’re probably going to go with some variation of either one,” said Justin Bensan, who is leading the Northeastern section of Students Against T Cuts at a meeting on Monday in Curry Student Center of students against the MBTA proposals. “Fare increases are here to stay and service decreases are likely to follow.”
Bensan, a middler political science major, said he’s heard students are “really outraged” about these proposals. MBTA’s own estimates suggest up to 17 percent of ridership could be effected by cuts.
“They’re going to make a decision on a proposal by April,” said Bensan, who did a co-op as an assistant transportation policy analyst last year at the MBTA. “We want to maintain as many services as possible while still being able to let the T close its deficit.”
Tucker, who attended the meeting Monday at Northeastern, said changing the MBTA’s mind is going to be an uphill battle. The public agency is crippled under about $9 billion of debt since state legislation in 2000 that made the MBTA its own agency that had to essentially fund itself – including covering a $3.3 billion debt from the Big Dig project.
“The T was basically born broke,” Tucker said. “Now it’s gotten to the point where they can’t close this gap without doing something severe.”
Tucker and Bensan’s long-term goal would be to meet with transportation officials to set a plan in motion to fund the MBTA without it resorting to more service cuts and fare increases. But since any decision made by the agency would go into effect by July 1, the goal of Students Against T Cuts is to spread the word about what services are on the chopping block and mobilize students, while searching for some kind of compromise.
Tucker said it’s not only college students from area colleges who are going to be effected. The E Line serves the Prudential Center, Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall and Longwood Medical Area, which is home to five hospitals.
“When you look at a public agency like the T, it’s a resource for the region, not a business. As a resource, it serves a number of businesses and services for the area,” Tucker said. “While you may hear that cutting the E Line on weekends is not as severe as people make it seem because the 39 bus runs down Huntington Avenue, that doesn’t sound like a good solution. Are you going to ask someone to take the bus, one that doesn’t run as frequently, to go to the hospital?”
Tucker wants to get subgroups of Students Against T Cuts started at other Boston colleges, similar to Northeastern’s group, to focus on how these proposed MBTA service cuts are going to affect students and neighborhoods.
The group’s goal is to attract “a very broad coalition of students” to the cause, as well as get on-campus student groups, local non-profits and even high schools attached to the project, Bensan said.
“I hope more students get involved because this is something that’s going to affect many people,” he said.
Bensan told The News he plans to speak tonight at the public meeting and said at least 10 students would attend. Students will organize banners and signs to hold up when someone from the community says something they agree with.
In a Jan. 11 email to The News, Northeastern Director of Marketing and Communications Renata Nyul said the university will work with MBTA officials regarding both scenarios proposed and potential impact. She wrote any reduction in E Line service would have a negative effect on Northeastern and the surrounding community.
“The service is critical to students and employees of Northeastern, as well as visitors to the university. Residents of several neighborhoods rely on the E Line instead of cars,” Nyul said in the email. “Eliminating the weekend E Line service would also hurt the promotion of Boston’s premier cultural institutions.”
