Mayor Walsh spoke out against service cuts as MBTA delays vote

BOSTON — Boston Mayor Marty Walsh joined council president Kim Janey and other leaders who pushed strongly against many proposed MBTA service cuts at a news conference Monday morning.

Facing mounting deficits and low ridership, the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board has proposed cutting the frequency of bus and subway routes, ending ferry service, stopping weekday commuter rail service at 9 p.m., and ending weekend commuter rail operations.

The vote was originally scheduled for Dec. 7, but delayed to Dec. 14.

Walsh and other speakers said that more than 800 MBTA jobs would be jeopardized and that the cuts are short-sighted. He said the Biden-Harris administration that’s coming soon is open to federal transit help and that with COVID-19 vaccines in the near future, many commuters will start returning in the coming months.

“The bottom line here is these cuts are just simply wrong,” Walsh said. “They’d discourage ridership, slow our recovery.”

Walsh and the leaders added that the service cuts would disproportionately hurt people of color, who are far more likely to ride buses in Boston, hurt low-income workers, people who do not own a car, essential workers who work late shifts, residents with disabilities, and others.

Advocates of the proposed cuts argue that public transit service cuts would hamper the economic recovery.

If approved, the cuts would take effect as early as the spring.

The MBTA’s budget deficit is in the tens of millions of dollars and is projected to hit the hundreds of millions of dollars next year.

MBTA leadership has expressed an intention to restore service cuts as soon as fiscally possible, but has not outlined a timetable or specific metrics that would trigger a restoration.

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