“What we’ve heard from customers — some customers, not all — is that they’d rather pay a little more than see their service cut, so that’s a place where [we] are focused,’’ Davey said, addressing reporters after an unusually charged T board meeting.
Inside the meeting, between airhorn honks, harmonica blasts, and call-and-response cries, riders described the pain that cuts and fare increases would inflict on their families and society’s most vulnerable. Others said the changes would be a grave mistake for the region’s economy, environment, and quality of life, and a blow to the record ridership the T has witnessed recently.
An additional 100 or so, turned away from the packed room for fire-code reasons, led cheers in the hall that could be heard through the closed doors — “We are! The 99 percent!’’ and “Banks get bailed out! We get sold out!’’ — until State Police eventually encouraged them to disperse for disturbing the office floors above the State Transportation Building’s atrium.
The board meeting, normally a staid affair, resembled many of the 31 public hearings that the T conducted throughout Greater Boston over the past two months, the last of them on Monday, on two proposed scenarios for cutting service and raising fares.
Even before Chairman John R. Jenkins could call on the dozens of speakers who had signed in, the group Occupy MBTA led a chant to demand no service cuts, no layoffs of MBTA employees, and no fare hikes.
“We demand! A public transportation system! That is accessible! To all of the 99 percent!’’ bellowed Noah McKenna, a 25-year-old laboratory technician from Jamaica Plain, as scores repeated at each pause. He urged the T to default on its loans before it turns to riders for more money. “The banks should be your first cut. Not the E Line! Not the commuter rail! Not the ferries!’’