The MBTA needs money – but we knew that already.
The unprecedented amount of snow that has fallen on Boston – more than 5.5 ft. – this winter has made commuters hyperaware of the T’s financial woes; when passengers get stranded on a disabled Red Line train in the middle of a snow storm, people aren’t surprised.
But unfortunately, we seem to like complaining about train breakdowns, delays and overcrowded platforms more than we like the idea of paying extra to help prevent those issues from happening in the first place.
Look no further than the “Modernizing Boston’s Transit” GoFundMe campaign, started last week by Charlestown resident Janssen McCormick. Despite the absurd $30-billion fundraising goal McCormick set, the idea of launching a crowdfunding campaign to theoretically improve an unreliable transit agency – one that’s buried under $9 billion of debt – is a stroke of creative genius. Because what McCormick’s GoFundMe campaign has done is offer daily commuters, surely frustrated by the T’s recent string of debacles, a chance to show, literally, how much they want public transportation to improve.
The GoFundMe campaign launched five days ago, on February 4. As of Monday afternoon, 34 donors have helped the campaign raise a grand total of $640. “Which is about $600 more than I ever imagined this GoFundMe would raise,” McCormick wrote on the campaign page Sunday night.
The fact that 34 people have been willing to donate money to a GoFundMe campaign created out of pure frustration to humorously highlight the T’s remarkable state of disrepair, and isn’t supposed to be taken all that seriously, indicates just how fed up people are with the ongoing situation. But considering that, as McCormick writes, “This [Modernizing Boston’s Transit] fundraiser has been shared over 2k times on Facebook and covered in numerous media outlets,” it feels like more than $640 should have been raised thus far.
True, perhaps the great majority of people who have read or heard about McCormick’s campaign – even if they truly want to give money to the cause – are wary of donating to a losing campaign. After all, where’s the money going to go?
“If we do not reach our goal,” McCormick writes, “all money raised will go to Alternatives for Community & Environment.”
(ACE, a local activist organization, tirelessly campaigned for a $10 monthly Youth Pass for T riders between the ages of 12 and 21. The T plans to offer a one-year pilot Youth Pass program, beginning July 1.)
With the crowdfunding effort destined to fall short of its $30-billion goal, “Modernizing Boston’s Transit” has essentially morphed into a fundraising effort for ACE. Will this mean fewer donations? Unclear. But if the performance of an earlier crowdfunding campaign for late-night T service is any indication, the answer is yes.
The late-night T service fundraiser was spearheaded by the Future Boston Alliance last March, just before the start of the T’s one-year pilot program. Future Boston’s Indiegogo campaign launched on March 12. It closed April 26, having raised $5,629.
The goal was $30,000.
It’s unfair to compare McCormick’s GoFundMe campaign to Future Boston’s late-night service fundraiser; the former is some form of dark comedy which has at least shed a little more light on the T’s major financial problems, while the latter was a legitimate attempt to raise money for a service many begged for before it was provided. But the point is, when we’re asked to give money to support transportation improvements we say we want, we don’t participate nearly as much as it seems we should be willing to.
