I agree with The Herald that two of the biggest problems facing the MBTA and its riders are “forward funding” and the worker’s unions.

While I’m all for worker’s rights, I’m not for leveraging them to gouge other workers, like me, for example. Especially at a time when workers in general are being so egregiously treated by employers everywhere. What makes it worse is the level of service on the T. While there are many exceptions, I’m sure (there must be, right?), bad behavior seems, sadly, to be the norm. And I guarantee you’d be sickened to know what the median income of an MBTA employee is. And the job comes with old school perks from a bygone era, too.

As for forward funding: it ties the T’s budget to the state sales tax, so that when sales in the state are down, so is the T’s budget. The organization also has an enormous debt to pay off from, like, the Pleistocene era. The legislature bears ultimate responsibility for the way the T’s budget is set, and this way clearly is not working.

What I find comical is how a couple of years ago when the T banned buskers from the platforms there was this great hue and cry from the peanut gallery. No! Save the buskers! Leave the mimes alone! Let them play! Let them frolic in the underground! But when it comes to a fare hike that will impact the average T-rider enormously—I mean, we’re talking a nearly forty percent increase here–think of that over the space of a year—there’s nothing but stunned silence. People feel powerless, apparently, and that fare hikes like this are inevitable and unstoppable.

Take a page from the immigrants’ playbook. There’s strength in numbers. How do workers get rights? They organize and agitate. Remember: it’s not just a T issue. It’s a legislative issue.