Went to the gym this morning, and on the way picked up a Metro, and saw the front page piece on a possible (read: probable) fare hike to cover a shortfall caused by higher gas prices. This is the piece the charming and tactful Patrick mentioned here.

Patrick. First of all, Metro pays my rent. It’s not as bad as all that. It’s just a bunch of cut-n-paste AP reportage, with some local listings thrown in for good measure. And it’s free. Samizdat it’s not, but, really, what do you want? Anyway, you heard it there first, dincha? Doesn’t that count for something?

So another fare hike. If every time the T is in hock they can hike the fares, we can look forward to paying about thirty bucks a trip by 2010. It’s not the answer, Dan.

If anyone reading agrees do two things:

1) write GM Daniel Grabauskas. His email is gm@mbta.com. Doesn’t matter that he doesn’t read his email. Send him a bunch with the subject line: “NO to fare hikes!” and tell him to take his fare hike and stick it up his ass. In a charming and tactful way, of course. And then…

2) contact your local and state representatives (you can find their email addresses here–or if you do not know your local rep, go here, and once you have filled in the required fields and clicked the “find my election information,” scroll down to the “District Representatives” section, click on the appropriate link, and go from there), and demand that they LEGISLATE A FARE FREEZE, like the one that was in place all those years when we were paying 85¢ for the exact same sucky service(and it was not so long ago–up to 2003, when Governot Romney signed a bill into law allowing fare hikes).

#2 is actually the more important of the two points. Seems to me, this is about the only way to agitate for a cease-and-desist on fare hikes. Riders obviously can’t afford to boycott the T. They’ve got us by the balls, basically. That’s why the legislature should step in. And it is not inconceivable that they could do just that. After all, they have done so in the past.

A legislated fare freeze forces the MBTA to think outside the box instead of dipping into rider’s pockets every time they fuck up.

Feel free to post any other prescriptions you can think of. I’d appreciate hearing them.