The T can't afford to keep one of its most successful operations going, yet it can afford to offer health insurance to its employees at no cost to them. How about having T employees pay 20 or 25% of their health care premiums? That would go a long way toward addressing some of the budget shortfall.

Mean-Willie: With the passage of Transportation Reform all MBTA employees are now part of the State's Group Insurance commission plan. This plan requires MBTA employees to pay a % of theri premium costs, plus increased co-pays.

The Boston Glob's bow-tied thumbsuckers display once again the ignorance this port city newspaper has about the maritime culture that typifies Boston and ocean shore cities and towns. The Blob thimkpiece is on target with naming Hull, Hingham and Quincy as participants in subsidized commuter ferry operations, but it also misses two unsubsidized commuter boat operations, from Salem and Winthrop. Instead, the Blob offers what appears to be a politically-inspired naming of Lynn and Chelsea as expressing "interest in adding ferry service over the years". Seems to me that I have heard talk of Scituate also wishing to run some of its commuters to boston by high speed boat. The Blob chooses to ignore the main question - subsidy. Instead its thumbsucker assigned the maritime beat opts to recommend Massport as a more apt agency than the T to run ferries. Why? The maritime thumbsucker thinks cargo ship and cruiseship supports are such marine experience that little more knowledge is needed for some underemployed Massport middle manager to take over the harbor's ferry operations. And is Massport going to finance the ferries? Wouldn't that be another financial burden put on Logan International Airport, whose revenues have for several years been used to quietly subsidize Boston's maritime port operations such as Connolly Terminal? Perhaps the Glob's maritime thumbsucker needs to go read the legislation that created Massport. One source of Massport revenue was taken several years ago when the state gave the Mystic River Bridge (and its endless tolls) to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to bolster Big Dig financing. One has to wonder which Democratic pol wants to unburden the T from one of its obligations - ferries - yet keep the commuter boats running with artificial fares subsidized by a public agency (or semipublic if Massport ever takes over). Certainly it is now the Glob's thumbsucker of marine issues - the guy/gal who doesn't know there are unsubsidized ferries already running to serve routes linking Boston to two North Shore communities.

I have to inform mean willie that T employees pay toward their health insurance with amounts varying with the plans they select. Retirees also pay. That said, I consider the T a victim of GOP ideology, which "wisely" put T funding on a limited budget. Then the T just borroweed what it needed to run thereby doubling, or greatly increasing the debt. This is the wisdom of the republican party.

boatwrote: (1) The seasonal Winthrop and Salem ferries ARE ALSO subsidized. (2) The strongest supporter of the Commuter Ferry is State Senator Bob Hedlund (R; Weymouth). I also have a question for you. Did you receive a subscription to The Boston Globe as a gift? It seems odd that you would be so eager to pay for the privilege of spitting such vitriol day in and day out. It's not like you make any sort of logical argument, the way some of the other conservative commenters do. Don't get me wrong, the more subscribers the less pressure to raise the subscription rate, so do please keep up the effort.

Why save a service that has acceptable alternatives? South Shore commuters have access to the Red Line as well as the underutilized Greenbush branch of the Commuter Rail. If costs need to be contained, eliminiting the MBTA subsidy for ferry service sounds logical to me. If you look at the ridership numbers from the MBTA, ferry ridership is just a sliver (less than a fraction of a percent) of the system's ridership. And keep in mind that private operators can continue to operate the commuter ferry services, if they are financially able and willing.

1.3 million trips - a $3.7 million subsidy, and to replace the subsidy each one of those trips would go from $3.40 to $15.00? That's some interesting math ....

The commuter boat has been successfully operating for 36 years. The Greenbush renovation was initiated, restoring a line that ceased operation in 1959, to attract those who were still driving, in hopes of relieving congestion on Rte. 3 and the Southeast Expressway. It is underutilized because it was built without any consideration of whether anyone would actually give up their cars. What the MBTA looks to be doing now is trying to retroactively justify the expense of the Greenbush restoration by cancelling the ferries in hopes of forcing those commuters onto the rails.

This is disingenuous and wildly innaccurate. The ferries do not service 1.3 million commuters each year. The ferries give roughly 1.3 million rides per year. You owe us, your readers, a correction.

I'd love to hear how the very few Republicans elected in Mass. Managed to overcome the huge majority of Democrats to impose their will on the MBTA. Even when the Govenor was a Republican the democrats had more than enough votes to block anything they didn't like.

Excellent editorial. Since two-thirds of the Commonwealth's residents live in coastal and river communities on navigable waterways, perhaps it's a good idea to take another look at how these over-the-water links can work better. It was the Massachusetts Port Authority that participated in the startup of the Hingham Commuter Boat in 1975, when Ed King, then the Port Authority's Executive Director, came down to Hingham and saw the Shipyard and recognized the economic development potential there. They made it happen then, and perhaps they can ensure a future for ferries in Boston Harbor. Many agencies have been successfully involved with the ferries over the years, including EOT, DCR, MassHighway, and now the MBTA, in addition to communities with licensing authorities. If the MBTA doesn't have the interest and financial capacity to command the fleet, perhaps there is a new management structure that can be set into place to ensure the retention and expansion of this system, which, as the T's own history points out, is the oldest mode of transit in Massachusetts (1631). The ferries of the Commonwealth not only keep traffic off the road, they provide redundancy when other systems don't work (now important here as well as in cities like New York and San Francisco), and excellent links to remote locations (including Provincetown and Cape Cod). The fast ferries are built in Massachusetts. They are a key part of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay tourism and recreation, and enlightened waterfront developments like the incredible Rowes Wharf. For a fleet that is made in Massachusetts, one would think the Commonwealth would showcase the vessels, the companies that contribute to their manufacture and the private companies that own and operate them so effectively, rather than scuttle the system. So as Captain Lawrence said as his dying command off Boston Harbor 199 years ago: Don't Give up the Ship! Let's celebrate a continuing transportation network of ferries that is second only to New York state-wide.