This is not a drill

As noted on the TAB blog, boston.com, and Universal Hub (and probably every other media outlet in Eastern Mass.), MBTA ridership is up 6.1% for the first quarter, compared to last year.

That's really astounding. Even with $4.00 gas.

Rising gas prices are changing behaviors, to an extent that I would never have guessed. Public policy has to keep up, because there's no reason to believe that this is a blip, that gas prices will go down (at least not significantly). In fact, gas prices shouldn't go down, because we should start restoring the state gas tax to it's 1991 rate, which now would mean $1.00 on the current $3.61 pre-tax price for a gallon ($4.00 - .21 Mass. gas tax - .184 federal gas tax).

According to Charlie-in-Chief Dan Grabauskas, the MBTA infrastructure already can't absorb the surge in riders at peak periods. What's going to happen when gas goes up another 25 cents, 50 cents, a dollar?

Shouldn't this trigger a radical change in capital spending priorities? And reconsideration of the proposal to relieve the MBTA's hamstringing debt?