It's simple, really. It's not their money. If they run short of funds, they'll just dig into the taxpayers' wallets.
I'm always amazed at the libertarians who freak out at the idea of subsidized transit (which is clearly what this is, even if there's a nominal balance sheet attached) as they drive their cars to work on the road system provided entirely at taxpayer expense.
When did MA repeal its gas taxes, license fees and taxes, and sales tax on auto related stuff?
It's a hypocrisy argument: government subsidies on transportation are bad, except for the method of transportation you use. Some people actually take those buses and subways and have different perspective.
Not so fast. The claim, which I refuted, was "which costs far more to operate and has zero "revenue")?"
Not enough revenue is very different from "zero revenue".
> It's a hypocrisy argument: government subsidies on transportation are bad, except for the method of transportation you use.
Except that I wasn't making an argument - I was showing that your "zero revenue" claim was false.
Note that it isn't at all hypocritcal to say that some subsidies are worse than others. And, when you're arguing for subsidies, you can't argue that all subsidies are bad.
Hiding mass amounts of state debt in the MBTA (along with effectively losing every negotiation with its union and failing to timely increase fares to market value as compared to other major US cities) has sandbagged public transportation in Massachusetts.