Boston to see first MBTA fare hike hearing Monday

The MBTA’s overseers are scheduled to hear from commuters in Boston on Monday for the first hearing in the city on proposed fare hikes.

The T’s oversight board is slated to decide in early 2016 whether to raise fares for its services. Its choices at present include bumping up fares system-wide by about 7 or about 10 percent on average. In either scenario, fares would go up by different amounts for different modes – one proposal would see a bump by as much as $9.50, or 12.7 percent for monthly LinkPass holders, for example, while at the same time raising Commuter Rail Zone 1 fares by 50 cents, or 8.7 percent.

The hearing comes after one each in Lynn and Brockton, where riders largely opposed bumping up ticket prices.

“It’s just another tax on the poor,” Pamela Bush Miles, of the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition, told T officials at the Lynn hearing last week at the city’s Breed Middle School, according to the State House News Service.

The idea has been met with opposition from transportation-focused groups at T meetings in the past, with many arguing that the agency shouldn’t raise fares amid service issues on aging trains and on the heels of a disastrous winter in 2015 plagued by delays and cancellations.

Raising fares could boost revenue by as much as about $50 million for the T. Hikes, which would be the first since 2014, are part of efforts to close a $242 million budget deficit in fiscal year 2017.

Monday’s meeting starts at 10 a.m. at the MassDOT headquarters at 10 Park Plaza.