This is also a support and maintenance contract, not just implementation.

Turnstiles, fareboxes, software/back end payment systems, etc.

The existing fare system already has those costs and they would be expected to be higher (as it gets more obsolete and harder to support) over that time period than the new system. So those aren't exactly new/additional costs vs what the MBTA was already spending at status quo to continue to have a fare system.

You're looking at more like a $650m number for the actual "new fare system" and $300m for a decade of support/maintenance. To be clear, I'm not at all happy with that price or the project management/timeline.

MBTA fare revenue in 2019 was around $672m, 2023 fare revenue is expected to be around $475m.

We're talking about 1 year's fare revenue to implement the project itself, and combined costs (project + ongoing costs) should still be only around 10-15% of the decade's fare revenue. With the at least 20 year project life, you'd be looking at fare collection costs coming in probably below 10% over the 20 years.

Ignoring inflation, over 10 years at pre-pandemic levels, the MBTA would bring in ~6.7 billion in fares. (At current levels, $4.75 billion), and $13.4 billion for 20 years. The fare system can be expected to cost around $1bn for the decade, around $1.3bn for 20 years.

So, the question is:

Where are you coming up with another $4-5 billion for the T in the next decade from?

And if you do have that $4-5 billion, is free fares the best use of that money or is any of the huge list of projects people want to improve the system a better use of it?