 MSNBC.com |
Legislature eyes tourist surcharge for rail projects
If a recently filed bill becomes law, Boston's outlying hospitality and tourism outlets would be forced to pay a user fee to help fund commuter rail and Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority expansion projects.
Last week, Rep. Antonio Cabral, D-New Bedford, along with 30 co-sponsors, submitted a bill to create the Massachusetts Transit Fund, which would support $2 billion worth of transportation expansion projects. The bill was spurred by what Cabral says is the only way to make the longtime proposed state projects a reality.
The projects include expanding the commuter rail from Boston to New Bedford/Fall River and out to Springfield, adding more service on the Worcester and Fitchburg line and extending the Blue Line subway system up to Lynn.
A new user fee of 2.75 percent on hotels, motels, sightseeing tours, rental cars, commercial airline tickets, commuter rail parking and ferry riders in the designated areas would help fund those transit projects.
The idea is modeled after the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center building project, in which Boston and Cambridge hotels have a 2.75 percent surcharge, per room per night, to help pay back the revenue bonds the state used to pay for the $850 million project. That surcharge gleans $25 million annually from the hotels.
"The model has a proven track record," said Patrick Moscaritolo, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau. "I just don't know if adapting this model (to other areas) other than Boston and Cambridge will generate the dollars necessary to meet the coverage costs that the investment firms have."
Cabral said the surcharge would make up a minute portion -- 2 percent to 3 percent -- of the total cost of projects, which would be mostly funded by the state and special obligation bonds, along with money gleaned from the state's fuel and motor vehicle tax and over-run funds from the Big Dig.
Cabral said that according to fiscal 2005 figures, said a user fee collected from hotels and other tour-related businesses in towns along the proposed New Bedford/Fall River commuter rail line would bring in upwards of $600,000 annually.
"I don't think it would really benefit us," said Betsy Daignault, reservationist at the Raynham Days Inn, which is already minutes away from station stops on the Middleborough/Lakeville line.
Raynham would be a stop on the new southeast line to New Bedford. "People coming from Florida and different areas already are irritated they have to pay a 9.7 percent tax, add to that another 2.75 percent and that's not really a benefit for the hotel."
Anoop Kataria, general manager for the New Bedford Days Inn, whose $100 room rate would rise to about $124 with the state and local tax and surcharge, said it's a great idea. "It's going to help the city and going to help everybody out," he said.
Executive Office of Transportation spokesman Jon Carlisle said there are other financial avenues to fund the transportation projects, many of which he said are in the works. He said the New Bedford line is slated to start work in 2011.
"Now is not the time in the process to set money aside," said Carlisle. "That will come further down the road."