All the info below comes from the MBTA’s Statement of Revenue, Expenses, and Changes in Net Position.

In other words, this is what the MBTA makes money on vs what the MBTA pays for on a yearly basis. Income and expenses.

INCOME

First of all, the operating revenue, this is in thousands of dollars, so just add three zeros to every number. This shows everything that the MBTA earns by providing services to riders, charging for parking in garages, advertisement revenue, etc:

This is it, this is everything that the MBTA makes. Looks like people paying for fares brings in just short of $600M. Surprisingly (at least to me) is how little “other” income the MBTA takes in. Lots of empty wall and ceiling space in stations, I don’t see why its not covered in advertisements from head to toe if they are as broke as they say.

EXPENSES

Now the MBTA does have a lot of expenses. So many in fact, that they have multiple sections in their financial statements.

Section one – this is how much the MBTA employees cost to employ and legally defend from:

So employees cost about $800M yearly to sustain. If you are paying attention so far, thats $600M of revenues from riders to $800M expense from employees.

Section two – other things the MBTA pays for. Depreciation and amortization can be thought of as the cost of degrading equipment, although not actually taken out of cash (more on that at a later date). That arrow pointing to $496M is the what the MBTA pays yearly to outsource operating the commuter rail to a third party (no big deal, just file that away under expenses..):

So, if you are paying attention, that is $800M of employee costs vs $1.117M of ALL other costs. And $496M of commuter rail costs vs $800M for employees.

Interesting, what other goodies lay ahead?

The rest of the income statement proved to be a worthy closing act. They lump all “other” income and all “other” expenses together. This is basically all the subsidies from the state (and other revenue sources) listed alongside with what the MBTA pays for them:

Some interesting things right off the bat:

You see where it shows the line from 160,000 to 275,222? That would be the difference between 2013 and 2014 respectively, of the financial assistance provided by the state for MBTA projects. A 71% increase, quite the jump.

Now, the fun part. The two circled numbers. The $799,295 thousand is what the MBTA receives yearly as part of the sales tax deal made with the state in 2000. And the $278,057 thousand is what it pays yearly in interest obligations, which it incurred as part of the deal. The deal in question was essentially the MBTA will get 20% of sales taxes collected in towns which it affects, and in return it will take on $3.3B of state debt incurred by various projects, notably the Big Dig. Now, the MBTA always says that if they were just rid of this debt, they would be just fine. And they were quoted saying that the sales tax has not grown as expected, hence the major shortcomings. But… if you look closely… hm. The MBTA takes in $800M per year and in return pays $278M per year. Seems like a good deal to me. And at this rate of $250M/year, the debt of $3.3B should be paid off in about 12 years. No problem there…

Not sure if this is as helpful as I think it is. But if anyone has any questions about specific parts of the financial statements, let me know, will try to cover that first.

Again, the link to the official statements: MBTA’s Statement of Revenue, Expenses, and Changes in Net Position.