The tragic story behind the MBTA’s free New Year’s Eve rides
The free T rides came after a series of drunken driving deaths.
The MBTA will once again provide free rides this Thursday as Boston rings in 2016, continuing a tradition that began on New Year’s Eve in 1983.
Though it now provides a nice bit of positive press, the free rides originated as a reaction to a series of tragic drunken driving deaths in quick succession.
And it was an issue that hit close to home for former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
On Christmas Eve in 1981, four members of a Dedham family—including a year-old infant—were killed in a head-on crash in Hyde Park when they were hit by a teenage drunk driver.
Just a week later on New Year’s Eve, two people were killed in a four-car pileup in Andover, in which one man was charged with operating under the influence, according to a Boston Globe report at the time.
In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, one passenger was killed in Roxbury, and the driver of the car was charged with operating under the influence.
And on the morning of New Year’s Day, three people were killed in Milton when their car hit a concrete abutment after being sideswiped. The driver of the second car was arrested and charged with operating under the influence, according to Globe reports.
Those 10 deaths, all within a week, turned drunken driving into an immediate priority. A week later, Gov. Edward King initiated a task force to study the problem.
Legislation signed into law in August 1982 created increased legal punishments for drunk drivers, mandatory incarceration for repeat offenders, and expanded highway patrols.
The next January, Dukakis began his second stint as governor, and continued to push against drunken driving. His perspective on driving deaths was colored by personal tragedy. His brother, Stelian Dukakis, was riding a bicycle in Brookline when he was struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run in 1973. He died four months later. The driver was never found.
In an email to Boston.com last New Year’s Eve, Dukakis said he “always assumed’’ that driver was drunk or under the influence of drugs. That tragedy, along with the 1982 Christmas Eve drunken driving deaths, helped shape his opposition to drunken driving, he said.
“We weren’t taking drunk or impaired driving seriously at that time, and I was determined to do something about it—and we did,’’ Dukakis said.
He said the tougher enforcement of drunken drivers and a public education campaign under his watch led to a decrease in drug and alcohol use among young people.
“Offering free rides on the T was part of that effort,’’ Dukakis said.
Thus began the tradition. For the first New Year’s Eve under the second Dukakis administration, the MBTA offered free rides as “an effort to combat drunken driving,’’ the Globe reported in 1983.
In a 1987 article, the MBTA cited Dukakis in his reasoning for the free rides.
“We’re really trying to support the governor’s program to eliminate drunken driving,’’ an MBTA spokesman said at the time.
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