MBTA is ‘barely treading water'
A Red Line MBTA train stopped at the Park Street station September 22, 2023. David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
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If Boston's public transit agency can't close a $700 million funding gap for the T in the next 13 months, it may have to consider massive service cuts.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The board of directors of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, or MBTA, has signed off on a $3 billion budget, as well as a capital investment plan, keeping the public transit agency’s flickering lights on in the coming fiscal year starting July 1. The fiscal 2025 budget, which is 11 percent higher than the previous fiscal year, was infused with spending from reserves to close a funding gap and help pay for a hiring spree.
But it’s the next fiscal year, 2026 – along with the projects the agency hasn’t been able to invest in – that drew concern from board members as they met Tuesday.
“We have 13 months to figure out how we’re going to solve the problem” of a $700 million funding gap for the T, said Tom Glynn, a former T general manager who now chairs the oversight board.
Otherwise, the agency will be forced to consider massive service cuts. “Cutting of service is not going to solve our problems. In fact it’ll send us in the wrong direction,” said Phil Eng, the T’s current general manager. “We’re going to keep making the case to fund the T. The economy and public life thrives with mass transportation, and I think others who are going to help us solve this are fully aware of the need to find a way to support our needs.”
A task force focused on transportation funding has been meeting for months and is due to send a written report to Gov. Maura Healey, with findings and recommendations, by the end of this year.
At its Tuesday meeting, the MBTA board reviewed how current key revenue sources, including fares and one percent of the state sales tax, remain in rough shape.
Sales tax revenue “grossly underperformed expectations” over the last two decades, hitting an average annual growth rate of 2.29 percent rather than the 6.46 to 8.50 percent, according to a presentation from T staff. That amounts to between $8.9 to $15.5 billion in lost revenue, and as Brian Kane, executive director of MBTA’s advisory board, put it, the agency has been left “holding the bag.”
Separately, ridership appears to have plateaued, and fare revenue remains at roughly 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Riders have also shifted away from monthly passes and moved to storing value on their CharlieCards and single tickets. (Pre-pandemic, half of fare revenue came from monthly passes.)
Eng chalked the ridership numbers up to changing work patterns driven by remote work, as well as track replacements and other repairs that may have turned commuters off from riding the T.
The T has also made parts of the system fare-free as part of the ongoing repairs. “That does affect fare collection,” Eng said and pointed to the commuter rail as a bright spot that demonstrates when service is frequent and more reliable, riders will return.
The MBTA’s board also signed off on a five-year capital budget, totaling $9.6 billion and covering 640 projects. The list includes replacement of a 1930s drawbridge by North Station, bridge fixes, repairs to stairs and lighting at various stations, and new buses, among others.
But the unfunded projects – not included in the capital budget “despite their importance to the MBTA’s strategic goals – also drew the attention of board members, as did the $24 billion needed to bring the system’s assets into a state of good repair. The unfunded projects include an overhaul of the JFK Red Line Station, accessibility improvements to the Orange Line’s Chinatown Station, a bus maintenance facility, and expansions such as the Red-Blue connector and a Silver Line extension.
“There’s lots that’s not here today and we struggle with the dollars we currently have,” Lynsey Heffernan, a strategic planning official at the T, told board members.
Mary Skelton Roberts, a board member who represents Boston City Hall, said the state of good repair figure made her “nervous.” She said “we continue to put money into the system, but it’s not enough to even move the dial on the state of good repair.”
Added Thomas McGee, the former mayor of Lynn and an ex-legislator who now serves on the T board, “We’re barely treading water.”
But after the board meeting, Glynn, the board chair, said he’s optimistic that state officials can come to a solution on the MBTA’s fiscal woes.
A veteran of state government who also served as the CEO of Massport, the agency that runs Logan Airport, Glynn pointed to the Boston Harbor cleanup, the Big Dig and health care reform. “When the community gets together and decides something is an important enough priority, they’ve always figured it out somehow,” he said. “And those were all big complicated things.”
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