SINCE 1918, 26 Massachusetts governors, 25 secretaries of transportation, 30 general managers, and hundreds of other trustees, directors, superintendents, super chiefs, legislators, mayors, select boards, auditors, consultants, commissions, committees, task forces, studies, reviews, reports, evaluations, and investigations have suggested and enacted remedies aimed at putting metropolitan Boston’s transit system on sound fiscal footing.
These have included system expansion, transit service cuts, fare increases, fare reductions, wage increases, wage reductions, public control, privatization, centralization, decentralization, municipal management, and state management. Also employed have been new approaches to public authority management, layoffs, hiring sprees, austerity moves, strengthening management rights, labor appeasement, deficit spending, forward funding, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, boards of varying sizes, and a variety of other measures. These have been tried or floated during periods of labor unrest, labor harmony, strong economies, recessions, depressions, wartime, peacetime, during Democratic administrations and Republican administrations, amid high and low gasoline prices, and many other economic and social conditions.
A consistent theme through it all has been fiscal precarity.
Against the backdrop of that 100-plus-year history, the MBTA begins its fiscal year 2026 capital and operating budget processes once again facing severe financial challenges.
In our recent report “Always Broke,” the independent MBTA Advisory Board reviewed the history of governing and funding of public transportation in the Boston area since the end of World War I. After studying the major public policies, funding choices, management hires, dismissals, and governing decisions since 1918 of the Boston Elevated Railway and its successor agencies, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and today’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, our report offered six key findings:
- Leadership Matters Most: Effective public transportation management depends on strong leadership from governors, transportation secretaries, board chairs, and professional agency leaders. While poor management harms system performance, success without continuous and consistent strong leadership at the very top is almost impossible.
- Economic Sensitivity: Public transportation finances are particularly sensitive to broader economic conditions like recessions and financial expansions. Subsidy sources that are stable, reliable, predictable, and countercyclical during downturns are the most helpful for public transportation’s success. Indeed, during recessions government investment in public transportation has historically shown success as an economic stimulant.
- Debt and Financial Instability: Debt has been a continuous problem for Boston’s transit systems since at least 1918. Legacy debts have always strained agency finances, just as debts related to Big Dig permitting strain MBTA finances today. Any funding solution that fails to address the MBTA’s debt problem is likely to add to financial instability in the long term.
- Reform and Austerity: Periods of austerity, reform without revenue, and laws and policies aimed at cost-cutting reduced the quality of service, led to staff shortages, and increased safety risks. Austerity-driven approaches harm riders, and the transit-dependent, but not unionized employees, agency managers, or politicians. Transportation reforms such as those enacted in 2004 and 2009 failed to achieve their stated goals of generating significant savings by changing who reports to whom.
- Sustainability and Oversight: Robust, independent oversight from entities like the MBTA Advisory Board and its predecessors helps, not harms financial transparency and accountability. A well-resourced and knowledgeable third-party overseer, independent of any governor, cabinet secretary, or general manager leads to better transportation legislation, better agency budgeting and spending, and an overall better system.
- System expansion: System expansions add to agency debt burdens, and increase operating costs to agencies, while such expansions reward society broadly, and the Commonwealth as a whole, via increased economic activity, housing growth, congestion mitigation, cleaner air, and a better way of life. MBTA expansion is economic/housing development and the infrastructure and operating costs of such projects cannot be borne by transportation agencies alone.
Next year, the MBTA faces a severe financial gap, with an annual operating deficit projected to exceed $700 million and an infrastructure maintenance deficit of at least $3 billion annually. As the Legislature and administration grapple with how to solve these gigantic financial challenges, history offers important lessons to learn, or at least not repeat.
Brian Kane is executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, an independent oversight agency. He is the author of the board’s 2009 report “Born Broke” and recent 2024 report “Always Broke” and is a member of Gov. Healey’s Transportation Funding Task Force
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