REP. BILL STRAUS would like everyone to stop talking about commuter rail.
Not the system, of course. The Mattapoisett representative, who decided not to seek reelection after holding the 10th Bristol district seat for 32 years, has spent many of those years agitating for better rail connections between the far-flung regions of Massachusetts.
But the term “commuter rail” is a thorn in Straus’s side.
“I like people to think in terms of passenger rail,” Straus said on The Codcast, “because the whole way in which I believe we will come to understand the future of that kind of rail is that we don’t necessarily follow the traditional model of commuter rail.” Rather than bringing people from outer areas into a central urban core, shuttling them downtown in the morning and out again in the evening, “passenger rail to me suggests that people move in both directions throughout the day. So we think, in terms of the infrastructure, of being able to provide enhanced capacity to move people in the ways that they travel now.”
For the past 11 years, Straus has been House chair of the joint Transportation Committee. He also sits on a transportation funding task force charged with considering what the next era of transportation funding could look like as the notoriously under-resourced MBTA barrels toward a fiscal cliff.
Often enough on Beacon Hill, “we may take up a major issue, feel that we’ve done something significant and we have, and then it’s more of a back burner issue for at least a few years,” Straus said. “Transportation doesn’t have that luxury. So the debate over transportation, I predict, will never go away.”
As to that task force, coming ever closer to the December 31 deadline to submit a report on transportation funding options to Gov. Maura Healey, “We’ll see where that recommendation document goes,” Straus said in mid December. “I may be the only member of that task force – some 20 people – who’s actually voted and then gone home to explain and defend increasing taxes. You could call it revenue, but [it’s] taxes: increasing what people pay to help support the transportation system.”
Straus’ tenure has spanned several seismic transportation shifts in Massachusetts – and he’s still a defender of the much-maligned Forward Funding legislation that required the MBTA to keep to a balanced budget with certain discrete revenue sources.
In 1992, the mid-30s Straus wrested back Democratic control of the district covering Acushnet, Fairhaven, Marion, Mattapoisett, New Bedford, and Rochester. He replaced John Bradford with a 51 to 49 percent win in the general election. Over the three decades since, Straus fended off the occasional challenger but was usually the sole name on the ballot.
After holding off a final challenge, winning 56 percent of the vote in 2022, Straus announced his retirement in March 2024.
“One of the things I always promised myself,” Straus said, “was I wanted to leave the position while I still loved it and not be – I hate sports metaphors, but they do come in handy – that guy who’s sitting on the bench and doesn’t have knees anymore, maybe can’t hit the fast pitch anymore.”
The representative endorsed former state undersecretary of energy and Fairhaven’s town moderator Mark Sylvia in the race to succeed him. Sylvia – the lone Democrat to seek the seat – took the 10th Bristol 52 to 48 percent against Joe Pires, a small business manager and School Committee member from Rochester.
After three decades representing his South Shore district, with the long-awaited South Coast Rail project poised to zip passengers to and from Boston starting in spring 2025, Straus said he also wanted to leave in time for someone new “to develop experience in the job and influence, frankly, among colleagues so they could see some of these longer term projects that we’re just beginning to see on the horizon.”
Add in good health and nearby grandchildren, and the time seemed right for the 68-year-old Straus to head off to the next chapter.
South Coast Rail, which will restore a commuter rail connection between downtown Boston and New Bedford given up in the 1950s as highways crisscrossed the state, has been pending for almost Straus’ entire tenure in office. Like many major infrastructure projects, the $1.1 billion “Phase I” of South Coast Rail has been plagued by “supply disappointments, construction disappointments, [and] management disappointments,” Straus said.
The long-delayed project was expected to be up and running in 2023, then 2024, but blew past that deadline as well. Now, Straus credits the Healey administration for getting the project back on track, notably after MBTA General Manager Phil Eng replaced the project manager.
The line is in the high speed testing phase, running trains almost 90 miles an hour over some stretches of rail. When passengers finally take their seats, Straus said, after decades of justified grumbling, “I think people will quickly forget.”
Straus says his philosophy on transportation is simple: “there isn’t a single mode that makes sense for all of the public,” so there will need to be spending on roads and bridges as much as the MBTA or regional transit authorities. Inter-transit fights, in his view, are deeply unproductive.
“If you’re driving up Route 24 towards Boston from the south – a drive I regularly take – and you look over and you see the trains heading into Boston in the morning, you should smile because that’s a ton of people that aren’t driving next to you and slowing down your ride,” he said. “So maintaining all pieces of the system helps all the modes. When money goes to a bridge and you ride the train, you should be happy. We are – it sounds corny – a Commonwealth, and the idea that we have shared interests and shared responsibilities is something I hope people do not forget.”
For more with state Rep. Bill Straus – on why drivers should want better public transportation, his first big transportation fight over New Bedford ferries, and why losing out on the 2024 Olympics may have been for the best – listen to The Codcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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