I’VE BEEN THINKING this week about Groundhog Day, but not because its observance will soon be upon us.
My thoughts have revolved around the movie of the same name, which explores how a person might experience being trapped in an endless time loop, unable to achieve meaningful resolution of anything. That is how one feels when reviewing the Healey administration’s new task force report on transportation funding for the Commonwealth.
It seems to me that I’ve seen this all before: the hefty report lacking much specificity, the charts designed to lend gravitas to an otherwise weightless narrative, the grand rollout event where we are told that this time, unlike all prior similar occasions, we are on the path to successful transformation of our transportation revenue system. As Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Contrary to some of the characterizations that have been offered, the Transportation Funding Task Force report and recommendations do not represent a breakthrough moment. The task force was never going to come up with new or innovative funding solutions because there aren’t any. Their predictable list of ideas is just that, predictable and unsurprising. It took over a year and a cast of over 30 task force members, plus outside consultant help, to tell the governor and all of us what we largely already knew: (1) the MBTA needs a quick and short-term stabilization of its operating budget, and using Fair Share revenues (the so-called millionaires tax on high earners) represents the path of least resistance, and (2) there are several well-known tools in the revenue toolbox that we can use to fund our transportation system more robustly and fairly.
If this is the price to pay for political cover, so be it. But my deep frustration is that in Massachusetts we seem to never be able to get past the predictable and toward the actionable.
The report embraces a tripartite framework in approaching the state’s transportation system: stabilize, enhance, and transform. It does a decent job stabilizing, but nothing really to enhance or transform.
Let’s look at stabilization, because this is where the recommendations address the looming “fiscal cliff” that the MBTA faces in the coming six months. The recommendations, and the governor’s apparent plan, is to stabilize the T’s operating budget by leveraging revenue from the Fair Share Amendment. This is good, but it is not enough.
Preventing the MBTA from experiencing an operating budget shortfall is important, but the T needs more money than just enough to prevent a shortfall. It needs more operating revenue to build its internal capacity, which remains significantly low in important areas like procurement, maintenance, and planning.
No one familiar with the T believes that its operating budget is sufficient to meet its needs, but this plan doesn’t do anything other than “stabilize” the status quo.
The T can’t deliver on what we all want and expect it to do with a status quo budget. It needs resources to adapt service delivery to meet post-pandemic journey patterns, it needs to ramp up planning and procurement across the board, and it needs to devote more personnel time to routine and programmed maintenance and quality control and assurance as operating, not capital, expenses. All of these initiatives cost money, and they aren’t and shouldn’t be considered capital expenses.
It’s also important to recognize that Fair Share revenues, like the state sales tax, may not perform consistently or robustly over time. This is a lesson we should have learned from the failed forward funding initiative of 25 years ago, which promised to solve the MBTA’s operating budget needs via a dedicated portion of the sales tax, which has been proven over time to be unstable and inadequate. Maybe Fair Share will be different. Maybe it won’t. We don’t have a long enough track record to know.
After “stabilize,” the task force report moves to muddier ground as it addresses ways to “enhance” and “transform” transportation. There are lots of words like “consider,” “pursue,” “right-size,” and “capture.” These are words of deferral, not action. The jargon of “enhance and transform” is compelling, but the report itself is not. I will offer one specific example of how the report fell short.
As I have previously written, the MBTA’s capital needs over the next decade are in the range of $75 billion or more. That does not include any spending for extravagant projects. It represents spending to get the system back to good repair, to connect the Red and Blue lines, and to introduce more widespread true regional rail across Metro Boston. And that doesn’t even cover the billions of dollars of climate resilience investments that need to be made on the subway system, particularly (and urgently) the Blue and Red lines.
As we watch in horror the real-time climate change lessons being taught every day in Los Angeles, we should ask ourselves how long we will take to make critical climate resilience transit investments here at home. So while the crowd at Union Station in Worcester, where the transportation plan was unveiled, applauded a gubernatorial commitment to spend an additional $8 billion statewide over the next 10 years, I wonder how anyone could think that is anywhere near a sufficient investment target.
It shouldn’t be this hard to get decision-makers to actually make decisions. Massachusetts should be on a pathway in 2025 that includes a comprehensive solution set that truly transforms how we fund our transportation system. What should that look like? Here is an abbreviated list of specific actions that can be taken this year by the Legislature and governor.
- Replace the gas tax with a statewide road pricing system, which could mean anything from conventional tolls to pricing according to time of day or road conditions, or by how many miles someone travels in a given period. Begin the transition within the next five years. As road pricing is introduced, the gas tax is reduced, eventually to zero. Stop subsidizing the costs of driving and charge accordingly. Means test road pricing to make it less regressive than the gas tax, and provide fair rates to establish regional fairness. Establish a fair and transparent mechanism to allocate revenues from road pricing to public transportation as well as roadway maintenance. Road pricing can’t happen overnight, but a legislative framework along the lines I have proposed here can be introduced and enacted into law this year.
- Provide the MBTA with additional operating budget support to expand its internal capacity to perform routine and programmed maintenance and quality assurance/quality control activities, ramp up procurement and planning, and manage critical projects like regional rail and the Red-Blue Connector. This means significantly more than simply stabilizing the T.
- In furtherance of a stronger MBTA operating budget, adopt a clear policy that fare revenues will not be looked to for more than 20 percent of the total T budget. This will enable keeping fares low, attracting new riders, and providing needed support to the most vulnerable transit-dependent users.
- Make the full costs of delivering paratransit services financial obligations of the Commonwealth, not the MBTA or regional transit authorities.
- Enact a regional ballot initiative law to enable municipalities to raise local revenue for important transportation initiatives like dedicated bus and cycling lanes and pedestrian safety.
- Remove constitutional constraints on municipalities to enable them to assess fees on home deliveries on a local option basis, without state interference.
- Impose a state fee on non-residential surface lots and parking garages within the Metro Boston inner core (everything inside Route 128) with capacity to park over 10 vehicles, and leverage the revenue to promote regional mode shift from driving to intercity rail.
This is not a comprehensive list, but it begins to paint a picture of what a truly transformational transportation plan would look like.
There are specific actions that can be taken now by decision makers that will take words like “enhance” and “transform” from rhetoric to reality. My great fear is that decision-makers will once again take little or no action to advance anything beyond “stabilizing” the MBTA.
That is simply not good enough. It does not meet the urgent needs of our times. It does nothing to help us achieve the lofty goals we set for ourselves – goals like reducing dangerous emissions, reducing traffic congestion meaningfully, and providing more people with sustainable access to jobs, opportunities, and resources.
Are we going to let this moment pass without truly transformative action? Will a coalition of transit, social justice, municipal, and public health partners coalesce around a coherent and actionable funding and investment plan for the next decade as we face yet another inflection point in our never-ending saga of trying to set our transportation system on proper footing?
I believe there will be a good deal of support for a plan like the one I outline here. Many people will gladly have the backs of political leaders who decide to actually lead and decide. Many more people will continue to suffer if those same leaders believe that all they need to do in 2025 is stabilize the MBTA’s operating budget.
We need the transportation equivalent of a moon shot in Massachusetts, and we can do that if we join together as advocates and travelers who have a daily shared experience on the roads and buses and railcars of the Commonwealth. President Kennedy said of the 1960s efforts to explore space that we were doing it and other things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
No one is saying that transportation transformation will be easy. But generational responsibility ought to overcome the inclination to be satisfied with the status quo.
James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation.
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