The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (“MBTA”) spider-map has been praised and replicated in countries around the world, but it only takes one short look at the transit map to realize one obvious missing link: the Red Line and the Blue Line are the only two of Boston’s rapid transit lines that do not intersect. Six governors, over more than two decades, have legally committed the Commonwealth to fix this obvious problem. Earlier this week, however, the Patrick Administration decided to buck this trend by seeking permission to permanently and completely remove the legal obligation to finish the final design of the Red/Blue Line Connector, without proposing to substitute any other project for it.

The Red/Blue Line Connector was originally supposed to be completed by December 31 of this year. Less than five years ago, the Commonwealth had reaffirmed that it would at least design the connector by the same date. Part way through the design, the Commonwealth is throwing in the towel, stating that it is unrealistic to expect that construction of this project will be funded, although it has never really asked the state legislature or the federal government to fund this critical transit project and has not considered any more affordable options to accomplish the same goal. This is a symptom of the chronic underfunding of our transportation system. Instead of pushing forward and advocating for increased revenue, the State is now entering a dangerous trajectory of just giving up on beneficial projects.

As a result of this missing link, transit riders traveling from points along the Blue Line to the Red Line, or the other way round, must transfer twice by using either the Green or Orange Line, reducing ridership and unnecessarily increasing congestion at downtown Boston stations including Government Center, Park Street, State and Downtown Crossing. The need to transfer twice restricts access to jobs, such as those at the academic and medical institutions along the Red Line, particularly for residents of East Boston, Revere, Winthrop and Lynn, for whom the Blue Line is the only accessible subway route. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) projected that the Red/Blue Line Connector would more than double daily boardings, from 10,050 to 22,390, at the Charles/MGH Station alone.

The absence of a direct connection between the Red and Blue Lines makes travel far more difficult than necessary and often discourages the use of public transit. For example, coming home from Cambridge, an East Boston resident has to wait on three different platforms for three trains. This can take particularly long for people who work at night, as many do, since the MBTA Rapid Transit lines’ arrival and departure times at Park Street, Government Center, Downtown Crossing and State Street are not coordinated and the trains are frequently delayed.  Even if on schedule, at 9:00 p.m. on a weekday, a trip from Harvard Square to Maverick Station involves 28 minutes of waiting time alone. By contrast, the route can be driven in only 16 minutes, resulting in a clear disincentive to use public transportation and contravening the State’s policy, articulated in the Global Warming Solutions Act and elsewhere, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

Many people, however, do not have the choice between driving and taking public transportation. The Blue Line, more than any other MBTA rapid transit line, serves almost exclusively communities where a large percentage of residents depend on mass transit. At the same time, residents of these communities are also in need of greater access to jobs. Likewise, many Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) patients need to travel from Revere, where MGH has a satellite clinic, to the hospital’s main campus in Boston’s West End. Taking public transportation under the current circumstances is not a simple trek for the infirm.

The Department of Environmental Protection now gets to decide whether the Commonwealth can proceed to request a revision of the State Implementation Plan under the Clean Air Act from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Let’s hope that someone in the process that lies ahead has the vision to create not only a praiseworthy map but a good underlying public transportation system.

The Union Square area in Somerville is one of the communities that would be served by the Greenline Extension. (Photo credit: dales1, flickr)

Residents of Somerville and Medford, MA, were crushed and angry when on Monday transportation officials announced that the already-delayed Green Line Extension project would most likely not be completed before 2018. The project would extend the MBTA’s Green Line through parts of these two cities just north of Boston, where right now there is no subway service of any kind, but plenty of pollution from I-93 and diesel commuter trains.

The critical project has already suffered several setbacks, and after years of broken promises, the community has had enough. Over 1500 residents, including many who stayed in Somerville or Medford because of the Green Line Extension, signed this petition demanding that the state follow through on the project and that they release a definitive plan to the public on how it intends to do so.

Stand with the residents of Somerville and Medford in support of government accountability and better transportation options for communities that need them. Sign the petition today.

Photo credit: Stephanie Chappe

As budget woes continue to strain the Commonwealth’s ability to maintain its aging transportation system and constrain its vision for the system’s future, more than twenty Bay State organizations have formed Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) to advocate for alternative financing and improved accountability in pursuit of a modern transportation system that works for Massachusetts. T4MA brings together a broad cross-section of historically disconnected organizations in the areas of transportation, regional planning, affordable housing development, public health, environmental advocacy, environmental justice and smart growth that will use their diverse experience and collective influence to bring about a safe, convenient, reliable and affordable transportation system for the people of Massachusetts.

John Walkey, field organizer of T4MA, explained, “On behalf T4MA, we thank Mr. Mullan for his dedicated service and welcome Mr. Davey to his new position. We look forward to working with him to ensure that the Commonwealth will create and maintain a 21^st century transportation system that is at the heart of a thriving economy. The jobs and economic prosperity the State hopes to sustain cannot be built on top of an underfinanced and crumbling transportation system.” More >

Comedian Will Rogers once joked, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” He might have been advising the Commonwealth about the cost of inaction on the state’s much-needed public transportation projects. The Commonwealth announced yesterday that the Green Line Extension will be delayed yet again. MassDOT now is projecting that the earliest the Green Line Extension will go into service is in the Fall of 2018, but the moment the residents of Somerville and Medford have been waiting for could be as far away as 2020. That would be six years after the federally mandated deadline and fourteen years since the Big Dig was completed—a long delay considering that the extension of the Green Line was a firm commitment made to counter the air pollution from the Central Artery Project. The year 2020 happens to also be a benchmark year for the Commonwealth’s greenhouse gas reductions goal (25 percent of 1990 levels), which will be hard to reach without the help of transit projects like the Green Line Extension.

Sadly, less than five years after it reaffirmed the promise, MassDOT yesterday also announced that it is seeking permission from the Department of Environmental Protection to abandon its obligation to design another highly beneficial transit project, the connector of the Red Line and Blue Line, citing its increased cost estimate. Part of the reason the costs of the Red/Blue Connector have increased, however, is the Commonwealth’s own repeated delay of this important transit project. Construction projects get more expensive over time.  Likewise, the cost of the Green Line Extension can only be expected to increase as a result of the delay.

Fortunately, the Commonwealth will be required to put in place interim offset projects or measures to achieve the same air quality benefits the Green Line Extension would have during the time period of the delay starting on December 31, 2014. We hope those projects will be located in the areas the Green Line Extension is intended to serve. Although MassDOT has known for more than a year that the Green Line Extension will be delayed, we still do not know what these projects will be. We do know that they will not be free. That points to the fact that it would be a lot cheaper to build the extension than to keep delaying it. And that’s no laughing matter, especially these days.

This Orange Line car is clearly past its expiration date. (Photo credit: Hannah Cabot)

Tuesday morning, CLF Staff Attorney Rafael Mares was testifying at the Massachusetts State House against several bills that seek to reduce, eliminate, or otherwise limit tolls on the state’s highways, which serve as a significant source of transportation revenue. While the sentiment of wanting to decrease commuters’ transportation expenditures was noble, Mares said, “we cannot afford to reduce our already inadequate transportation revenues at this time, given the significant financial and physical challenges facing our state transportation system.” One of those challenges, he said, was the MBTA’s aging subway cars.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, there were 447 Red Line commuters on a train between the Porter and Harvard Square stations who knew exactly what he meant. Their six-car train broke down around 9 a.m., leaving its passengers stranded in the dark tunnel for at least two hours before rescue efforts began. The passengers were evacuated on foot, with the last emerging around 12:30 p.m., 3 1/2 hours after the initial breakdown.

This event may serve as the latest and some of the most troubling evidence of the MBTA’s funding deficit, but it certainly doesn’t stand alone.

“All 120 Orange Line cars are well past their intended lifespan,” Mares stated in his testimony. “Manufacturers build subway cars to last 25 years, provided they receive a mid-life overhaul to refurbish or replace major elements such as propulsion systems, brakes, lighting and ventilation. None of the now over 30-year-old Orange Line cars has been overhauled.

“These aging subway cars are challenging the MBTA’s ability to run a full set of trains each day, causing longer waits on platforms and more frequent service interruptions. A similar problem exists with one third of the Red Line cars, which as the Globe reported, ‘were pressed into service during Richard Nixon’s first term, and have not been overhauled for a quarter century.’ Neither their replacement nor the expansive band-aid of $100 million to keep the Orange and Red Line trains running is currently in the MBTA’s Capital Improvement Plan, which covers the next five years.”

However, tolls or no tolls, it’s clear that maintaining and expanding a functional transportation system in Massachusetts will require more funding from a more diverse portfolio of funding sources, and CLF is working with transportation experts, local legislators and community groups as part of the Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) coalition to articulate what some of those options would look like. Learn more about CLF’s work on transportation funding here.

Former MWRA Executive Director Paul Levy (who has worn a lot of really interesting hats in his career) provides, in CommonWealth Magazine, this really interesting take on the Boston Harbor cleanup and lessons learned from that experience can inform decisions about the slow motion implosion of the transit system of Greater Boston.  Very important reading that nicely complements the good words and insights of Peter Shelley on this blog about the Harbor cleanup.

Big questions that hang in the area include:

• Noting that the cleanup has massively improved the harbor – if we did it all over again, would we employ a “big pipe and big plant” solution to the sewage and stormwater problem in Boston or use more local and distributed methods?
• What lessons learned from these case studies can be applied to the electricity system?
• What role does the existence of the massive highway system that spans the nation (and if you want to read a fascinating description of the creation of that system check out “The Big Roads” by Earl Swift) have on our other infrastructure planning and decision making?

Any thoughts on these questions?  The comments section below awaits.

Yesterday, the Globe published a story covering a legislative hearing about MBTA commuter rail service, specifically, reacting to passengers’ dissatisfaction with the system after a particularly harsh winter and increasing number of service interruptions. Department of Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan reported that the combined on-time performance for all commuter rail lines was 72 percent– which may sound like a decent number until your train is one of the 28 percent that sat on the tracks through dinnertime or left you shivering on a platform for the first hour of your daily commute.

The article reports that much of the discussion focused on the woeful fiscal condition of our transportation system. With transportation officials throwing around numbers concerning operating budget deficits, capital needs, and debt, all in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it is easy to lose hope.  Funding transit, however, is not an intractable problem.  At the hearing, while repeating MassDOT’s focus on “reform before revenue,” Secretary Mullan stated that “we won’t be able to cost-cut our way out of the deficit,” and expressed need for a conversation about revenue.

A report released Tuesday by CLF and Northeastern‘s Dukakis Center suggests a framework around which such a conversation could begin. The framework explains the need for diversified transit financing and suggests putting the broadest possible range of revenue sources on the table at the outset. Such solutions could include lower off-peak fares or universal pass programs for students. There’s also the possibility of granting Massachusetts cities and towns the authority to raise additional local revenue in form of fees or taxes to support services like transit. Other states, including Rhode Island, are already deep into this conversation. It is time for Massachusetts to follow suit.

The framework was developed based on conclusions gleaned from a Blue-Ribbon Summit held by the two groups last November. The Summit brought leading transit finance experts from across the country together to explore potential solutions to better fund Massachusetts’ transit system. To learn more about CLF’s work to modernize transportation, go here.

(Photo credit: Stephanie Chappe)

In anticipation of a state Joint Transportation Committee hearing on April 12, today, CLF and the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University released two reports to address the financial woes of public transportation in Massachusetts. The reports were based on conclusions gleaned from a blue-ribbon summit that the two groups co-hosted last November, which brought leading transit finance experts from around the country together to explore and develop solutions that can help build sustainable funding mechanisms for transit currently available in Massachusetts and allow expansion of those services over time. In addition, the reports are supplemented by a background paper describing the financial status of public transportation in Massachusetts and a series of options papers discussing the pros and cons of potential solutions to the problem.

Public transportation in Massachusetts is facing a stark financial crisis. The MBTA alone has a backlog of $3 billion of needed repairs and an increasing gap in its operating budget. The fifteen Regional Transit Authorities around the state, on the other hand, are forced to underserve their current customers because they lack a combined $125 million per year required just to meet present demand on existing bus routes.

Despite the fact that over the years they have received a lion’s share of transportation dollars, the state’s roads and bridges are also in desperate need of repairs. A few years ago, the Transportation Finance Commission projected that Massachusetts will have a $15-$19 billion gap in transportation resources over the next 20 years. While the existence and extent of this financial crisis is well documented, few solutions are currently on the table because so many stakeholders and policymakers mistakenly believe that transit finance in Massachusetts is an intractable and overwhelming problem for which no viable solution exists.

The important lessons learned from the summit include that:

• A financially stable public transportation system requires a healthy and diverse portfolio of revenue sources, rather than the current all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. The current funding system relies heavily on a small number of sometimes volatile funding sources, such as the sales tax.  The experts underscored the importance of  identifying brand new streams of revenue.

• With the chronic under-pricing of automobile travel, raising transit fares is not the answer.  Increased fares, at this time, would send the wrong price signals to transportation users and would create more incentive for people to drive, ultimately reducing the great economic, environmental, and social benefits of public transportation.

• Along with new revenue sources, such as vehicle-miles-traveled fees, universal transit pass programs, and increased registry fees, as well as further cost-efficiencies, a change in fare structures, rather than raising fares, and maximizing ridership are key strategies for generating user revenue equitably and affordably.

Read the full reports, background and option papers:

• Blue-Ribbon Summit Summary
• Blue-Ribbon Summit Framework
• Background Paper
• Option Papers

Question: What’s better than a bike share program in Boston? Answer: A bike share program in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline. And according to this article in yesterday’s Globe, a solution may be closer than we think. Local officials in those areas are exploring the feasibility of this the-more-the-merrier approach,  which would expand Boston’s original bike share proposal, first introduced about two years ago, into a regional program that would serve those additional densely-populated communities just outside the city’s core.

An effective bike share program would serve as a complement to the MBTA, increasing access to hard-to-reach areas not currently served by the T, such as Arlington, Medford, Somerville’s Union Square or Cambridge’s Inman Square, reducing stress on the MBTA system at peak times like during rush hour or following major sporting events (if you’ve ever tried to fight your way onto the green line after a Red Sox game, you know what I’m talking about) and providing yet another alternative to driving, reducing congestion on the city’s roadways.

Cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Washington, DC already have bike share programs in place–and we should join them. CLF supports a regional bike sharing initiative for Boston and other sensible transportation alternatives that get more New Englanders out of their cars and into their communities, whether that’s on foot or by train, bus or bike.

Learn more about CLF’s work to build livable cities and modernize transportation at clf.org.