On April 13, the Massachusetts Senate voted in favor of a $600 million per year transportation funding plan. But can that plan fund all of the challenges facing the Bay State’s transportation system? It’s a question many are asking, and few have the tools to answer.

That’s why we built the Transportation Budget Calculator. Follow this link to see how short this funding falls in the face of the state’s overwhelming transportation needs.

The plan that the Senate approved directs an average of $600 million per year to transportation. While the Senate bill is similar to the proposal previously approved by the House, it added roughly $100 million per year on average in revenue. This additional amount does not require raising any new taxes. Rather, the Senate bill redirects 2.5 cents per gallon from the gas tax that is currently committed to underground storage tank removal to the transportation sector. The Senate bill also calls for new revenues from the leasing of MBTA and MassDOT land to utilities.

A conference committee has formed to try and merge the House and Senate bills. There has been a lot of interest in understanding how much of its transportation challenges the Commonwealth would be able to tackle should legislation emerge that is consistent with the revenue that the Senate bill raises.

The Senate bill raises sufficient revenue to correct some of the Commonwealth’s most egregious financial practices born out of the necessity to fill budget holes created by chronic underfunding. This includes ending the terrible practice of paying for costs associated with the operation of our transportation system with bonds.

The bill also includes about $100 million per year on average for capital projects. This number could be significantly lower depending on two factors: first, whether the bill’s growth projections for payroll and benefits come to pass or not; and second, whether it is realistic for the MBTA to be able to meet the bill’s underlying projections about how much money the agency can raise on its own. Regardless, this amount, unfortunately, cannot resolve all of the infrastructure challenges of our transportation system.

To get a sense of the challenge facing the committee, try our new Transportation Budget Calculator. Using the revenue provided by the Senate bill, the calculator allows you to pick state of good repair and expansion projects off of a project list and will inform you if you can afford the projects you have selected or not.

It’s may not be as exciting as your favorite video game, but you can still enjoy the ride (if you can afford to build the road or the track)!

Since Governor Patrick proposed his plan to raise revenue for transportation and education, a lot of time has been spent on discussing the merits of the revenue sources he has chosen. In comparison, relatively little time has been devoted to how such money should be spent. The great American humorist Evan Esar once wisely said, “The mint makes it first, it is up to you to make it last.”

Transportation for Massachusetts has worked closely with Representatives Tricia Farley-Bouvier of Pittsfield, Representative Carl Sciortino of Medford, Senator Katherine Clark of Melrose, and others to draft legislation that addresses this side of the coin. In addition, Transportation for Massachusetts helped develop a bill that could prepare Massachusetts for better ways to raise revenue for transportation in the future. In total there are currently three great bills pending that Transportation for Massachusetts helped develop.

Here they are:

An Act relative to transportation investment, regional fairness, and accountability to state policies (HD 3119 introduced by Rep. Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Sciortino, and S. 1670 by Senator Clark) will guide any transportation investments the legislature and the governor agree on to build a financially stable, safer and more modern transportation system in every corner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This bill would:

• Eliminate the unsustainable practice of paying for day-to-day operational costs of our highway system by borrowing through state bonds (currently, MassDOT is spending roughly $1.75 for every $1.00 borrowed because of the interest on the bonds);
• Require that an equitable portion of transportation revenue benefit all regions throughout the Commonwealth;
• Set aside funding for Gateway Cities and environmental justice neighborhoods to plan and design projects that are eligible for federal transportation money. This would allow these communities to invest in projects that residents care most about—such as fixing roads and bridges, improving Regional Transit Authorities, and investing in sidewalks, bike lanes, and other projects that promote transit oriented development and affordable housing;
• Require that transportation projects comply with existing policy goals and objectives that reduce pollution, improve public health, improve land-use coordination and meet our mode shift goals;
• Require that transportation investments over $15 million be analyzed for their impact on our economy, environment, public health, low-income communities and communities of color, pedestrian and bike access, and cost of operations;
• Ensure that sufficient money is available for critical maintenance and safety investments; and
• Support the state’s existing mode shift goal to triple trips made on public transportation, biking and walking across the Commonwealth.

An Act relative to contract assistance for Central Artery debt of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (H. 3141 introduced by Rep. Sciortino) proposes a way to address the crippling debt load at the MBTA by paying down the debt related to the Central Artery Project. The legislation would require that the Commonwealth provide contract assistance from the Commonwealth Transportation Fund for the Big Dig debt held by the MBTA. This money couldn’t come out of funds that are already set to support investments at the MBTA or RTAs.

An Act relative to the establishment of a vehicle mileage user fee pilot program by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (H. 3142 introduced by Rep. Farley-Bouvier and Rep. Sciortino) proposes a voluntary vehicle miles traveled pilot program to identify alternatives and supplements to the gas tax. The pilot seeks 1000 volunteers from the entire Commonwealth to evaluate ways to protect data collected, ensure privacy, and vary pricing based on time of driving, type of road, proximity to transit and vehicle fuel in order to help Massachusetts prepare for the future of transportation revenue.

We are grateful to the legislative sponsors of these bills who share our commitment to creating and sustaining a 21st-century transportation system that serves all people in communities across thes state.

You can also find this post on the Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) blog.

My son’s third grade class is looking for “juicy” adjectives, and I found one.  Again and again, journalists are describing the Massachusetts Governor’s 21st Century Transportation Plan, which proposes to raise revenue for our chronically underfunded transportation system, as “ambitious.” Not the kind of “ambitious” your mother admired in you when you were a college student, but the “ambitious” that implies hubris. As in asking for a lot. Maybe even too much. Insisting that the Governor’s plan is “ambitious” immediately gets people thinking about how they can cut it down to size. So before the knives come out, having carefully reviewed the plan and understanding the real needs of our transportation system well, let’s take a look at what’s really in there:

• The plan proposes to increase Chapter 90 funding for local street maintenance and associated projects from $200 to $300 million per year.  The Massachusetts Municipal Association, however, just recently estimated the actual need to be $562 million per year.
• Likewise, the Governor’s plan only dedicates 23% of the capital to strategic expansion projects, the rest is all maintenance of roads, bridges and transit infrastructure, replacement of old trains and buses, capacity upgrades, and other costs of the current system.
• More importantly, only 4% of the money set aside in the Governor’s plan for operations is related to strategic expansion projects.
• The plan also assumes that good and necessary transportation projects which have long been recommended by transportation planners and economists, such as the Red-Blue Connector and the Urban Ring, would be left unfunded over the next ten years.

I don’t know whether “reasonable” or perhaps “conservative” would be juicy enough adjectives for my son and his friends, but they would surely be a more accurate description of the Governor’s transportation plan.

When Governor Deval Patrick stood before the Legislature and the people of Massachusetts last week to offer a bold proposal to raise $1 billion per year to fund critical investments in transportation, he struck a skillful balance between the pragmatic and the visionary, appealing to us as both taxpayers and investors in a thriving Commonwealth.  The Governor asked his constituents to “Imagine if you could depend on a bus or subway that came on time, was safe and comfortable… if the Green Line ran to Medford and the commuter rail ran to Springfield,” among other improvements. He made sure to emphasize that everyone would benefit from a 21^st century transportation system, whether they drive a car or take public transit, from one end of the state to the other. And he proposed that everyone pay their share, according to their ability.

It’s a good proposal and a badly needed one. The question now is how to get the buy-in we need to make it happen. Not surprisingly, it’s not too hard to find political opponents and citizens of the Commonwealth to speak out against the proposed tax increases. Who wants a tax increase? It’s like asking someone whether they want a root canal. But if you ask a person in that special dental pain whether she would be willing to pay a fair price to make it go away – indeed to be able to enjoy biting into a delicious crunchy apple —she would almost certainly agree that her investment would be worth it.

With Massachusetts’ transportation system so woefully underfunded for many decades, we are all in that special pain. Crumbling bridges, decaying train cars, vanishing bus routes and unfinished projects are daily reminders that we’ve got a problem that needs to be fixed. And we all have our own version of that delicious apple:  our mode of transportation that gets us where we need to go, when we need to go, safely, reliably and affordably. The problem is that people want the pain to go away – indeed, they want the apple! – but, politicians fear, they don’t want to pay for it.

In fact, a MassINC poll conducted last year showed that 62% of people surveyed said that they would be willing to pay more than they are paying now to improve the transportation system – up to a point. So, maybe we should be asking people not whether they agree with the Governor’s proposal to raise taxes, but rather, whether they agree that a working transportation system is a worthwhile investment. More frequent trains. Easy connections between distant parts of the state. Fast access to the airport. And why stop there? What about cleaner air, less congested roads and more vibrant communities with thriving businesses and the jobs they bring? Let’s talk about the benefits, like the Governor started to do, and help the savvy taxpayer see how her investment will pay off – now and in the future. Our legislators need to hear from the transit champions. C’mon…we know you’re out there.

Platform at Park Street Station. Photo: takomabibelot@flickr

“Watch the doors. Doors are closing. There is more service immediately behind this train. Please wait for the next train. Doors are closing.”

I find I am hearing this message more and more on the MBTA. So when the transit agency announced yesterday that average weekday ridership topped 400 million trips in FY2012, setting a new record, I was not the least bit surprised. Ridership was up 5.7% over last year and June 2012 marked the 17th consecutive month of growth as compared to the same month in the previous year.

Ridership increased across all modes, with the biggest increase in trolley ridership, up by 8% followed by buses up by 5.9% and then subway, up by 5.2%.

MBTA general manager Jonathan Davis credited the record ridership to various factors including a growing state economy, lower state unemployment rates, increased availability of real-time information for riders and an overall improvement of MBTA reliability. To me, the reasons for the increased ridership are less important than the bigger, general trend: more and more people are relying on the Commonwealth’s transit system. This is great news for people and the environment because it means less air pollution and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Choosing transit instead of driving alone produces half the greenhouse gas emissions per mile.  For this we can all breathe easier, whether you use public transit or not.

Unfortunately, last January, the MBTA announced a budget deficit of $159 million. Just a month ago, on July 1, fares went up 23% to raise an additional $84 million a year for the agency. The rest of the deficit was closed by a combination of service changes, administrative efficiencies, and one-time revenues. Already, the MBTA has projected a new operating budget gap of close to $90 million for next year. That means that it’s a guarantee we’ll be having the same conversation again soon and fare increases and service cuts will be on the table once again if we do not come up with a long-term solution and balance the MBTA’s budget for good. The numbers are clear. People want a healthy transit system and the time to invest is now.

Photo Credit: Barbara Krawcowicz @ flickr

They say that passing legislation is like making sausages. That may be true, but sometimes it is more like waiting for the bus.

Almost two months ago, the board of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) approved a balanced operating budget for the coming fiscal year, which includes revenue sources that still need legislative approval. Today, the Boston Globe reported about the continuing lack of a resolution.  How much progress has been made?

Well, if you look closely at your “Where is my bus?” app, you can see that we are slowly getting somewhere.  The house members of the Joint Committee on Transportation succeeded at locating the MBTA operating budget related measures in the Governor’s bill among the long list of corrective changes to the structure of MassDOT, stripped the legislation of all of its non-pressing parts, set aside $6.5 million for the state’s fifteen regional transit authorities (RTAs), which are also cash-strapped, changed some of the revenue sources, added enough funds to make sure the MBTA’s FY13 operating budget is still balanced, and reported the bill out of committee. According to the House Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation, the full House is likely to vote on the package in the next two weeks.  After that, of course, we still have a good distance to go before the MBTA’s budget is truly balanced. This process cannot take too long, however, since the fare increases and service cuts are supposed to take effect on July 1.

Missing from this timeline, however, despite a number of protests, is a discussion on Beacon Hill on how to protect the MBTA’s most transit-dependent riders from the impending fare increase. The budget assumes a fare increase of 23%, even with the legislature’s help. CLF has proposed a reduced or discounted fare for low-income passengers.  This could help the MBTA ensure that a fare increase is equitable. The MBTA would be following a growing trend in the country. The Chicago Transit Authority, for example, in September of 2011, launched free fare cards for low-income seniors, paired with reduced fares for all seniors. Sun Tran in Tuscan, Arizona all Pima County residents over the age of five who meet low-income requirements are eligible for a reduced fare. C-TRAN in Vancouver, Washington, also has a similar program for low-income residents, as do Iowa City Transit in Iowa City, Iowa and Kitsap Transit in Kitsap County, Washington. We are still waiting for this concept to be added to the legislation.

When can we expect progress on this front? I don’t know, but maybe the MBTA has an app for that.

Thursday, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown sent a letter to Governor Patrick criticizing  the Governor’s mention of a potential state gas tax increase as one of the ways to provide additional revenue for the state’s dangerously underfunded transportation system. Yesterday, in response, 23 individuals and organizations throughout the State, including CLF, sent letters to Senator Brown and Governor Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Murray to urge an open and frank dialogue about what it will take to build and maintain the safe, reliable and affordable 21^st century transportation system Massachusetts needs. The letters also pointed out that, contrary to Senator’s Brown’s statement that “Massachusetts motorists already pay a higher gas tax than the national average,” Massachusetts drivers actually pay 41.9 cents per gallon in combined local, state and federal taxes—about 15 percent lower than the national average of 48.1 cents per gallon.

Getting to the heart of the matter, let’s do the math.  In FY11, the State raised about $2.2 billion for transportation. Those funds came from registry fees ($500 million), motor fuel taxes ($662 million), and the general state sales tax ($1.1 billion). Another $313 million in tolls was collected and more than $451 million in transit fares. Local governments contributed about $150-200 million as local assessments supporting transit (low compared to the national average). Massachusetts qualified for $294 million n federal transit funds and about $600 million in federal highway funds in FY11.

Yet, highway capital needs for the next five years ($6.16 billion) are more than twice the available resources ($2.5 billion). The 2009 D’Alessandro report, requested by Governor Patrick, estimated that the MBTA state of good repair backlog is $3 billion and will require an annual expenditure of nearly $700 million simply to prevent system deterioration. And, we all know when we put off needed repairs, things only get more expensive to fix later on down the road.  The MBTA carries a debt of $5.5 billion (not including interest), and debt service—interest payments—constitute nearly 22% of the MBTA’s FY12 budget—the agency’s second single largest expense. The bottom line? Massachusetts’ transportation system is broke—and that’s about to get worse, as Washington is poised to cut dramatically transportation funding to states.

What do the numbers add up to? A threat to the State’s—and the region’s—economic competitiveness, quality of life, and environment. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation, and the obvious answer is that we need to increase transportation funding for roads, bridges, transit and pedestrian and bike ways. But that’s not enough. We’ve also got to get much smarter about how we spent those funds.

The people of Massachusetts need better ways to get around, including options that will help reduce global warming pollution, consistent with the States’ own Global Warming Solutions Act mandate. CLF is working to find a solution. Yesterday, CLF joined with more than 20 other organizations throughout the State to formally launch Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA), a coalition dedicated to advocating for alternative financing and improved accountability in building a modern transportation system that works for Massachusetts. T4MA brings together a broad cross-section of groups, from transportation and regional planning interests to affordable housing, public health, environmental justice and smart growth organizations, that all have a stake in reforming transportation in Massachusetts. Learn more about T4MA here.