The Bay State is one of the greatest concentration of life science companies on the planet right now, with cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Raleigh-Durham eager to someday steal our seat at the head of the biotech banquet. And whether Greater Boston hangs onto the coveted No. 1 spot for another decade or two or is overtaken by one of a number of ambitious rivals remains to be seen.

Our dominance comes through loud and clear in a pair of recent reports by top commercial real estate firms, JLL and Transwestern/RBJ.

But beyond the gaudy stats, there are growing questions about whether we have the infrastructure needed to support this marquee sector and others like it – or, for that matter, the political will to tackle looming barriers to growth.

Our voraciously expanding life sciences sector is butting up against a series of potentially crippling limitations, from soaring lab costs and a shortage of research space to a shambles of a Third Word public transportation system.

“Companies need space tomorrow,” commented Don Domoretsky, senior vice president and head of JLL’s New England life sciences practice, in the company’s recent report ranking the nation’s top biotech hubs.

Nowhere To Go But Down

First the good news.

For developers who have made a big bet on biotech and lab space in Boston, Cambridge and the suburbs – take a bow, Boston Properties and Alexandria Real Estate Equities – these are boom times indeed.

The recent JLL report puts Boston area on top nationally with a 72.5 point score (presumably out of 100), compared to 66 for Raleigh-Durham, 64 for San Francisco and 60 for New York.

The Boston area is tops in new life science patents, on a per capita basis, and No. 2 in both venture capital funding and in the number of new biotech/life science IPOs.

And yes, we have MIT, Harvard and the collective brain power that few ambitious life science regions can compete with right now.

We are also No. 1 in rentable lab space, with more than 16 million square feet of it. That’s slightly ahead of the Bay Area and 5 million or 6 million square feet ahead of the next set of challengers, Raleigh-Durham and Philadelphia, according to JLL. The vacancy rate in Cambridge is among the tightest in the country, at just a little over 10 percent.

A new report by Transwestern/RBJ argues the rate is even lower than that – 9.3 percent for the region and just 6.7 percent in Cambridge itself. Those are record lows, the firm notes.

And we beat all comers when it comes to the highest lab rents, which is great for developers and landlords, but a double-edged sword when it comes to long-term competitiveness.

The Boston area average weighs in at $47 a square foot after a 7.4 percent increase so far in 2015. That’s $10 above the second most expensive market in the country, San Francisco, and that’s even after a whopping 16.9 percent increase lab rents in the Bay Area, JLL reports.

Cambridge has led the way in rents, with a 20 percent jump over the past year.

Yet amid all the stunning statistics, trouble lurks.

For starters, despite all the cranes out there in Cambridge and on 128, we are not building new lab space nearly as fast enough to keep up with demand.

Several dozen life science companies are on the hunt for new lab and office space, seeking nearly 5 million square feet. But they are competing for less than 1 million square feet of available space – tough news when you are a company on the trail of a hot new drug and struggling with cramped digs.

In fact, space is so tight companies are scooping it up defensively, whether they need it immediately or not, to salt away against future needs, further driving down vacancy rates and driving up rents.

“Research results, M&A activity and partnership agreements have forced an immediate need for space,” JLL’s Domoretsky said.

Help is on the way – developers are scrambling to meet demand by building new lab space on Route 128, expanding life science clusters in West Cambridge, Waltham and Lexington, with Burlington rolling out the welcome mat as well. The question is whether it will come fast enough and in large enough blocks of research space to keep companies from eyeing other, less congested markets.

Unfortunately, we face even bigger public sector challenges that must be dealt with.

Gov. Charlie Baker has taken some crucial first steps in fixing our joke of a public transportation system.

Last winter’s shutdown finally got the attention of the Boston area’s business community, including the life science powerhouses headquartered in Kendall Square.

Nothing worked last winter, with even the typically more reliable Red Line, the lifeline for the massive constellation of life science and tech companies in Cambridge, crumping out along with everything else.

Baker’s badly needed reforms are being fought tooth and nail by the T’s dysfunction unions and their old-line supporters on Beacon Hill. The old Hackachusetts is very much alive and kicking.

Barring a freak spate of mild weather, this winter should provide a good test run on whether we are on right track to fixing transit woes or are still headed off the rails.

But it’s not just our maddeningly undependable trains that we have to worry about.

Route 128 is already well over capacity, with traffic congestion mounting steadily by the year. Beyond a lot of tinkering and short-term fixes, state transportation officials have been uninterested or unable to look at bolder plans to prevent this vital artery from slowly becoming a parking lot. With 128 emerging as a safety valve for the increasingly overstressed Cambridge and Boston lab markets, this isn’t good news.

Finally, our soaring housing costs are making it increasingly hard for companies in every sector to recruit new talent.

The pros still outweigh the cons for life science companies and drug giants when it comes to doing business in the Greater Boston area, or, maybe more accurately, Greater Cambridge.

But it will take a lot of work to stay on top, with other cities more than happy to steal our biotech companies from right under our noses.

For now though, we might as well enjoy the view from the top. After all, nothing lasts forever, with Greater Boston’s current dominance of the booming life sciences sector no exception to that iron rule of history and market cycles.