A half-length mockup of the MBTA's forthcoming Type 10 Green Line trains sits in a tent on City Hall Plaza in downtown Boston on Oct. 30, 2024. The MBTA's new five-year construction plan calls for station upgrades to get ready for the trains' entry into service in 2027. Photo courtesy of the MBTA
You don’t have to read between the lines too closely to see the more constrained approach MBTA officials want to take to construction projects and big-ticket maintenance in the near future in its capital investment plan.
Facing pressure from inflation, federal uncertainty, and previous funding commitments, the T will focus on a trio of major capital projects further along in the pipeline, keeping the universe of work smaller than in prior planning cycles.
To one watchdog, the new messaging is a realistic, “honest” approach that more clearly communicates the limits of the T’s capital budget.
“For far too long, government entities have overpromised and underdelivered,” said Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board. “It makes common sense to me to be honest with the public what is and is not possible given existing resources.”
What’s the Capital Investment Plan?
The T’s capital investment plan is a rolling five-year document updated annually. In May, agency overseers approved a $9.8 billion plan to cover fiscal years 2026 through 2030. (It’s not yet clear what the bottom line will be on the 2027-2031 version.)
Early in the process for developing the next version, the T has limited flexibility as a result of inflation, tariffs, and what MBTA Deputy Chief of Capital Strategy Michael Malia called “federal funding uncertainty writ large.” Employees of the transit agency, who this time of year typically get a chance to suggest where additional dollars should be directed, have been told to keep their focus narrow.
In past cycles, capital funding requests tended to reflect the steep costs of maintaining and upgrading the oldest transit system in the country. Last year, staff proposals totaled about $13.5 billion even though only about $1 billion was available for new commitments, according to Malia.
But this time around, Malia said, the T is taking a “new approach.”
Officials asked staff to limit their requests only to areas where additional money is needed to finish existing projects or to fund the most important maintenance and repairs. The goal is to keep resources focused on a handful of areas while navigating an uncertain fiscal outlook.
“I think the T is putting down a marker that their approach going forward is to do maintenance, reconstruction, and replacement of existing infrastructure, and any sort of expansion project [or] big megaproject is going to have to be paid for elsewhere, [such as] by the commonwealth itself,” Kane said.
Focused on Three Major Projects
In the next three years, a trio of projects will take up much of the MBTA’s available capital funding: the roughly $1.2 billion replacement of the North Station commuter rail drawbridge, the $1 billion procurement of new “Type 10” trains for the Green Line, and the effort to stockpile enough money to qualify for a crucial federal grant that would fund Green Line infrastructure improvements.
To secure that grant, which could help cover power and signal upgrades needed to accommodate the newer trolleys, the T needs to program $1.9 billion in matching funds over the next two years, Malia said.
About 45 percent of the T’s current five-year capital plan comes from the agency itself, which borrows $600 million per year to cover these expenses and then repays that money over time. Another 40 percent comes from federal sources, and state government pays for 14 percent, according to an analysis by the MBTA Advisory Board.
Some projects get funding outside of the capital plan. The T gained an additional $850 million in bonding capacity last week, essentially allowing it to borrow more money for infrastructure work, thanks to an accounting maneuver that deployed revenue from the voter-approved surtax on wealthy households.
Those dollars will help fund a bus maintenance facility in Arborway, a rail layover facility at Boston’s Widett Circle, Green Line improvements, and the purchase of new commuter rail locomotives.
“It’s interesting to come here saying ‘We’re getting something great, but it’s still going to be challenging going forward,’ but it is. This is the world we’re living in,” Malia told the T’s Board of Directors last week. “We have a legacy system that has a tremendous amount of need, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure we’re meeting that efficiently, appropriately and with the proper vision.”
Big Ideas Shelved, For Now
Kane, whose group represents cities and towns that help fund the T, said the narrower focus will slow down work on overhauling other, non-Arborway bus maintenance facilities to support battery-powered electric vehicles. It’s also likely to keep blue-sky ideas, such as extending the Green Line’s E Branch, in hypothetical territory.
He noted that the two most recent major expansions — the Green Line Extension into Somerville and Medford, and the commuter rail’s South Coast Rail — were “projects agreed upon in the 1990s.”
“There’s nothing else on the proverbial drawing board,” Kane said. “I don’t think anything like that will happen in the foreseeable future.”
The T’s capital budget, he added, “is simply too constrained to consider major expansion projects.” His group has long called on the MBTA to prioritize infrastructure investments that strengthen service instead of pursuing heavier-lift extensions.
The nuts-and-bolts need is significant. In 2023, T officials said it would cost $24.5 billion to bring all of its assets into a state of good repair.
“Politicians and leaders don’t get credit for preventing things going wrong. They get credit for cutting ribbons,” Kane said. “It’s cheaper over the long run, as we all know, to maintain what you have as you go and put money aside as you go to replace things at some point. We don’t do that. No one does that in the public sector.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
