Sarah Barnat
This winter has been a wake-up call about the fragile state of the MBTA. It’s also been a wake-up call about the importance of transit to the state’s economy. Some of the most valuable real estate in New England, in the heart of the regional capital, stood nearly inaccessible for days. Employees and employers lost time and money. Even drivers suffered as T riders took to the roads instead.
But there is another longstanding problem with the T, one that the Urban Land Institute highlighted in our 2012 “Hub and Spoke” report. Even under what passes as normal conditions, the T is straining to keep up with demand. And with more development coming online around transit stations, the problem will only get worse.
Using the T’s own data, the report found that the Waterfront Silver Line, crucial to one of the hottest real estate neighborhoods in the nation, is already congested. The Orange Line from Downtown Crossing to North Station and the C and D branches of the Green Line are highly congested. The central trunk of the Green Line and parts of the Red Line are over capacity. So is South Station, home to eight of 12 commuter lines and 62 percent of that system’s riders.
More people are riding the T because it is the most cost-effective and sustainable way to live and work in the city. The report forecast that T ridership, which stood at 1.3 million daily trips in 2012, is going to increase; the T needs to plan for another 100,000 to 360,000 weekday riders by 2021. To put that in perspective, the entire Green Line carries about 230,000 riders on a typical weekday. The fact that the T saw record ridership in 2014, despite a fare increase and unusually low gas prices, is a sign that these projections are on target.
A $6.7 Billion Backlog
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is fueling this demand. Data from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council shows the potential for 75,000 new residential units and space for 130,000 new jobs near transit and commuter rail stations by 2035. More intensive use of commercial development near transit and policies designed to encourage transit use are also driving ridership up.
As with T ridership, recent events confirm the trend indentified in the report. A recent front page story in the Boston Sunday Globe highlighted the historic building boom now happening in Boston. Nearly all of the 14.6 million square feet of projects identified in the article are at or near transit stations, because that is where people want to live and work. If the T cannot keep up with the pace of development, we risk leaving some of this growth on the table.
The fact is, even when the system returns to full strength, the hub of our transit network will still be overcapacity at peak times. New Red and Orange Line cars, slated to come online starting in 2018, will improve reliability. But they will only be replacing decades-old rolling stock; they will not increase capacity over what we have now.
Increasing the core capacity of the T is a daunting task, especially in light of the $6.7 billion backlog of projects needed just to bring the T up to a state of good repair. Tackling this mountain of deferred maintenance is the first priority, but it cannot be all we do. As we repair what we have, we must make smart, targeted investments to improve service and increase capacity.
It’s natural to ask, after the winter the T has had, how can we possibly think about improvements when we can’t maintain what we have? But given the stakes for development and the state’s economy, the real question to ask is, how can we afford not to? At the end of the day, we can’t do TOD without the T.
