Rick Dimino
August 2016 represents the beginning of the second year for the MBTA’s Fiscal Managements and Control Board. Gov. Charlie Baker and the Legislature created this five-person panel to fix the budget, operations and management practices of our much-maligned transit agency. The Control Board is expected to address both the daily problems – like balancing the budget and ensuring the trains, buses and subway cars are running properly – but also to establish a long-term vision for infrastructure improvements. The board is working on two different tracks at the same time. In terms of these immediate issues, their actions are proving to be successful.
For the MBTA’s annual budget, the Control Board installed a real focus on controlling employee overtime costs and increasing revenue from advertising. It made significant progress in improving the MBTA’s ability to operate during winter conditions and storms. It embraced innovation through a pilot program with ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft to provide paratransit services in a more cost-effective manner as part of The Ride. These ideas represent more than just an attempt to balance the MBTA’s annual operating budget; they represent a real cultural change to the agency and should help to restore our trust in their use of public tax dollars.
In the long-term vision and approach, the MBTA and the entire Massachusetts Department of Transportation have initiated Focus 40 and prepared a five-year capital plan; both of these face challenges. After an initial review of the condition of the MBTA’s infrastructure, the Control Board proclaimed “the system faces dire state of good repair and other capital needs across all modes.” To address this, the board presented a request to eliminate these “dire” needs over the next 25 years, at an estimated cost of $25 billion. However, a few months later the MassDOT board did not agree to this plan and allocated even lower funding amounts each year for maintenance repairs, essentially saying a 25-year plan is too fast. From the business community’s perspective, either timeline is disappointing. Riders and even non-riders of the MTBA would agree that we need improvements as soon as possible.
Another reason for concern is MassDOT and the MBTA’s ability to spend their infrastructure budget in a timely manner. Over the past five years, MassDOT only spends 82 percent of its approved infrastructure budget each year. This means that if MassDOT continues at their historical pace of spending 82 percent of the budget, Massachusetts would see reduction in transportation infrastructure improvements when compared to the last few years. This past year the MBTA only spent two-thirds of the planned state of good repair budget, which means over $200 million of much-needed repairs did not happen. Hopefully MassDOT and the MBTA Control Board will invest in design and construction management and staff resources to ensure all infrastructure investments happen as currently planned. After all, the system’s need for effective repair work is obvious.
The Can Has Been Kicked Far Enough
It is clear that as Greater Boston grows, we will need the MBTA to handle thousands of additional commuters each day, especially as traffic congestion is certain to increase on our already inefficient roads and highways. The MBTA needs to take steps now to meet this growing demand.
Many transportation advocacy organizations and municipalities expressed this message to the Control Board and MassDOT when they were developing their five-year infrastructure plans. The cities of Boston and Cambridge, and as well as local nonprofits, asked for a more aggressive pace on a number of key projects, such as state of good repair spending, expansion of South Station, funding for the I-90 Interchange in Allston including a new West Station and state-of-the-art improvements to the Red Line subway signals.
Unfortunately, MassDOT and the MBTA did not incorporate the necessary construction dollars any of these requests in the final budget plans, thereby possibly postponing these important projects and forcing the commonwealth to wait even longer for a 21st-century transit system.
Still, in spite of the limitations of the approved capital plan and the current lack of capacity to spend the dollars given to them, the Fiscal Management and Control Board deserves our praise and continued support relative to its near-term achievements in the past year. We all need the board to be successful, in rebuilding a safe, reliable and effective system that meets the needs our citizens and economy. This means that unless there’s a comprehensive vision, a plan to carry it out, the wherewithal to hire top professionals to oversee its execution and a finance strategy to fund it, the state’s core transit system will not be in a position to meet our future mobility and economic requirements. To reach that goal, finances and human resource development need to continue to be a priority. It is an effort that should be the main focus of the Control Board for the next two years.
Rick Dimino is president and CEO of A Better City.
