The MBTA Advisory Board, an independent group that represents cities and towns that help fund the T, is calling on Beacon Hill to make debt relief a central part of the next MBTA financial rescue plan.
Public transportation is on the verge of an “existential crisis,” a key transit watchdog warned, as the MBTA moves ahead with a budget plan that drains its reserves in the face of a looming deficit and uncertainty about Beacon Hill’s approach to long-term funding fixes.
One of the state’s top transportation experts is now Massachusetts’ top transportation official, a move one advocate praised as “an inspired choice.”
Cities and towns that help fund the MBTA are concerned it will be “impossible” to restore pre-pandemic service levels and that the agency might need to hike fares given the growing shadow of a budget shortfall that officials so far have failed to address.
There’s been a springtime sense of optimism surging through major metropolitan area transit systems. Just not at the MBTA as incoming MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng prepares to take the reins. The difference? Riders’ belief in the system’s reliability.
The eastern Massachusetts commuter rail network and its hundreds of thousands of riders would no longer be the responsibility of the MBTA under safety and management reforms targeted by the House’s transportation chief.
Anybody who thinks a new governor will solve the T’s problems alone is engaging in magical thinking. As corny as it may sound, it will take a team effort– and a lot more and tougher oversight.
The MBTA’s oversight board received a stark warning Thursday morning: Without more state transit funding, plans to build thousands of new homes near train stations will be in peril.
Transit advocates are giving Gov. Charlie Baker’s belated picks for the MBTA’s new board generally positive marks while sounding a note of caution about the tasks ahead.
The MBTA overestimated its budget deficit and could erase its argument for a controversial package of service cuts by using a less conservative outlook, according to an independent oversight panel
Although the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board unanimously approved the authority’s $2.1 billion budget Monday, members renewed calls for new forms of transportation revenue after warnings from an outside review group about the T’s finances.
Despite steady progress toward achieving most of its goals for improvement, the MBTA is lagging on several infrastructure- and customer-related benchmarks outlined two years ago in its strategic plan, according to the first in-depth review of that plan.
