While a new panel of government officials, business leaders transportation activists and commuters prepare for another round of investigation into how the state should fund roads and transit, Gov. Maura Healey will keep an open mind – including around the possibility of new or increased taxes.
Gov. Maura Healey’s push to increase state support for the MBTA could help the agency navigate the year ahead, but it would not be enough to solve a projected budget gap, officials said Thursday.
Potentially teeing up a new round of debate about how the state funds public transit, MBTA officials on Friday rolled out a dire financial forecast that projects a sizable operating budget shortfall this year and a nearly $1 billion chasm within five years.
The MBTA will need almost $15 billion more to modernize and fix its trains, tracks, facilities and equipment, the transit agency announced Thursday afternoon.
As they continue to mull the state’s overdue budget, here’s one idea the legislature’s fiscal negotiators should jump on: Take the Big Dig debt off the T’s books.
MBTA officials warned Thursday of a “sobering” financial outlook for the agency, but voted to jack up spending by nearly 7 percent in an annual budget that funds mandatory safety improvements and an ambitious hiring effort.
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.
In a sharp break from their predecessors, Gov. Maura Healey’s recently tapped MBTA directors peppered agency officials with questions Thursday about budget woes and safety initiatives as they strive to get up to speed on the agency’s inner workings.
Fixes to the T need to go beyond just new leadership and an increased workforce. We also need to explore new approaches to capital projects, service delivery and funding plans.
MBTA overseers want to press ahead with a budget that uses hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time funding to boost the agency’s spending by nearly 7 percent next fiscal year, much of it on new safety and training initiatives.
A long-sought downtown Boston rail link between the MBTA’s Red and Blue Lines, passenger train service in western Massachusetts and another study of low-income T fares headline transit areas of focus in Gov. Maura Healey’s first annual budget.
As remote work gives some Massachusetts workers the opportunity to move out of state, and high housing costs and transportation woes drive others out, Boston businesses are calling for a statewide housing plan, new MBTA leadership and greater government support for apprenticeship programs.
A flurry of one-time funding injections improved the near-term financial outlook for the MBTA, but with costs growing more quickly than revenues and a still-undetermined amount of spending required to comply with federal orders, that optimism might not last long.
MBTA officials for months have projected that a sizable operating budget gap – between $240 million and $421 million, depending on ridership – will erupt in fiscal year 2024, then grow worse.
Finger-pointing and debating who is time blame is tempting but won’t move the MBTA out of its state of crisis fast enough.
With a fiscal cliff and expensive, increasingly likely federal safety mandates bearing down on the MBTA, it’s clear Beacon Hill will need to do more to protect this critical infrastructure if it wants to keep its climate and housing production goals on track.
The MBTA’s leadership and rank-and-file staff have not done enough to ensure its public transit service operates safely, the head of the T’s governing board said Thursday while calling on those up and down the agency’s ranks to redouble their efforts.
Buoyed by an injection of federal relief funds during the pandemic, the MBTA will redirect half a billion dollars toward major safety investments, electric bus infrastructure, workforce retention efforts and matching grant programs.
Darkening an already-grim financial picture, MBTA officials on Thursday projected the agency’s expenses will grow faster than revenues until fiscal 2027.
For transit advocates concerned improving the MBTA and regional transit authorities, the state’s coming windfall in federal infrastructure money represents a still-unseized opportunity whose impact will be muted unless Beacon Hill takes a more proactive role.
