Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff

The Healey administration’s new Transportation Funding Task Force, which was sworn in and held its first meeting Thursday, will be “looking at everything – congestion pricing, tolling, every single option there is” for state funding of roads and transit, the group’s chair said Tuesday.

“The Transportation Funding Task Force is focused on options. I think we all know, for the most part, how we got to this place as far as our transportation system. We know that it’s not going to be easy to get out of it. The Fair Share Amendment, many of these initiatives – they are not the answer. It will help, it will buy us time, but it still does not answer the issue,” Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt said during a budget hearing Tuesday. “We know that, quite honestly, the quality and quantity of your transportation options depend on where you can afford to live. We all know that. And I think with the cost of housing, it’s making this even harder for communities, for residents, to live in the commonwealth.”

Transportation financing has been studied, often in depth, for years in and around state government and the new effort by Gov. Maura Healey will add another chapter to the research, with no assurance that it will lead to actual improvements. The MBTA faces a gap in its operating budget starting next year that could grow to $900 million by the 2028-2029 fiscal year and a separate, large cliff in its capital budget – used to fund the new buses and the improved suburban trains Healey backed in her gubernatorial campaign platform – even as it tries to aggressively root out billions of dollars in deferred maintenance across its trains and physical infrastructure.

Tibbits-Nutt will chair the task force and Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz will serve as vice chair. MBTA General Manager Phil Eng also participated in the group’s first, private meeting Thursday.

The task force is being asked over the next year to recommend a long-term plan for making – and paying for – investments in transportation infrastructure all around Massachusetts. Healey has neither embraced nor ruled out the idea of pursuing tax or fee increases to generate more money for the state’s transportation sector, a subject that always induces strong debate on Beacon Hill.

“We’re looking at everything – congestion pricing, tolling, every single option there is – to the best of our ability, quantifying what that would look like. But what we are not doing is making the equity issue even worse,” Tibbits-Nutt said Tuesday in response to a question from Sen. Liz Miranda of Boston. “We are not looking to add additional costs for people around transportation because they have no option but to drive. That is not what we’re focused on. We’re just focused on saying, ‘OK, if we were to do congestion pricing, this is what it would look like, if we were to toll additional roadways, this is what it would look like’ just so we know.”

Tibbits-Nutt said the group’s final product “is not going to be a recommendation focused solely on the amount of money that you can gain from a particular option to the detriment of the communities that are going to have to bear that impact.”