If they’re not careful, Gov. Charlie Baker and his hand-picked MBTA general manager could undermine the biggest effort to grow housing production this state has seen in decades.
We can all agree that Massachusetts has a dire housing shortage that’s causing purchase prices and rents to rise out of many people’s reach. To fix that, the governor and much of the housing industry endorsed the Housing Choice legislation, which both makes it easier for willing communities to rezone for more density and requires communities in the MBTA’s service area to permit reasonably dense, multifamily housing near transit stops by right.
But by insisting that the agency won’t use a small fraction of the federal COVID-19 aid it’s received to restore extensive cuts to subway, bus and commuter rail service, Baker and MBTA GM Steve Poftak are threatening both of those efforts.
Concerns about traffic routinely dominate opposition to new development. Massachusetts residents aren’t stupid. They know that without reliable, frequent public transit service, more neighbors puts more cars on local streets regardless of whether these new neighbors have the luxury of working from home or not. After all, everyone has to visit the grocery store, get haircuts or drop kids off at school and many – at least, post-pandemic – will want to go out shopping or visit restaurants. When public transit can’t be relied on, people buy cars if they can afford to, adding to traffic and carbon pollution.
Developers and advocates for more housing can short-circuit these worries if there is a useful bus and train network that supports a proposed project. Even a single, humble bus can take up to 50 cars off the road at one time using the amount of road needed for only two or three cars. However, if the MBTA can’t be trusted to provide adequate service, the friends of housing production face a much tougher battle.
Housing Choice’s greatest achievement – mandating transit-oriented multifamily zoning in nearly every Greater Boston community – is at even greater peril, thanks to the substantial leeway the legislature granted state officials in implementing this provision. While any zone must allow at least 15 units per acre, just what constitutes an acceptably sized zone was left open for Baker’s team to define. Without an adequate transit network, municipalities have a much stronger argument against substantial increases in density as the Baker administration begins writing these implementing regulations.
What makes Baker’s and Poftak’s intransigence so galling is that the cuts – which include 20 percent reductions in frequency on the Red, Green and Orange lines – will save the T a mere $21 million compared to nearly $1 billion in federal aid it’s receiving between the December and March aid packages.
At a time when the threat of climate change demands we decarbonize our transportation system and the threat of traffic compels us to prevent its return as Massachusetts reopens, this is no time to cut public transit.
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