Banker & Tradesman file photo

The MBTA will need almost $15 billion more to modernize and fix its trains, tracks, facilities and equipment, the transit agency announced Thursday afternoon.

In its first Capital Needs Assessment since 2019, when the Baker administration estimated the T needed about $10 billion to fix decades of underinvestment, MBTA officials now say it will take around $24.5 billion.

“Restoring reliability and ensuring safety are priorities as we rebuild MBTA infrastructure. Understanding and acknowledging the significant resources needed to bring our system to a State of Good Repair is just one step towards fixing our infrastructure to deliver more robust and frequent service. The MBTA is one of the oldest transit agencies in the country, and while there are a number of contributing factors, it’s clear that years of underinvestment have added to the cost of bringing our system back to a state of good repair,” MBTA General Manager and CEO Phillip Eng said in a statement. “Timely and appropriate actions are key to mitigating and avoiding more costly and potentially impactful efforts. Know that we are committed to aggressively addressing our immediate needs – like the recent 16-day outage on the Ashmont Branch to perform track work – as we strive to deliver a modernized system to serve future generations.”

The T said its repair bill involves $6.4 billion for facilities upgrades, $5.3 billion for tunnel and bridge repair, $5.1 billion to fix or modernize old power distribution systems, $2.4 billion to replace out-of-date trains and buses, $2 billion for subway track repairs, $1.3 billion to modernize signals on the commuter rail system, $1.2 billion for commuter rail track repairs and $753 million for new signals on the subway system. The dollar figures were derived from the replacement value of the T’s various assets.

Big drivers for the $14.5 billion jump in the repair bill, the T said, include construction cost inflation, continued aging of the T’s infrastructure and “a more robust, comprehensive, and data-driven” approach to cataloguing the agency’s needs than it used in 2019.

“While this is a useful tool for capital planning, it does not mean the T needs $24.5 billion dollars today,” MBTA senior director of capital planning Jillian Linnell told the MBTA’s board of directors at a Thursday meeting, explaining that each piece of equipment that needed replacement or other repairs still needs to be integrated into budgets and replacement plans. “This exercise is intended to be a temperature check to help us see how we are doing.”

Replacement or major repairs for some of the items included in the Capital Needs Assessment are already underway or planned, Linnell said.

Officials presenting the assessment to the T board Thursday were at pains to say that the analysis doesn’t mean that the T is unsafe, but that much of its equipment had become obsolete and costly to operate due to age, comparing equipment that was not in a “state of good repair” to a family car that had passed its 10th birthday.

“We’re doing a capital investment program [right now] that doesn’t come anywhere close to dealing with this, let alone regional rail or the other expansions advocates and many of us [on the board] have talked about. This is very sobering,” MBTA board member Tom McGee told T staff, noting that both the dollar cost of the T’s repair bill as well and the number of systems that need to be replaced increased significantly from its 2019 assessment.

The announcement comes a day after newly-minted Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt told an audience at a forum organized by the MBTA Advisory Board, which represents municipalities, that the T’s upcoming operating budget gap represented “an opportunity to have a hard, hard discussion about hard choices about what is actually needed for the T to function.”

When asked about the T’s needs assessment, a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey said “the Capital Needs Assessment and Inventory shows what we have known for a long time – there is an urgent need for significant resources and work across the MBTA system because of decades of underinvestment. The Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to ensuring that the MBTA has the resources it needs to deliver the safe, reliable service that the people of Massachusetts deserve.”

A leading transit advocate echoed Healey’s sentiment about the need for more investment in the T and applauded the agency for what she called “transparency” about the scale of its repair bill.

“Today’s news is confirmation of what was already clear to T riders and supporters – the MBTA is suffering from a legacy of underinvestment and needs more funding to get the system back on track. Now, the Administration, elected officials, and advocates must come together to develop an actionable plan to identify new sources of revenue to address this critical backlog, as well as the investments needed modernize, decarbonize, and fortify our system from the worsening impacts of climate change,” A Better City President & CEO Kate Dineen said in a statement the group released after the T’s announcement. “We are grateful for the MBTA’s analysis and for their transparency, and A Better City and its members stand ready to help advance a comprehensive plan to deliver the transportation system our region needs to compete and to thrive.”