Rick Dimino

This year begins with great anticipation for the upcoming safe return to workplaces and business districts throughout Massachusetts. We are now at the beginning of a widespread vaccination effort that should allow hundreds of thousands of workers to commute to offices, travel throughout the region and help the economy reemerge from the pandemic. This is also an opportunity to initiate changes to our transportation system that meet the needs of a new economy in 2021 and beyond. Unfortunately, there is reason to be concerned with the MBTA’s current approach to providing transit service in 2021. 

In December, the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board voted to cut transit service in a manner that is ill-timed and unjustified from both a budgetary and service delivery standpoint. Instead of signaling that commuters can rely on public transit over the next few months, the MBTA is reducing some transit service due to low-ridership from the pandemic. 

Although designed to be temporary in nature, some of these service cuts – including those on the commuter rail, ferry and some bus routes – will endure at least through June, which is when we hope to see a return to the workplace well underway.  

Employers Will Need the T 

Transit service cannot be turned off or on like a faucet. Adjustments take months to implement because of contracts with non-MBTA operators, communication plans for riders and even some federal legal requirements. The third-party operators of commuter rail and water ferry service, Keolis and Hornblower respectively, need time to hire and train staff once changes are approved by MBTA leadership.  

The current plan at the MBTA is to wait until the spring to reassess changes to frequency, routes and the level of service that would take place through June. Otherwise, the transit cuts will continue. This plan will likely leave metropolitan Boston unprepared for increased ridership in late spring and early summer.   

Strangely, the recently approved transit cuts are not being done to solve a budget crisis. Due to generous federal funding from the CARES Act and some smart budget planning this fall, the MBTA developed a balanced budget for this year and through June 2021. Then, only weeks after the vote to cut service, the latest federal recovery bill is poised to deliver approximately $300 million in additional funding to the MBTA. The agency is cutting service through this June because it has argued ridership is too low now and will continue to be so for the next two years. This is the wrong approach for many reasons and should be reversed as soon as possible.  

Recent employee and employer surveys indicate that workers want to return to their physical workplace, with some flexibility, when the economy re-opens. When they do return to commuting, they plan to use the same mode of transportation they used prior to the pandemic. The MBTA must be ready to run full service in the spring. In the short term, commuters will demand less crowded cars and reliable service. We should not be putting workers back onto buses, subways and rail cars, that are at capacity. That would discourage transit use in the short term, hurt workers’ confidence in the transit system and ultimately stall our economy in 2021.  

Opportunities to Modernize 

With funding that is currently in place, there are many opportunities for the MBTA to evolve into a more modern system. Ridership and commuter rail usage will certainly change and there could be a shift away from peak hour service and towards service throughout the day to accommodate essential workers and flexible work schedules.  

This new approach presents the possibility to smooth out service during the day and adopt more frequency with the full-day schedules. Changing our commuter rail schedules would allow for greater physical distancing for riders, as well as the opportunity to use our current rail workforce more efficiently and to advance the commonwealth’s long–term regional rail vision goals. 

The latest round of federal relief funds also offers the best chance for the MBTA become a 21st century transit system through better infrastructure. There are key transportation projects identified in Focus40 and the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Transportation report – such as the Red Line-Blue Line connector, an electrified regional commuter rail system, an all-electric bus fleet and improved maintenance facilities – that could be supported in part by federal funds under the Biden administration.  

The MBTA should accelerate design plans on these transformational capital projects so they are ready to receive future federal funds. Otherwise, these key projects will continue to be unfunded.  

With strategic planning and smart investments, 2021 can be the year that our region began to build back a stronger, more equitable economy, driven by access to safe, reliable and accessible public transit. The MBTA’s approved service cuts hinder the region’s economic recovery, jeopardize the future of the transit system and curtail the commonwealth’s ability to achieve its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Let’s start the year by fixing this mistake and sending a clear message that we are going to make public transit a better option than ever before for the essential workers taking it today and the workforce of the future.  

Rick Dimino is CEO of A Better City