fb-pixelT funding solutions abound. Political will, not so much. Skip to main content

T funding crisis solutions abound, study shows. Political will, not so much.

The MBTA needs $700 million more next summer just to balance its budget. A series of funding solutions from elsewhere, like raising the gas tax and congestion pricing, could fill the gap.Lane Turner/Globe Staff

The MBTA got a list of desperately needed possible solutions on Thursday to its most pressing problem: how to fill its $700 million operations funding gap by next summer.

Increasing the excise tax in areas with T service and areas next to those with T service could raise as much as $570 million per year. Charging drivers to use busy roads at peak times could raise $440 million. And increasing the T’s share of the state sales tax could bring in $335 million.

Those funding strategies were among the 10 ideas that staff of the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, which manages federal transportation funding for the region, presented to the MBTA board of directors as the T grapples with a funding crisis overseers have called “existential.”

But there does not yet appear to be political will to make them a reality. Most of the strategies involve creating new taxes or raising existing ones, both of which Governor Maura Healey has said she opposes.

Advertisement



And the MPO’s research, which an organization spokesperson said MassDOT paid $125,000 for, appears to duplicate research being done by pricey outside consultants hired by Healey’s 31-member transportation financing task force.

In April, that task force initiated a $450,000 contract signed by the MBTA and consulting firm Ernst & Young to pay a team of consultants — some as much as $610 per hour — to do some of the same research that the MPO staff presented Thursday.

Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt, who chairs the task force, said the MPO study would be a “valuable resource.”

“Those of us working on this Task Force are focused not only on the MBTA Service Area but also on all types of modes across the 351 communities as we look to fund the next generation of transportation,” Tibbits-Nutt said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately respond to a question about whether Healey would support the funding strategies presented Thursday.

The apparent bureaucratic overlap and unwillingness of state government leaders so far to consider all strategies to fully fund the T has some transportation task force members and advocates losing faith in the process. The task force is supposed to recommend to Healey by December how to sustainably fund transportation statewide.

Advertisement



Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board and a task force member, had said in February he was optimistic about the task force’s ability to solve the funding crisis. Now he is starting to change his mind, he said.

“If the governor chooses not to lead, we’ll go to the Legislature and seek leadership there,” Kane said. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

But the Legislature isn’t offering any T funding solutions yet, either. Budget proposals from the governor, the state House of Representatives, and the state Senate for the fiscal year that starts next month all leave the MBTA hundreds of millions of dollars short on its operating budget, forcing the agency to use all of its deficiency fund to close the gap. The T has $11 billion worth of infrastructure projects its staff has deemed critical for the next five years that are unfunded, part of a larger $25 billion backlog.

The T projects the gap in its operating budget — used to pay for debt, employee wages, supplies, fuel, and its commuter rail operations contract, among other things — will grow to nearly $700 million by next summer and reach nearly $900 million by 2028.

The 10 funding strategies researched by the MPO target three areas: vehicle ownership, road usage, and “value generated by transit.”

Increasing the car registration fee could raise between $33 million and $104 million a year, depending on whether it applies to drivers in the T’s core service area or also includes drivers in the extended core service area, researchers found. If the state gas tax were on par with the New England average, it could bring in $22 million.

Advertisement



Doubling existing highway tolling could raise as much as $80 million, and implementing congestion pricing could raise as much as $440 million, researchers found.

Other strategies researched include allocating property tax revenue on new developments in areas near T service to the agency ($25 million to $85 million raised annually); increasing the room occupancy tax and the meal tax by 1 percent in the expanded T service area (bringing in as much as $35 million and $175 million, respectively); and increasing the T’s share of the sales tax ($335 million raised).

Reggie Ramos, executive director of the public transportation advocacy group Transportation for Massachusetts, said “nothing should be off the table.”

“The problem is big, and we need to be bold,” Ramos said. “We ought to do something different to get a different outcome.”


Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her @taydolven.