(Bloomberg) — Briah Cooley typically takes public transit to her job at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston — if the train actually shows up.
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Ahead of her commute on a sweltering July morning, a maintenance vehicle derailed, damaging tracks and triggering a temporary shutdown of the subway route that connects Boston’s south side. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority offered free shuttle buses but Cooley, faced with more than an hour in peak traffic, opted to work from home instead.
Incidents like this have the 25-year-old clinical research coordinator rethinking her future in the Boston area.
“The two things that make me not want to live here anymore are the train and the housing market,” said Cooley.
Her experience isn’t unique. Boston is the birthplace of public transit in the US: the country’s first ever subway tunnel is still used today to connect the stop closest to the mayor’s office with the city’s famed public garden.
Like other US transit systems, Boston has struggled with low ridership post-pandemic. But decades of underinvestment have also left the region with antiquated infrastructure, a mishmash of technology and a daunting budget shortfall. The MBTA faces a projected $700 million operating deficit for the next fiscal year and needs at least an estimated $2.5 billion annually to address a backlog of repairs.
Even when the system operates without issue, commuter trains only come once an hour during the morning and evening rush in certain suburbs, a much lower frequency than New York-bound workers in New Jersey or Connecticut are used to.
The subway — known as the “T” — is laid out like a pinwheel and the various lines primarily intersect in the downtown center, forcing travelers to take long and convoluted journeys. Service levels on the city’s subway system on average remain about a quarter below what they were pre-pandemic, according to data from TransitMatters.
The Boston-area transportation system’s woes aren’t just a frustration for commuters; they also affect the Massachusetts economy. Housing in areas with convenient commutes to Boston can be prohibitively expensive, forcing many to live further afield. Businesses say it’s harder to bring workers back to the office if getting there is a complete nightmare. Boston is particularly vulnerable to the slump in office demand, as a third of its tax revenue is tied to commercial property taxes.
“The economy of Boston is struggling, and one of the reasons is because of the challenges we have with the MBTA system,” Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn said in an interview on Monday. The amount of time workers spend waiting for trains and buses is a top concern for businesses, he said. “It’s a major problem, and we really don’t know how we’re going to solve it.”
In the post-pandemic era of remote work, Massachusetts risks losing people and companies, says Jay Ash, head of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership. A recent survey found that a quarter of young adults in Greater Boston are likely to leave in the next five years because of high housing costs and transportation issues.
“We can make the system better,” said Kate Dineen, chief executive officer of A Better City, which represents the interests of about 130 business leaders on transportation and development issues. “But in order to do that, we’re going to need substantial new investments in the MBTA.”
Scramble for Funding
Growing concerns over transit have caught the attention of Governor Maura Healey who created a transportation funding task force composed of public and private sector leaders to study the state’s system and come up with recommendations for a long-term financing plan.
“I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to discern that we have underinvested in public transit for decades,” Healey said in an interview on Monday. “I recognize it’s a competitive advantage when there’s strong public transit and it can be a competitive disadvantage when there isn’t.”
A transit system that can provide access to housing and improve residents’ quality of life is a “top priority,” Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the Massachusetts transportation secretary, said in a statement.
The MBTA’s funding woes are set to deepen, driven by a slow ridership recovery and debt inherited from past investments like the Big Dig — the most expensive highway project in the US.
“The T was born broke and it remains broke,” said Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board in a July presentation. “The deficits that the T faces are existential, and I would argue that you cannot make the service cuts or make the number of layoffs required to solve a $700 million deficit, let alone one that’s greater.”
By fiscal 2029, the budget shortfall will swell to almost $900 million.
At the height of the pandemic, the MBTA proposed sharp cuts to bus and subway services and the elimination of ferry operations and weekend commuter rail trips to scrounge up $142 million in savings. The service reductions required to close a deficit that’s five or six times greater would be even more draconian.
A series of accidents such as a passenger’s death on a Red Line train and an Orange Line fire have led to federal mandates for increased safety spending, adding to the transit system’s budget pressures.
Massachusetts recently enacted a surcharge on incomes over $1 million, with an eye toward earmarking half of the revenue for transit. Most of the other proposed fund-raising tools involve new fees for road usage or tax increases in a state that the Tax Foundation already ranks as the fifth-worst business tax climate in the nation.
Half of Massachusetts residents said the state should consider congestion pricing to reduce traffic and fund transit improvements, while two-thirds said towns and cities should have more taxing authority to support transportation needs, according to a June survey by MassINC on behalf of advocacy group Transportation for Massachusetts.
Rail Link
Efforts to improve service continue, with MBTA General Manager Phil Eng this year pledging to eliminate slow zones, where poor track conditions require trains to operate at reduced speeds. In the meantime, frequent line closures for repairs underscore the system’s reputation for fickle service.
“We are committed to ensuring that we continue improving service, understanding that we must utilize available dollars in the most efficient manner,” Eng said in a statement.
One reason why industrial software company Aspen Technology Inc. is based in Bedford, Massachusetts rather than Boston is because housing is cheaper and the commutes are easier, CEO Antonio Pietri said in an interview. Bedford is close enough to New Hampshire that many of the company’s employees live across the border, he said.
Some are lobbying for new transit infrastructure altogether. US Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat who represents the Massachusetts district that includes Newburyport and Salem, has been advocating for an underground tunnel that would connect North and South Stations in Boston and a commuter and regional rail system that’s currently split between the two.
Currently, travelers have to either walk the roughly one-mile distance or take a subway trip on two different lines. This setup makes commutes from more affordable but distant suburbs overly long and complicated.
The rail link would make “traveling around the Commonwealth and throughout New England faster than driving — and that’s what’s key,” Moulton said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Boston office.
As lawmakers debate the right way to fix Massachusetts’ transit system, some residents aren’t waiting for them to figure it out. Massachusetts stands to lose almost $1 billion in annual revenue by 2030 as residents — particularly prime-age workers and high-earners — move elsewhere, according to a study by Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
“Legislators say that they want to make Massachusetts a more competitive place for businesses, improve people’s quality of life and make it a more equitable place,” said Jarred Johnson, executive director at TransitMatters. “But you can’t do that with a failing transportation system.”
–With assistance from Nic Querolo.
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