New electric vehicle chargers are pictured at select parking spots by the secure Mount Vernon Street archway at the State House. (Photo courtesy of Sam Doran/State House News Service)

ELECTRIC VEHICLE DRIVERS traversing Massachusetts on the state’s major highways could find themselves facing one of EV owners’ biggest fears: a lack of chargers to ensure they can safely make it from point A to point B. 

The state has made significant progress over the past decade in making it easier for motorists to afford to purchase an electric vehicle and install chargers in homes. 

But Massachusetts has yet to tap funding from a key federal program to install chargers throughout the state’s network of major highways, the state’s Department of Transportation confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon.  

And now, the implosion of a major contract the state awarded to redevelop 18 service plazas along the Massachusetts Turnpike is bound to push back the installation of even more EV chargers. 

“All these things together make it harder to achieve our deployment goals,” said Eric Bourassa, director of transportation at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and a member of the state’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council. 

Those delays underscore the challenges facing the state in cutting pollution from the transportation sector, which accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts at 38 percent. Widespread adoption of electric vehicles is a crucial part of those efforts, but the state remains far off its goals for the chargers needed to both increase consumer confidence in the technology and power the vehicles once they are on the road.  

There were 9,413 publicly accessible charging ports in Massachusetts as of May, the fourth-highest rate per capita in the country, but the state would need to triple its annual rate of new charging deployments through 2030 to achieve its climate commitments, according to the most recent state data. 

The latest blow to the state’s EV charging efforts is the byproduct of a larger debacle around the state Department of Transportation’s attempts to refurbish the turnpike service plazas. The winning bidder, Irish company Applegreen, backed out during final negotiations — and with it went the nearly 800 EV chargers it pledged to install over the course of the 35-year contract, dozens of which were set to be deployed next year.  

It’s not clear how many charging stations will ultimately be called for at the service plazas as the state starts from scratch and launches its rebid of the process. The original request the state released last year tied much of the charging installation requirements to studies on future demand, which remains murky, especially after Massachusetts paused its EV sales requirements for manufacturers earlier this year. 

The new bid has not yet been released, and the state transportation department declined to comment on when it might be or what it may include, citing active litigation involving the department and Global Partners, the Massachusetts-based company that sued the department after it lost the original bid to Applegreen.  

Global Partners didn’t comment on the specifics of the EV charging plans it laid out in its original bid beyond saying that it remains “committed” to reapplying in the next bidding process and that expanding EV charging is part of its “bold plan” for the plazas. 

The transportation department is “balancing multiple goals” with a complicated contract like this one, said Bourassa, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council transportation specialist. “These are the hardest procurements to do in state government. You’re trying to accomplish 10 different goals. You want this awesome new plaza that’s going to have great amenities for motorists and new facilities and new restaurants. You want electric vehicle charging. You want revenue. You’re trying to get that balance.” 

The two companies involved in the turnpike service plaza dispute, ironically, are a central part of the state’s strategy to install chargers along Massachusetts highways through a different initiative, where the state has been slow to act.  

Massachusetts has yet to deploy any EV chargers through the $64 million in federal money the state was awarded as part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, the transportation department confirmed, despite a five-year goal to install at least 92 charging ports through NEVI funding. Nearby states like Rhode Island and New York, on the other hand, have moved ahead faster in building out the charging stations under the federal program.  

The state selected Applegreen, Global Partners, and a third company, Weston & Sampson, as developers under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. Those companies are proposing charging sites to the Department of Transportation, which have not yet been approved, the department said. 

“This has had a lot to do with the way we went about procuring contractors and professionals,” said Jim Aloisi, a former state transportation secretary who now lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves on the board of the advocacy group TransitMatters. “Procurement is something that is kind of boring from a public perspective. But it’s almost always a barrier to moving quickly. I don’t think Massachusetts did anything to expedite it.” 

But even as Massachusetts officials are still figuring out how to supply the necessary chargers on highways to ease “range anxiety” — the worry of EV drivers about whether they’ll make it to their destination, or the next charging station — the state and local communities are sifting through the complicated challenges of deploying chargers on town streets and parking lots and connecting them to the electrical grid. 

Aloisi said since most driving is local, he wants the state to dedicate more money to municipalities in order to accelerate deployment of chargers, and in the metro Boston area, to install them at commuter rail station parking lots — to get people out of their cars in the first place. 

“It’s great that we have the federal money to deploy NEVI in Massachusetts, but that’s not going to solve anywhere close to our needs,” he said. “We could be providing more direct funding to cities and towns. They know their streetscape. They know where the right spots are. We’d be much better off doing that as a way to encourage more and more people to even consider the transition to EVs.” 

Massachusetts has advanced a number of policies to boost the uptake of EVs over the last decade. The Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program funds charging infrastructure, the state has expanded a rebate for EV purchases, and the electric utility companies have launched programs to install EV chargers at homes, workplaces, and publicly accessible areas. 

Plus, Beacon Hill enacted a “right to charge” rule last year to make it easier for residents of multi-family buildings to have charging infrastructure at their condo or apartment complex.   

With those policies in place, there’s a “real desire to get this right,” Bourassa said. “Sometimes that means it takes longer, because we have gotten it wrong in the past,” he said, pointing to past instances of broken highway chargers on the turnpike.  

Still, with looming emissions reduction mandates and a squeeze on additional help coming from Washington, time is of the essence. 

“Any delay is bad,” said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director at the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, regarding the stalled service plaza chargers and slow-moving NEVI plans. “There’s no way to sugarcoat that. We need to triple the pace of deployment between now and the end of the decade to build enough EV charging stations to meet our climate requirements. So any delay has ramifications on that front.” 

Jordan Wolman is a senior reporter at CommonWealth Beacon covering climate and energy issues in Massachusetts. Before joining CommonWealth Beacon, Jordan spent four years at POLITICO in Washington,...