Four years ago, as part of a surge of go-getter climate optimism that fueled a legally binding state commitment to slash greenhouse gas emissions, Beacon Hill ordered the MBTA to switch its entire fleet of fossil fuel-reliant buses to electric-powered vehicles. For months, if not years, however, it’s been an open secret in transportation circles that the T will not come close to hitting the deadlines lawmakers set for that multibillion-dollar changeover.
Many voices argue that it’s not all the T’s fault. Yes, the monumental undertaking has already featured budget overruns and complicated planning, but there’s also a market mismatch, with multiple transit agencies across the country competing for a constrained supply of battery electric buses. Federal policy under the Trump administration is changing, too, making it more difficult to get money from Washington for electric buses.
Just over four and a half years before the first major deadline, T higher-ups concede that the agency is almost certainly in no position to comply in time. What’s more, they are ready to tee up a bigger question that seems sure to stir thorny debate: Is the push for a rapid transition to an all-electric bus fleet even worth the tradeoffs?
The MBTA today has about 1,100 buses, all but a tiny fraction of which run on diesel fuel, compressed natural gas, or hybrid sources. The cost to replace all of those with vehicles that spew virtually no emissions, and to build out the unique maintenance and charging infrastructure they require, is several billion dollars under the most optimistic estimates, and the notoriously cash-strapped T is already struggling with limited capacity for funding big projects.
But even if the money materialized overnight, the MBTA would still need to sequence and execute a series of major garage retrofit and construction projects over the next decade and a half. Today, officials are ready to say they don’t think they can do that without taking several facilities offline, temporarily forcing significant reductions to bus service.
All of that raises the question of how best to use limited resources. Some transit advocates argue spending hundreds of millions or billions on expanding bus service, regardless of the kind of fuel the vehicles burn, will make a bigger difference toward overall emissions by getting more drivers to leave their cars at home.
Altogether, it’s the latest spasm of uncertainty muddying the state’s aspirations to lead the nation in climate policy, coming just a few months after lawmakers in House floated the idea of weakening a statewide 2030 decarbonization mandate. Beneath both issues is the same difficult reckoning as lofty goals collide with the everyday reality of executing complicated change.
Published by MassINC