THE NEW YEAR is upon us, year two of the Healey/Driscoll administration, and one year before we reach the quarter-century mark. With one year left to go and who-knows-what ahead of us, it is probably safe to say that the first quarter of the 21st century will be remembered primarily for the two pattern breaks that disrupted our lives in many ways and from which we are not fully recovered: the Covid-19 pandemic and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One may hope that the first quarter of the 21st century is not also remembered as that moment when America fell irrevocably into autocracy. This year’s presidential election will answer that question.

More locally, in this century Massachusetts has had six governors and twelve secretaries of transportation. That’s probably six secretaries too many.  Governors Sargent and Dukakis each had but one transportation secretary, and a strong case can be made that they were the most successful in the job.

The recent WGBH podcast series on the Big Dig served as an important reminder that forward-looking and impactful governors, and smart, strategic transportation secretaries, can leave important legacies that will benefit future generations. One of those legacies was a historic series of brave and cutting-edge decisions and investments that elevated public transportation as the preferred mode choice of the future.

It is no exaggeration to say that we have squandered the great opportunity given us by Frank Sargent, Michael Dukakis, Alan Altshuler, and Fred Salvucci to redirect our metro Boston mobility system more toward sustainability and public transportation and less toward auto mobility.  We have squandered it with state policies that historically underfund public transportation and provide substantial hidden subsidies to drivers. We have squandered it to the point where the MBTA suffers under the great burden of a Federal Transit Administration safety receivership, a significant deterioration of its assets, and an institutional inability to move forward with any credible speed on important initiatives such as regional rail and the Red/Blue Connector. This is the legacy of everyone in state government transportation leadership positions since the 1990s.

It isn’t all bad news. The MBTA may finally be on the road to recovery, with strong and transparent leadership and a new senior team that gives every impression it is competent and effective when it comes to restoring good repair to the system’s essential infrastructure.

Whether that same team can meaningfully advance the electrification and re-imagination of commuter rail service delivery into true regional rail, whether it can get out of its own institutional way and make the Red/Blue connector happen on a reasonable schedule, this remain to be seen. We have yet to see a credible Gantt chart showing how we get from today to final completion of the Red/Blue connector, a critical connection of the subway system that was required as part of the state’s Big Dig environmental mitigation obligations.  

How can we expect people to believe in government if that same government cannot fulfill its legal obligations and promises to transit riders? Advocates will continue to hold the T accountable on these initiatives, for action in the short term and not just happy talk, because a first-rate system ought to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. It should be able to advance good repair efforts while also modernizing and building new things; otherwise all we will have at the end of the current administration’s tenure will be the best 1970s transit system on the East Coast.

One more thing about the T: Massachusetts has utterly failed to address the imminent transit funding crisis and continues to avoid the unavoidable reality that a post-pandemic transit system cannot expect to fund its operating budget needs with fare revenues comprising a full one-third of the budget.  Those days are gone, yet the Legislature fails to act on identifying a fair, stable, long-term solution. If we don’t address the looming transit revenue crisis now, we will inevitably get the solution wrong when the crisis actually hits because nothing good comes from crisis-driven legislation. The clock is ticking loudly – does anyone hear it?

Beyond the travails of the MBTA, I have a lot on my mind when it comes to the Massachusetts transportation agenda.  The one item I’d like to focus on a bit here is the urgent need to begin the process of identifying the source or sources of transportation revenue that will replace the state gas tax. 

As more and more residents purchase electric vehicles and hybrids, the gas tax will increasingly diminish. The transition to EVs is going to be more gradual than many believe, but the EV transition is not a case of “if” but “when.” The scale of federal EV charging funding, the response of the auto manufacturers, and the absolute necessity of eliminating tailpipe carbon emissions combine to provide a large measure of assurance that the historic transition away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles is inevitable in this generation. This will have multiple effects, some good, some bad. Notably, it will upend the way we fund our transportation needs, because the gas tax has been the bedrock of state transportation revenue since the mid-20th century.   

We cannot wait until the crisis of lost gas tax revenue is upon us. Now is the time to consider what will replace this unpopular tax and whether that replacement revenue will come from one or from multiple sources.  A recent MIT report on this topic (I was a lead contributor to the report) assessed a variety of transportation-sector revenue alternatives through a performance lens and an efficiency lens.

The performance lens considers ease of administration, resistance to easy evasion, stability over time, and fairness, with equity being an overarching consideration. The efficiency lens considers how well, or poorly, certain revenue alternatives are positioned to address key negative externalities of vehicular mobility, including traffic congestion, road wear and tear, safety, and emissions (both carbon and particulate matter). The report does not make specific recommendations but acts rather as a tool kit for decisionmakers. It is a very readable report and I recommend it.

When replacing the gas tax, and doing so using transportation-based revenue sources, state decisionmakers can choose to assess vehicle ownership and/or vehicle use. If you assess vehicle ownership, you can charge every vehicle owner an annual recurring fee that is either flat or graduated to reflect specific impacts unique to certain vehicles as a result of their size or weight.

If you assess vehicle use, you can do so in any number of ways, but the most likely and sensible way to do so would be through a form of road user charging. Road user charging conceptually is broader than simply “highway tolls.”  It can include conventional tolling, or “congestion” pricing, cordon pricing, or pricing per mile traveled.  Each of these alternatives have pros and cons, but each is likely to generate substantial revenue to replace the gas tax.  Because these methods are driven by technology (electronic collection), they can easily be means tested, and therefore they can be structured more equitably and in a significantly less regressive way than the gas tax.

There is nothing new to electronic road pricing, or its many variations. Yet there has been a desire on the part of some at the State House to defer action on this until a commission of some kind is formed to make recommendations.  What the commission will do, in an area that is well-established and fully mature, is beyond me, but I understand the need to have political distance from anything resembling a new transportation funding source, so I am reconciled to the need for political leaders to take cover under the protective shield of a commission report. 

Of course, no one will be well served if the commission is populated by special interests who neither understand nor particularly care about transportation policy. The “cast-of-thousands” commission that was the end product of the last serious efforts to form such a group, and which gladly did not become law, did not lead to optimism on this count.

Road user charging, whether we like it or not, is the post-gas tax future most likely to be adopted by most states, including Massachusetts. It may even be adopted by the federal government as it looks to replace the federal gas tax, and the recent bipartisan infrastructure bill authorizes national pilots for several variations on road user charging.

Time will tell, but the time for Massachusetts to engage this topic fully and openly is now. While road user charging need not be implemented in the short term as a replacement for the gas tax, it could be used to good effect to support state funding of mega projects like the Cape Cod Bridges. Tolling traffic using those bridges and providing full-time Cape residents and businesses free or heavily discounted passage could be a fair and effective way to fund the project without doing so at the expense of other statewide transportation needs.  It could also be a way to introduce the future of road pricing in Massachusetts in a specific and manageable context.

I have, as I said, a lot on my mind. This rumination will perhaps spark some reflection on the part of those entrusted with the operation and maintenance of our transportation system, those who also have the obligation to act on not simply fixing what needs repair today, but on implementing initiatives that will future-proof and modernize our system. We must do both, and we can do both if there is the political will to do so.

James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation and a member of the TransitMatters board.