A passenger scans through the fare gates at the MBTA Park Street stop. (Kate Kotlyar/CommonWealth Beacon)

MARIA LIVES IN Everett and spends more than two hours on the MBTA every morning. We met her after she had taken a bus to drop off her child at daycare.

She was about to board another bus, then two subway lines, and finally wait up to an hour for a commuter rail train to reach her cleaning job in Norwood. In the afternoon, she makes the same trip in reverse. With rents rising, homes within reasonable reach of her employment are unaffordable.

Rahim lives in Worcester and recently started his first job in Malden. At first, he relied on transit: the earliest commuter rail train to Boston every morning, followed by a 30-minute bike ride to his lab that was too far from the Orange Line to rely on the subway. He has since bought a car — not because it is affordable, he told us, but because two hours on the highway back and forth felt more manageable than over four hours on transit.

Today’s MBTA doesn’t work for Maria and Rahim (not their real names)— or for countless other residents across Greater Boston.

We need a long-term vision and plan for a transit system that enables all of us to fulfill our essential needs — easy and affordable access to jobs, opportunities, and resources. Now is the time to start advocating for this.

The MBTA has launched Focus 2050 to develop its latest long-term planning document,This process will establish priorities over a 25-year timeframe and is scheduled for publication in mid-2027, with community engagement starting this spring.

Focus 2050 will identify needs early, evaluate options while they are still actionable, and provide concrete projects to design, fund and build when the opportunity arrives — all of which are necessary steps well before any tracks, platforms, and signals are put in place. A clear, shared vision for how the system should evolve can offer direction for policymakers, opportunities for institutions, and confidence for the public.

To inform these efforts, TransitMatters has launched “FRAME the Future,” laying out a long-term transit system vision that is future-ready, adaptable, modernized, and evolving.

  • Future-Ready: Built to respond proactively to future needs and challenges, such as population growth and intensifying climate impacts.
  • Adaptable: Reacting to shifts in travel patterns, demographics and destinations, while also ensuring flexibility for a region that continues to transform.
  • Modernized: Using proven, contemporary technologies to improve capacity, reliability and safety, replacing costly legacy infrastructure.
  • Evolving: Growing to close gaps, improve connections, and serve new population and job centers, creating a cohesive region-wide network.

This campaign aims to help Greater Boston move towards a regional long-range master plan that matches that vision — one that integrates near-term transit investments and transforms them from isolated fixes into a coherent long-term strategy to meet our state’s goals: growth, housing, congestion reduction, and climate commitments.

Even in a state of good repair, today’s MBTA is insufficient for Maria, Rahim, and anyone else who lives, works, or travels in Greater Boston. It is a transit system designed for a much smaller, more affordable city now outpaced by a metropolis facing record congestion and housing costs. While Greater Boston’s population grew by 30 percent since the 1990s, the MBTA’s capacity and reach remained largely static.

The widening mismatch between regional growth and transit capacity has ripple effects. People compete for limited housing supply near transit nodes, and those who are priced out of the city endure grueling commutes. Communities struggle to attract and retain business and talent.

All this is happening while Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities are growing their transit networks massively. Recent improvements to the MBTA’s subway infrastructure and commuter rail are important, but they don’t address fundamental deficiencies in capacity and service delivery.

If the T were to address those deficiencies, what would it look like?

  • It would connect to destinations across the region without forcing everyone through downtown Boston.
  • It would provide frequent service to support midday errands, night shifts and weekend getaways, not just the traditional suburb-to-downtown, twice-a-day commute.
  • It would use the latest technology — electric trains, automation, platform screen doors, and modern signals — to make trips easier, faster, and safer.
  • It would support abundant housing, as more municipalities like Cambridge and Salem eliminate parking and loosen zoning restrictions, growing our economy without adding to roadway congestion.
  • Most importantly, it would be a system that naturally emerges as the first choice of travel for people who live, work, and play in Greater Boston.

A status quo transit system is no longer enough to meet the needs of a growing Greater Boston. Over the next year, TransitMatters will work alongside community members, businesses, and municipalities to bridge the gap between today’s 20th-century infrastructure and the 21st-century vision our region deserves.

By providing the data, analysis, and success stories necessary to build a broad consensus, we aim to transform the MBTA from a static system into an abundant resource. Our collective choices today will determine the future for people like Maria, Rahim, and countless others — ensuring they finally have the freedom to live affordably and travel efficiently in the decades to come.

Charles Lyu, Will Palmer, and Robert Warren are co-leads of the TransitMatters FRAME the Future campaign. TransitMatters volunteers Jingze Wang and Nick LaCascia contributed to this piece.