FOR A JOB about planes, Massport CEO Rich Davey still spends a lot of time with his eyes on the road. Not as a driver – the Back Bay resident still famously doesn’t have a car – but because the people flowing in and out of Logan Airport are getting stuck in the same traffic jams and navigating the same MBTA system as the rest of the region.  

On The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Davey about his first year at the helm of Massport, after two years as president of the New York City Transit Authority, part of the sprawling Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  

His move to the MTA in 2022 was a return to active transit management, though for once not in his home state of Massachusetts. That was more of a day-to-day “blocking and tackling” role as the system moved about five million people around its buses and subways every weekday. Now he can operate on a longer timeline, wrestling with traffic to and from the airport, what greener air travel could look like, plus pressures on tourism and travel prompted by the second Trump administration. 

Davey is the only person to serve as MBTA general manager, Massachusetts transportation secretary, and the CEO of Massport. Before leading MassDOT, Davey ran the state’s commuter rail system as general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad. After leaving the MBTA leadership post in October 2014, Davey went into consulting, still with an expertise in transit, and was tapped to head up the unsuccessful bid for the Boston 2024 Olympics.  

It seems like quite a shift to go from overseeing the busiest transit system in the country to figuring out how to keep grumpy Bostonians sane at the baggage claim, but Davey says the role is a combination of easing customer pain points and broader-scale system improvements.  

Between the Silver Line bus system, navigating the rise of ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, and thinking about water transit through the Massport-controlled Port of Boston, Davey can never be too far removed from the flow of buses, trains, cars, and boats around the region. 

Driving to the airport can be a traffic nightmare, so Logan is working on TSA screenings “remote terminals” at offsite parking areas in places Braintree, Framingham, and Back Bay. After being screened and parking, customers could shuttle directly to the gates rather than wind through security at Logan. Interestingly, the closer a person lives to Logan Airport, he said, the more likely they are to take Uber or Lyft to the airport than public transit. 

“Part of what we need to do is offer services that allow folks to get their time back, but without causing the mass traffic,” Davey said. “I’m actually really worried about Waymo and autonomous vehicles in the future.” The technology is already here, he said, and people are taking self-driving cars to airports in San Francisco and Phoenix. “I do worry that could create massive traffic around Logan airport as well, so part of what we’re doing is working with the T to see if there are other opportunities.” 

On the episode, Smith and Davey discuss how to improve the daily experience of getting to and from Logan Airport (6:00), the climate impacts of air travel (19:45), his past in immigration enforcement (24:00), and whether the city’s system could have handled the strain if the Olympics landed in the Bay State (29:20).