Boston Mayor Thomas Menino joined the chorus of transportation stakeholders calling on the Patrick administration to get moving on a statewide comprehensive transportation reform plan. “A comprehensive plan must be vetted and acted on quickly,” Menino told the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation today.
The departure of Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen led Rep. John Fernandes to wonder if the Legislature would get a plan that Cohen had worked on but would no longer be around to explain or defend, or if they would get one crafted over just a few weeks by a new secretary.
During testimony by Mary Connaughton, the lone Massachusetts Turnpike Board member to vote against the recent toll increase, Fernandes, a Milford Democrat, also suggested that the turnpike board consider enacting the minimum toll increase necessary to keep the credit ratings companies happy until “a plan is delivered.”
(Those companies have threatened to downgrade the turnpike’s bonds unless the agency identifies specific measures to deal with its short term financial problems.)
How a comprehensive plan will develop grew murkier with Sen. Steven Baddour’s acknowledgment that lawmakers would be presenting their own plan. Baddour, the Senate chairman of the transportation committee, did not offer any details.
The hearing provided strong clues that the dithering over a reform plan is going to open up new cans of worms. Rep. Steven Walsh, who’s proposed suspending the turnpike’s power to increase tolls through December 31, 2009, or until a comprehensive plan is delivered, offered… well, let’s call it a thinly veiled threat: The Lynn Democrat said would have a hard time supporting any comprehensive plan if “tolls increase on the North Shore.”
