September 15, 2020
TRANSPORTATION

MBTA Crisis – Part II

The Capital Budget: Critical Demands; Insufficient Funds

This report, which examines the MBTA’s sources and planned uses of capital funding, finds “an impending chasm” between the costs to maintain and modernize the Authority’s existing infrastructure and available sources to pay for these investments. At the same time, the MBTA must address two additional capital needs linked to climate change – decarbonization and climate resiliency adaptation – for which the MBTA currently has neither accurate costs nor funding to pay for these critical investments. These looming capital shortfalls require the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board to rethink its capital investment priorities this fall.