COVID Stifles MBTA. Skeptics Doubt Its Future. Time to Invest Big in T Is Now.

As anyone who's travelled recently into or out of Boston during rush hour can attest, traffic has made a major comeback.

MassDOT numbers confirm the view from the driver's seat of a typical commuter.

In a presentation this past Monday to MassDOT's board of directors, Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver noted that traffic is "back to about 2019 levels."  (For a man whose expertise is travel, could the Administrator's name be more perfect?)

The situation on the T, while improving, is not nearly as robust.

For the period July 12-16, average daily ticket validation in subways was 183,000, while daily bus ridership averaged 215,000.  

Those figures represent 38% and 55%, respectively, of the number of subway and bus riders during the same period in 2019, eight months before the state went into COVID lockdown.

"We continue to see ridership come back," MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak told the MassDOT board on Monday.  [Source: State House News Service]  

"Last week," Poftak said, "was the highest ridership week since March of 2020, so we will continue to closely monitor that.  If you've seen our campaign, we're ready for people who come back, but also mindful we have been serving hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis throughout this pandemic."

The State House News Service pointed out that, before COVID struck, the legislature "appeared poised for action to address the state's overcrowded roadways, aging infrastructure, and often unreliable transit systems," but, since then, improving mass transit "has taken a backseat " to pandemic-related issues and, lately, to many other matters.

The News Service's Chris Lisinski writes that legislative leaders "have not demonstrated the same interest they once had in passing a bill to raise new revenue for transportation needs..."

As a decades-long (i.e., scarred) T rider, my hope is that we will soon see a rekindling of such interest on Beacon Hill.

I understand the concern that subway and bus ridership may never return to pre-pandemic volumes. But that fear is overblown and misconceived.  

Pre-pandemic ridership should not be regarded as an ideal to be replicated in the post-COVID era, but rather as a reflection of a transit system severely out of date and ill-suited to meet the needs and the expectations of Greater Bostonians, now, and even more so in the future.  

Instead of wringing our hands about obstacles that could prevent ridership from returning to former peaks, we should be thinking of how much higher future ridership could be if we significantly upgraded T facilities, equipment and amenities; improved reliability and the overall customer experience; and expanded services.

Because of all it has going for it, Boston is only going to become more vibrant, desirable and wealthy.  

Even if pandemic remote work patterns become permanent and lots of office towers have to be reconfigured at exorbitant cost for other uses, the capital of New England will make a comeback for the ages when the pandemic is behind us for good.

Any politician who takes a strong stand now in favor of big, bold investments in mass transit will be seen one day as a prophet.  (And as a hell of a public servant, to boot.)