After months of hemming and hawing, legislators on Beacon Hill finally delivered a budget to Governor Maura Healey’s desk, which she signed last week. And though there’s much to celebrate in the deal — Boston is getting a seat on the MBTA board of directors; tenants across the state will get to keep an important pandemic-era eviction protection; and prisoners will no longer have to pay steep fees for phone calls — lawmakers also missed some opportunities, including one to start putting the East-West rail proposal on track.
Healey had requested that the Legislature set aside $12.5 million for the decades-old idea of connecting Boston with western Massachusetts through frequent, reliable, and fast passenger rail service. The governor’s request wasn’t an impressive sum by any means — a drop in the bucket for what a project of that scale would ultimately cost. But it was promising seed money to get the proposal chugging along again by funding initiatives like designing a new rail station in Palmer and improving tracks in Pittsfield. More importantly, it would have shown that the state is actually committed to realizing the East-West rail dream. And yet lawmakers chose to drop that line item from the final budget.
That doesn’t mean the East-West rail project is dead. Healey’s administration still managed to find money for these initiatives through a separate funding source, and the budget allocated $650,000 for staff support that includes an East-West rail director. And late last year, the Baker administration applied for a $108 million grant from the US Department of Transportation, which, as a result of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law in 2021, has tripled its budget for its program funding rail improvement and modernization projects across the country. If approved, the grant would help alleviate the passenger rail bottleneck between Worcester and Springfield — which currently only serves a single daily roundtrip for Amtrak riders — by revamping a 54-mile stretch of tracks, owned by the freight railroad company CSX, and building an additional set of tracks along part of that corridor in order to accommodate more passenger trains while maintaining freight capacity.
There are many reasons the federal government should approve those funds. It would, for example, strengthen Amtrak’s Inland Route connecting Boston to New Haven via Springfield, which would provide both a climate-resilient alternative to the coastal route and a boon for the cities along the way. It would also add two more daily passenger roundtrips and shave 20 minutes off the time it takes to get from Springfield to Boston by train, making rail a more competitive transportation option for people who would otherwise drive. And it would contribute to Amtrak’s long-term ambitions by laying the groundwork for a superior Boston-Albany route.
There would also be an added benefit to the state’s rail aspirations. By improving passenger capacity along a major stretch between Worcester and Springfield, the project would breathe new life into plans for an East-West rail line that would operate along that route.
That would certainly be a welcome development, but for state lawmakers, it would also underscore a key failure: their foot dragging and overreliance on federal funding to get this and other transportation projects off the ground. That’s why the Legislature’s failure to meet Healey’s request for some East-West rail funding is disappointing, and it’s why Massachusetts has to start putting more of its money where its mouth is when it comes to improving public transportation across the state.
It’s undeniable that major transit expansion projects will require assistance from the feds. But as one of the country’s wealthiest states, Massachusetts shouldn’t keep waiting around for the federal government to jumpstart transportation projects. (That’s at least one lesson from the federal government’s decision to deny funding for replacing the Cape Cod Canal bridges earlier this year.) Thankfully, there have been signs of progress, and lawmakers have been able to invest more in transportation since voters passed the new millionaires tax, whose proceeds are specifically earmarked for transportation and education, last year. The new budget, for example, includes using $477 million of that new tax revenue on transportation projects.
Still, with the resources it has, the state must be a visionary when it comes to investing in modernizing public transportation, especially as lawmakers keep talking about the need to reduce carbon emissions. It would be great for the federal government to give Massachusetts a boost with this grant, but the Legislature shouldn’t wait to invest in the East-West rail until then. Because if the grant is ultimately approved — and hopefully it will be — the Legislature should be ready to capitalize on it.
Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated. An earlier version failed to note that while the Legislature rejected a request to fund a new rail station in Palmer and improving tracks in Pittsfield, the Healey administration found an alternative source of funding. The budget also included $650,000 in staff support for the East-West rail project.
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