NEW BEDFORD is expected to join the list of MBTA communities later this year when South Coast Rail begins running, but the city won’t have to pay any assessments to the T for its new commuter rail service.
Under state law, communities that are members of both the MBTA and a regional transportation authority can deduct their assessment by the regional transit authority from the assessment of the T. In New Bedford’s case, the city’s $1.4 million assessment by the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority surpasses the MBTA assessment of $750,000, so New Bedford won’t have to pay the T anything.
“The city’s understanding is it has no obligation to the T because of its stake in SRTA,” said Jonathan Darling, a spokesman for New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, in an email. “We think it’s fair because of our longstanding obligation to SRTA.”
Fall River, the other destination for South Coast Rail, is also going to pay nothing to the MBTA because its assessment by the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority exceeds its assessment from the MBTA.
But allowing New Bedford, Fall River, and other communities to deduct their RTA assessments from their MBTA assessments will create a shortfall in T funding of nearly $20 million that 65 municipalities in the MBTA’s core service area will have to make up.
Boston gets hit the hardest. According to an analysis by the Department of Revenue, Boston’s assessment by the MBTA in the coming fiscal year will be $87.2 million. The city, however, will have to pay an additional $10 million, or 11.4 percent more, to make up for the discounts offered to MBTA communities that are also members of regional transit authorities. All together, the city will pay $97.2 million to the MBTA.
Other communities that have to pay significantly higher MBTA assessments to offset the discounts for regional transit authority members include Cambridge, which is paying $1.2 million more in the coming fiscal year. Others paying extra include Newton ($667,762), Brookline ($637,187), Somerville ($609,538), Medford ($499,777), Quincy ($259,131), Lynn ($257,002), Waltham ($163,194), and Weymouth ($146,242).
The rationale for having some Massachusetts communities pay for the transit services of others is murky. “It’s a subsidy,” said Paul Regan, who from 1998 to 2020 was the executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, which represents communities in the T service area. “There’s no two ways about it.”
Most of the MBTA’s money comes from the state in one form or another, but member communities are also required to chip in under a convoluted assessment system that increases the amount of municipal money flowing to the T by 2.5 percent a year. In fiscal 2025, the total assessment on MBTA communities is set at $193 million.
The individual municipal assessments are based on a formula that relies somewhat on population and somewhat on geography relative to Boston. For example, Boston’s share of the total MBTA municipal assessment is determined by multiplying the city’s last US Census population figure by 18 and dividing that number by the sum of all the municipal population assessments in the T service area. Following that formula, Boston’s share of the overall municipal assessment in fiscal 2025 will be 45 percent, or $87.2 million.
All of the other MBTA municipal assessments follow the same formula but use different population multipliers. Cambridge and Brookline use a multiplier of 12. For Arlington, Belmont, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Milton, Newton, Revere, Somerville, and Watertown, the multiplier is nine.
There is a large group of 51 municipalities, including Braintree, Lexington, Quincy, Salem, and Weymouth, where the multiplier is three.
Lastly, there are 112 communities farther away from Boston where there is no population multiplier. This group was added in 2000 when the Legislature passed a law requiring the MBTA to operate within a budget and dedicated a portion of the state sales tax to the T.
The system has its flaws. For example, it’s hard to understand why Arlington and Everett, which utilize only MBTA bus service, pay a much higher assessment rate than Quincy, which receives subway, bus, and commuter rail service provided by the T. Avon, which should be included in the T service area, isn’t.
“It’s not a perfect system,” said Regan. “I don’t think anyone would say it is.”
In 2005, Sen. Karen Spilka of Ashland succeeded in inserting legislation into an economic development bill that allowed communities in her area to form a new regional transit authority. The communities were members of the MBTA and several of them benefited from MBTA commuter rail service, but the T was not providing bus service in the municipalities.
Spilka’s bill allowed the communities to form the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority and operate their own bus service. What the communities paid the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority for bus service was deducted from their MBTA assessment.
The arrangement is allowing Ashland, Spilka’s hometown, and Hopkinton, Marlborough, and Southborough to obtain local bus service and eliminate their MBTA assessments entirely.
Wellesley this coming fiscal year will pay $489,839 to the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority while cutting its $682,373 MBTA assessment in half. Natick will pay $630,414 to the regional transit authority while cutting its MBTA assessment from $810,871 to $273,059. Framingham, meanwhile, will pay $1.5 million to the regional transit authority while cutting its MBTA assessment from $1.6 million to $254,554.
All of the reductions in MBTA assessments will be picked up by 65 other Massachusetts communities, with Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline shouldering more than half the load.
Brian Kane, the current executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, said it’s time to rethink the way municipalities fund public transportation in Massachusetts.
“Municipal funding for public transportation is an important part of the way transit is paid for in Massachusetts,” he said in a statement. “But the way and the amount communities are assessed, and the process by which they can meaningfully participate in the oversight of the public transportation providers, requires rethinking. Cities and towns hope to work closely, in partnership with the Healey administration, the Legislature, and the Transportation Funding Task Force to reform municipal support for the MBTA and regional transit authorities, and play a more substantive role in their governance and operations.”
