The High Cost of Growth in Greater Boston

The report details the infrastructure challenges Boston will face by 2030.

BOSTON—If Boston residents and commuters think traffic is bad now; just wait 10 years or so as more businesses and residents clog the city’s roads and mass transit system. The business group A Better City released a report that assessed the city’s infrastructure now and how the city’s strong economy will impact its roads, bridges, mass transit, energy and wastewater systems in the years ahead. The report, authored by A Better City and Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy , was issued on Tuesday during A Better City’s State of the Built Environment conference held at the Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center. While the report’s projections on growth and the stress they will put on the city’s infrastructure are alarming, the report characterizes the city’s current infrastructure as “inadequate, deteriorating, and out of date.” MassDOT reports that 37% of state-owned roads are currently in “poor” or “fair” condition. At the present rate of maintenance, 79% of the state’s roadways could be in poor to fair condition by 2025. Of Greater Boston’s 2,115 bridges, 11% are either closed to traffic or functionally deficient, and nearly 20% are restricted from use by heavy commercial vehicles. “Highway congestion has become so bad that typical a.m. and p.m. commuting speeds within Greater Boston on the Mass Pike, I-93, Routes 3 and 24, and I-495 are below 25 miles per hour and on many segments below 20 mph. MBTA vehicles are in desperate need of maintenance and modernization, the report states. More than a third of operating Red Line cars were acquired more than 40 years ago, and 44%of Green Line trolley rolling stock dates back to 1989. To reach a “state of good repair,” the system needs more than $7 billion in improvements. Some of the key infrastructure projections in the report include the additional of at least 80,000 more autos, trucks, and tractor-trailers on Greater Boston’s roads and highways by 2030, an increase of nearly 5%. On the mass transit system, Greater Boston can expect by 2030 to have to service more than 14,000 additional subway commuters, more than 11,000 additional bus and trolley commuters, and more than another 1,000 daily commuter rail customers—a 6.8% increase in subway and bus/trolley use by commuters and nearly a 3% percent increase in commuter rail. “Constrained roads and highways, and significant growth in transit oriented development may lead to even greater increases in transit demand,” the report states. While Logan Airport has been able to keep up with passenger and freight demands, if passenger air travel continues to grow at the same pace as it did over the 2005–2015 period, the airport will have to service 63% more passengers on domestic and international flights annually by 2030. On the freight side , if current freight demand continues at its current pace at the Conley container port in the Seaport, container ship capacity will increase by 93%—increasing its ability to handle TEU containers from its current 181,000 per year to 350,000 a year by 2030. Another issue facing Conley is that the terminal has neither the water depth nor the crane capacity to handle any of the new larger container vessels, the report notes. James Rooney , president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce , praises the report and notes the report predicts that the Boston economy will continue to grow in the years ahead. “The worrisome news is whether or not we will have the infrastructure needed to sustain this output. Certainly the challenges identified are not unique to Boston. It is my hope that the ABC report stimulates a conversation about these challenges not only here in Boston, but at a national level, as doing nothing is not a strategy for any U.S. city to compete on a global level in the 21st century.” Richard Dimino , president and CEO of A Better City, told the Boston Globe, “It was kind of like a surgeon coming in, saying ‘I’m sorry, you thought your arteries were clogged. They’re actually nonfunctioning. If we’re not successful in moving these people to transit, the implications are nightmare.” A Better City is a business organization that has more than 130 member companies and develops solutions and influences policy in three critical areas central to the Boston region’s economic competitiveness and growth—transportation and infrastructure, land use and development and environment and energy.