Fast, Reliable, and Free MBTA

Our district's future runs on public transit. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in Massachusetts, and the people who rely most on the T are the people who can least afford fare hikes and service cuts. Decades of disinvestment gave us slow zones, shuttle buses, and unreliable service, and the answer is public investment at the scale of the problem. Fare-free transit is climate policy and it is economic policy: every dollar not spent at the fare gate is a dollar back in a working family's pocket. We all deserve a fast, free, and reliable T.

Underfunded by Design

The T is not failing because public transit does not work. It is failing because Beacon Hill designed it to be underfunded. A generation ago, the state handed the MBTA a fixed slice of the sales tax that never grew the way lawmakers promised, and then loaded billions of dollars of Big Dig-era debt onto the T's books, which means the T spends hundreds of millions every year paying off highway-project debt before it runs a single train. Every governor since has preached "reform before revenue" while the maintenance backlog compounded into the tens of billions, and riders lived the results: slow zones multiplying across the system, shuttle buses replacing trains, and service you could not plan a life around. A pothole and a slow zone are the same thing: disinvestment made visible, and both are political choices that different political choices can reverse.

The Air Our Neighborhoods Breathe

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts, 38 percent of the statewide total, and in Greater Boston the burden is not shared equally. The working-class and low-income neighborhoods pressed up against our highways and parkways breathe the worst air in the region, and the research proving it was done in our own district: near-highway studies of ultrafine particle pollution have linked living close to a highway to elevated rates of asthma, heart disease, and other serious illness. Those highways were driven through working-class neighborhoods over the objections of the residents decades ago, and the same families have been breathing the consequences ever since. Every rider the T wins back from a car is cleaner air for the neighborhoods that have carried this burden longest, which is why a fast, free, and reliable T is an environmental justice demand, not just a commuter's convenience.

Erika's Record: Funding the Fix

Erika has used every seat she holds to force money into the system. From her role on the Legislature's bonding committee, she has fought to increase capital funding for transportation and won, securing more than $375 million in additional Chapter 90 funding so cities and towns can actually fix their roads, bridges, and crumbling pavement, because the potholes rattling your car are what a starved capital budget feels like. She joined colleagues to secure $400 million for the MBTA to address federally identified safety failures, and $20 million to launch reduced fares for riders with low incomes. She fought for and won Fair Share investment in the T at historic scale, including $850 million to attack the backlog of repairs and deferred maintenance, funding that helped eliminate slow zones across the system. And she filed legislation and successfully pushed the MBTA to lay out a plan and estimate the cost for fare-free buses across the entire network, turning "someday" into a blueprint with a price tag.

Fast, Free, and Reliable Is the Whole Point

Public transit is more than getting from point A to point B: it is access to work, school, healthcare, and everything that makes a life, and free and reliable service is how we guarantee that access to every single person, not just the neighborhoods wealthy enough to have alternatives. Fare-free buses speed up boarding for everyone, put hundreds of dollars a year back in riders' pockets, and cost a fraction of what the Commonwealth hands out in tax breaks without blinking. The Fair Share Amendment already proved the model: tax incomes over $1 million, and suddenly the T can fix its tracks and launch fare-free pilots. Erika will fight to finish the argument, funding a fast, free, and reliable T by taxing offshore corporate profits and millionaires fairly, electrifying our buses and commuter rail into a true regional rail system, and building the safe streets for walking and biking that make every trip without a car a real choice.

The Unfinished Agenda

In the Senate, Erika will keep organizing with transit riders, environmental justice advocates, and the unions who run the system. And she will fight to:

• Make the T fare-free, starting with buses. The blueprint exists because Erika forced it into existence, and now Massachusetts must fund it.
• Fund the T at the scale of the need. Tax offshore corporate profits and millionaires fairly, and take the Big Dig-era debt off the T's books so rider revenue and state funding buy service instead of old highway debt.
• Fix everything, then run it fast. Finish the repair backlog that Fair Share funding began cutting into, then invest in the frequency riders can build a life around.
• Electrify the system. Electric buses in every garage and an electrified commuter rail running as frequent regional rail, so transit cleans the air in the neighborhoods that need it most.
• Fix how we fund our streets. Keep increasing Chapter 90 road funding and fix the formula so dense communities with the most vulnerable road users get their fair share for safe sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and streets that do not rattle your car apart.