Baker pushes for $9.7B transport bill
Gov. Charlie Baker stopped by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation to make his pitch for the $9.7 billion bond bill filed last month, arguing the legislation will allow the state to reap the benefits of the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in November.
“We’ve developed a plan to invest billions of dollars in communities throughout the Commonwealth over the next five years using the resources from the BIL,” Baker said. “That’s why we filed this legislation to authorize another $9.7 billion to prepare for the resources and funding that will come to the Commonwealth through this bill.”
Baker highlighted some of the major components of his proposal throughout his testimony.
The bill includes $6.2 billion to support core programs for Highway, Transit, and Energy and Environmental Affairs, $2.5 billion for highway federal aid and non federal aid BIL support, $64.9 million to support regional transit authorities, $145 million to match federal funds for the MBTA, and $150 million to support a Clean Transportation Program, which includes the goal of building out a more robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Other investments include $830 million for the purchase of new energy efficient Green Line cars, $55 million for municipal investments into items like bike lanes and paving projects.
“There’s a very significant opportunity here,” Baker said to the committee. “When you apply for the federal grants, you have to demonstrate you’ve got the state capacity available to deliver on our side of the equation.”
Baker administration officials that attended the hearing faced questions from lawmakers about whether the state has enough power grid capacity to handle the significant expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure outlined in Baker’s bill.
Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs Kathleen Theoharides reminded the committee that the state’s climate law signed last year requires 750,000 new electric vehicles to be on the road by 2030 to meet the benchmarks. The state does have the grid capacity for that number of electric vehicles, but the infrastructure needs to be there to match, like grid-connected bus stations, for example.
Prior to Baker’s testimony, several representatives of environmental and transportation groups pushed for more money on climate initiatives, arguing that his bill doesn’t go far enough in these areas.
“We need to think about how to invest this once-in-alifetime opportunity money in a way that meets the oncein-a-lifetime challenge that we face from climate change,” said Johannes Epke of the Conservation Law Foundation. “Sprinkling a little climate change or equity into an otherwise pretty status-quo bill that focuses a lot on highways and internal combustion engines is not going to get us where we need to go.”