While the Big Dig improved traffic on key roadways to and from Boston, traffic and congestion are growing problems regionally and in Boston.

• Data from the Texas Transportation Institute for 2003 (the most recent year for which data is available) indicates that two-thirds of all Metro Boston travel during peak hours occurs in congested conditions and that the so-called morning and afternoon “rush hours” actually encompass a total of more than 7 hours daily.
• The Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization’s 2004 Congestion Management System report found that between 2000 and 2003 in Metro Boston, traffic delays had increased and average travel speeds had slowed during the morning rush hour, with 39% of travel on major arteries below the speed limit and 29% of travel on interstate highways below 50 miles per hour—in both cases, about 10 percentage points higher than in 2000.
• Traffic on the Southeast Expressway rose from 170,000 vehicles per day in 2000 to 190,000 vehicles per day in 2004 (See Indicator 10.5.2).
• One bright spot is the Big Dig:  a transportation impact analysis of the Big Dig completed in February 2006 (before the tunnel collapse) found that the new roadways substantially reduced travel times through Boston and to Logan Airport.

Car ownership among Boston residents has grown sharply, but is growing more slowly than the surrounding metropolitan area and a new trend of “car sharing” is beginning to emerge as a substitute for car ownership. 

• More than 356,000 vehicles were registered in the City of Boston in 2005, up 45% since 1995; however, the number of registrations dropped slightly in 2005 and grew more slowly in the City than in the state and metro area in three of four years between 2002 and 2005 (See Indicator 10.4.1).
• Growing automobile ownership in the City has created a shortage of on-street parking even for those with resident parking stickers:  the City of Boston issued more than 76,000 residential parking permits in 2004, up nearly 75% from 1990.
• The idea of car sharing may be making a dent in rising car ownership statistics: the car sharing company Zipcar now has 500 cars in 300 locations in Greater Boston and survey data indicates that more than 40% of members either sell an existing car or decide not to purchase a car.

While public transit use remains high, ridership has declined or remained flat in Greater Boston at a time when it is growing nationally.

• MBTA ridership dropped each year from 2001 through 2005.  While ridership data for 2006 has yet to be fully reported, apparently ridership began to increase in the second half of 2005 and preliminary 2006 data indicate that ridership rose by 2% to just under 335 million boardings in 2006, a ridership level still below 1999 levels (See Indicator 10.2.2).
• While commuter rail ridership nearly doubled between 1991 and 2006, this gain represented only 19 million annual boardings while the subway and trolley systems lost more than 27 million passenger boardings between 2001 and 2005. 
• Nationally, Americans took 10.1 billion trips on public transportation in 2006, rising 2.9% over 2005 and up 30% since 1995; substantial increases occurred both in metropolitan areas with new streetcars but also on mature transit systems like those in Philadelphia and Chicago.

The quality of MBTA transit services, while improving in some respects, remains poor.

• Bus riders consistently experience crowding and delays, with only 14% of bus routes meeting the MBTA’s standards for adherence to schedule on an average weekday.  The MBTA has, however, worked to reduce the number of “dropped trips” (those scheduled but not made) from about 340 per day in December 2004 to 34 per day in December 2005. 
• The MBTA has established two service delivery standards for its rapid transit lines, one concerning headways (time between trains) and one concerning staying on schedule with respect to arrival times.  Only the Blue Line meets both standards; the Green and Red Lines fail both, while the Orange Line fails the standard for staying on schedule.
• In the first year of commuter rail service under a new provider (ending June 2004), only three of the eleven rail lines met the MBTA’s goal of being on time (within five minutes of schedule) for 95% or more of all trips.

Gasoline consumption and costs are rising, along with accompanying greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

• Consumption of gasoline for transportation purposes in Massachusetts rose 19% over the last decade, from 56.5 million barrels in 1994 to 67.2 million barrels in 2004.
• In 2004, Massachusetts residents consumed 458.5 gallons of gasoline per capita, slightly under the US average of 464 gallons per capita.
• Gasoline prices rose sharply in 2005, with AAA finding that the average price for regular gasoline in Metro Boston peaked at $3.21/gallon in September 2005.
• The Census’ 2004-2005 consumer expenditure survey for metropolitan Boston found that spending on transportation costs in general and gasoline specifically increased sharply, with annual spending on gasoline and motor oil rising 34% from $1299 annually in 2003-4 to $1,747 annually in 2004-5.
• Emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from gasoline consumption in Massachusetts rose 19% from 1990 to 2004.

Years of deferred maintenance and spending on the “Big Dig” have left the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a large and growing gap between transportation infrastructure needs and available revenues. 

• To pay for the Big Dig, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) has accumulated more than $2.2 billion in debt which will have to be paid off with regular increases in tolls.
• Preliminary analyses released by a special state Transportation Finance Commission.  conclude that, over the next year, Federal, state and local revenues for transportation infrastructure will fall between $13 and $17 billion short of the cost of properly maintaining and repairing the state’s roads, bridges and public transportation systems.
• The Commission’s estimates do not include the cost of any enhancement or expansion projects either for roadways or for the MBTA public transit system.

The MBTA’s financial problems are growing more serious.

• While one cent of the state’s sales tax has been earmarked as a dedicated revenue source for the MBTA, the sales tax has generated $113 million less over the first five years of this arrangement than was originally projected.
• The MBTA is spending 27% of its budget to pay debt service on its $8 billion in debt, the largest debt load of any transit system in the United States. 
• The only way that the MBTA can address rising debt service and other costs and insufficient revenues is to increase fares, so in January 2007 the MBTA raised fares for the third time in less than seven years.
• Over 90% of the $2.4 billion slated to be spent under the MBTA’s current 5-year capital plan is to help get the system back to a “State of Good Repair” rather than on expansion or enhancement projects, yet even this amount will not meet all of the system’s maintenance needs.

Pedestrians and bicyclists are being included in transportation planning and projects.

• The Massachusetts Highway Department’s new highway design manual requires planning for and construction of bicycle and pedestrian facilities as part of highway projects.
• The MBTA has made it easier to combine bike and transit trips, adding 250 bike racks to buses during 2006; in addition, beginning in the summer of 2006 the MBTA ran a special commuter rail coach that carries 40 bicycles for summer weekend trips on the Rockport line.
• The pedestrian advocacy organization WalkBoston has worked with the City of Boston to change the timing of traffic signals to be more pedestrian friendly and successfully used the state environmental review process to force improvements in plans for the sidewalk along Rose Kennedy Greenway in front of 500 Atlantic Avenue.

Air travel at Logan Airport is increasing more slowly than in New England and the US as a whole, while air traffic delays are growing.

• As of 2006, air passenger traffic at Logan Airport finally rebounded to pre-9/11 levels, with the airport serving 27.7 million passengers in 2006 as it had in 2000 (See Indicator 10.1.1).
• The number of air passengers rose more slowly at Logan than nationally, however, and in New England Logan has lost market share to other airports in New England, including Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
• Air traffic delays at Logan worsened from 2002 to 2006, with the percentage of on-time departures declining from 85% to 77% and the percentage of on-time arrivals declining from 84% to 72%.  In order to address this problem, in November 2006 Massport begin using the long-delayed and controversial Runway 14/32

Ridership is increasing on many Amtrak intercity rail services to and from Boston.

• Ridership on Amtrak’s Acela service rose 8.8% in 2006 to 2.7 million riders, representing a recovery from service outages that occurred in 2005 due to faulty brakes.
• Regional service in the Northeast corridor, however, experienced a concomitant 5.1% drop as Amtrak reduced deep discounts that had been used to maintain service in 2005.
• Amtrak’s Downeaster service, which runs along a 116-mile corridor between Boston’s North Station and Portland, Maine, served 338,000 passengers in 2006, an increase of nearly 23% compared to 2005 ridership.

The Port of Boston is growing.

• Cargo activity at Massport’s Conley Container Terminal increased by 7.3% in 2006, to more than 200,000 TEUs (an international shipping industry measurement for container size), marking the fifth consecutive year of growth.
• The most significant container growth was from Asia, which saw a 13% increase in volume between 2005 and 2006.
• Cruiseport Boston’s Black Falcon Terminal is also experiencing substantial growth both in the number of visiting ships and the number of passengers served, with 81 vessel calls in the 2006 cruise season and nearly 209,000 passengers embarking and disembarking.

Demand is growing in the City of Boston and throughout the metropolitan area for housing near transit and other “transit-oriented development” projects.

• A study by Northeastern University’s Center for Urban and Regional Policy found that the City of Boston’s development pipeline currently includes more than 40 projects within one-half mile of MBTA rapid transit stations that could generate more than 9,000 new housing units.
• The Center for Transit-Oriented Development projects a doubling in the demand for homes within a half-mile of transit stations in Metro Boston, from 417,000 households living in such transit zones in 2000 to nearly 840,000 households in 2025.