Mass. transportation secretary gives ‘unfiltered’ take on challenges

State Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt promised an “unfiltered me” in an address to the advocacy group Walk Massachusetts last week – and she followed through on her pledge.

Using frank language rarely heard on Beacon Hill, Tibbits-Nutt weighed in on a series of major policy issues. She talked about how she would raise more money for transportation, with one option being the installation of toll gantries at the state’s borders with neighboring states. She promised to do more to address traffic fatalities by urging law enforcement to issue more speeding citations. And she said she would not support a layover facility for commuter rail trains as part of the I-90 Allston multimodal project, handing neighborhood activists a major victory.

The secretary promised to be aggressive in pursuing change even in the face of strong opposition. To buttress that point, she said she will not spend any time making decisions with the goal of hanging on to her job. She also said Gov. Maura Healey has her back. “This governor likes fights. She does. She loves to fight,” Tibbits-Nutt said, according to a video of her talk on the Walk Massachusetts website.

The secretary is heading a task force charged with coming up with a new funding model for transportation by the end of the year. Many insiders are openly skeptical the task force can reach consensus on a package that can make it through the Legislature, but Tibbits-Nutt said the group will be focused on getting results. She also ticked off several revenue initiatives she is interested in.

“This [task force] is actually different because we’re not censoring it,” she said. “I’m going to talk about tolling. I’m going to talk about charging TNCs [transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft] more. I’m going to talk about potentially charging more for package deliveries, charging more for payroll tax — basically going after everybody who has money. And when I’m talking tolling, I’m talking at the borders. I’m not talking within Massachusetts.”

She added: “We’re going after all the people who should be giving us money to make our transportation better and our communities better.”

Asked for details on the tolling option, a MassDOT spokeswoman said the task force is reviewing many possible revenue sources, including the “evaluation of tolling at all Massachusetts borders.”

Tibbits-Nutt said some of her top priorities are building more housing, getting drivers to slow down, and fixing dangerous intersections. The secretary said she wants to use vacant MBTA  property for new housing and wants to use commuter rail to link people to where housing is getting built.

“We can expand the commuter rail and we can make commuter rail cheaper because that’s serving the communities with housing,” she said, specifically mentioning the municipality of Gardner, which she said built 512 housing units last year.

Tibbits-Nutt talked passionately about reducing traffic fatalities and safeguarding pedestrians, and the challenges associated with doing that, even in the small community where she lives in Devens.

She said state data indicate not enough traffic citations are being issued and law enforcement has to get more aggressive. “We’re pushing for less warnings, more citations,” she said. “They’re not writing citations and people aren’t slowing down, and I think the two are related.”

She also delivered good news to Allston-Brighton residents, telling them a proposed layover facility for commuter rail trains as part of the I-90 Allston project is not going to happen. She credited Fred Salvucci, the former secretary of transportation who now works at MIT, for convincing her the layover tracks aren’t needed.

She said the state just landed a $335 million grant for the I-90 Allston project under a federal program designed to knit together communities ripped apart by previous transportation projects. The grant was sought in part to alleviate the harm caused by the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike in that area in the 1960s. Tibbits-Nutt said she did not want to undermine the purpose of the grant by building commuter rail layover tracks, which she suggested would serve as a ”giant wall” dividing the area anew.

She did not address whether a separate bypass track along the commuter rail line would be abandoned as well. A spokeswoman indicated that decision has not been made yet, noting “conversations about the bypass track are ongoing.”

Tibbits-Nutt said the best spot for the commuter rail layover tracks would be at Widett Circle in South Boston, which the T recently purchased for $255 million. But for that to work Tibbits-Nutt indicated the state needs some help from the city of Boston.

“We’ve got to find where that layover space is going to go for the T,” Tibbits-Nutt said. “This is a time where we could put pressure on the city of Boston because we need Widett.”

The secretary was also very blunt about what she could and could not do as secretary. For example, she apologized for the way repairs to the Tobin Bridge had sent paint and metal chips showering down on the residents of Chelsea. “It shouldn’t have ever happened,” she said. “It is embarrassing.”

She said the only thing she can do now is get the mess cleaned up as fast as possible.

And Tibbits-Nutt also shot down an idea floated by many transportation advocates to help the T out financially by relieving it of some of the debt the T was forced to assume as part of the Big Dig. “It’s not going to happen,” she said. “No one knows where that debt would go.”

She noted MassDOT can’t afford to pay off the debt and the state is likely facing a budget crunch over the next couple years. “The budget this year is brutal and the House came back with something even uglier,” she said, referring to the House’s version of the budget.

As she works to address the state’s transportation challenges, Tibbits-Nutt urged the advocates at the Walk Massachusetts event to hold her feet to the fire and insist on follow through.

“You hold us to it,” she said. “Don’t let me forget. Don’t let me lie. Don’t let us sugarcoat something.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.