Federal, state and local officials got together in a future MBTA bus maintenance garage Monday morning to celebrate the infrastructure law passed by Congress last year and the billions of dollars of funding that Massachusetts stands to put to use on projects like the one they were there to ceremonially break ground on.
Officials said replacing the 104-year-old Quincy bus maintenance facility with what MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said will be “a completely modern state-of-the-art facility” and “the first garage in our system to accommodate a fleet of zero-emission battery and battery electric buses” is a key but early step in the MBTA’s modernization. In order to update its bus fleet to be more environmentally friendly, the T needs to make significant upgrades to facilities like the one in Quincy and its Arborway garage, which is next on the list to the upgraded.
The upgrades to the Quincy facility, which as of 2020 could only accommodate vehicles that entered service before 2010, will allow the garage to accommodate hybrid and battery-powered buses and expand its capacity from 86 vehicles to 120 vehicles. The work is expected to be complete by 2024.
“The good news for us is not just this particular facility today but the statement it makes about where we’ll be going and how we’ll be moving and moving people over the course of the next decade or so,” Baker said Monday morning.
In 2019, T officials estimated that it would cost $10.1 billion to replace all outdated equipment and infrastructure across the MBTA system. Poftak said Monday that the T is expecting the federal infrastructure law to deliver $2.2 billion in formula funds over the next five years with $1.6 billion already programmed and $580 million dedicated to new projects.
About $9.5 billion in formula funding is headed the Bay State’s way over the next five or six years as part of last year’s federal infrastructure package, Baker said Monday — including $5.4 billion for roads and bridges, $2.2 billion for public transportation and $1.3 billion for environmental infrastructure.
Even more funding will be available through competitive grants, which elected officials and advocates see as a golden opportunity to kickstart momentum on long-discussed projects and tackle weighty issues like climate change and geographic equity.
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