Mass. transportation secretary seems more like her old self in Chamber of Commerce talk

Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Monica Tibbits-Nutt weighed in on a series of major policy issues in a recent talk with the advocacy group Walk Massachusetts, including one subject that may make her very unpopular in Rhode Island. (Screenshot/walkmass.org/)

Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt has found her voice again.

After an “unfiltered” speech on April 10 that got her into hot water with Gov. Maura Healey, Tibbits-Nutt largely went silent. She attended remotely and barely spoke at an MBTA board meeting in late April. And she kept a low profile at other events since then, avoiding questions and staying out of the public eye.

But on Tuesday she appeared before the Charles River Regional Chamber of Commerce in Watertown and seemed more like her old self.

She engaged in what amounts to a transportation standup routine, blending personal and sometimes funny observations with policy commentary on a wide range of issues, everything from traffic safety to climate change to the recent approval of a low-income fare at the MBTA, which she described as “the greatest day of her career.” She called Fred Salvucci “hands down the best transportation secretary ever” and promised the new Cape Cod bridges will get built even though current funding is $1 billion short.

Tibbits-Nutt took many questions from the audience, including one asking how much revenue the state receives from tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike and how much it would receive if tolls were placed on highways coming from the north and south.

The question touched on one of the issues that got her into trouble with the governor. At the Walk Massachusetts event, Tibbits-Nutt said she was looking at all sorts of ways to raise transportation revenues for the state, including tolling at the state’s borders; assessing fees on Uber and Lyft rides and package deliveries; and hiking the payroll tax.

“We’re going after all the people who should be giving us money to make our transportation better and our communities better,” she told the Walk Massachusetts group.

Four days after Tibbits-Nutt’s comments were first reported by CommonWealth Beacon, Healey issued a statement saying “the secretary’s comments do not represent the views of this administration, and to be clear, I am not proposing tolls at any border.”

In answering the question about tolls on Tuesday, Tibbits-Nutt said she did not know how much revenue the existing tolls bring in or how much money new tolls would deliver. She noted that toll money on highways can only be spent on the tolled road itself and made clear that she had received the governor’s message about tolls loud and clear.

“If we were to increase tolls in Massachusetts, which we will absolutely not do, or add any tolls in the Commonwealth, which we absolutely will not do, we would need legislation to change how we use that toll money,” she said.

At another point in her talk, Tibbits-Nutt didn’t shy away from her past comments about new transportation revenues. “I spend a lot of time talking about different funding mechanisms. That is a very controversial thing to talk about,” she said. “But we have to talk about it. And whether people think my idea is crappy that’s fine, but we need ideas. We need any ideas because we’ve used everything we have and the tools aren’t working.”

On other topics:

Tibbits-Nutt said climate change is having a major impact on the state and its transportation infrastructure. “The rain storms we’re getting make those snow storms of 2015 seem like a dream scene at this point, which I can’t believe I’m saying,” she said. She called last September’s storm damage to transportation infrastructure in Leominster “borderline biblical,” and said it cost $28 million to repair.

She called the roughly $2 billion I-90 Allston project “insanely expensive” while taking great pride in the $330 million federal grant the state received for that project. “No one in the country thought we could get that,” she said. She also said the I-90 Allston project isn’t just a Boston project. She said West-East rail depends on it. “We can’t do that if we don’t do the Allston project,” he said.

Asked if Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s desire to build a commuter rail stop on the Needham Line near the West Roxbury Education Complex will ever happen, she said: ‘Potentially.”

She was quick with an answer when asked if there are other states or cities that are doing transportation right. She said California is the best in the world at electrifying trains. She hailed Quebec for its hydrogen-powered trains (“that’s something we’re looking at,” she said). She said the Pacific northwest is the best at funding transportation, Chicago is tops in expanding services, and Austin, Texas, is the best at building new subway lines. She said Washington State’s free bus service is the best in the US and London and Paris are leaders in keeping the cost of service reasonable.

After the last question, Tibbits-Nutt didn’t hang around. She was out the door quickly.

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

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