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by James Aloisi, CommonWealth Beacon
July 6, 2025
THE OFFICIAL POLICY of the Commonwealth, enshrined in law by a well-intentioned Legislature, is that the MBTA cannot purchase any new bus other than an electric bus beginning January 1, 2031, and the T is further directed to operate only electric buses as of January 1, 2041.
These directives may seem far off, but in the world of transit operations and the time it takes to procure and test equipment and make it ready for service, and build the new garages necessary to house and charge them, these deadlines are imminent. They were part of a larger bill aimed at “driving clean energy” in the Commonwealth.
The bus mandate is a laudable goal, to be sure, but one that fundamentally misunderstands the significant constraints that have been placed on the US electric bus marketplace. Those constraints place the MBTA, and every other US transit agency pursuing a similar policy, in the position of being forced to purchase the wrong vehicles at the wrong price at the wrong time.
I am not opposed to the transition to electric vehicles, whether they are buses or private passenger vehicles. Indeed, I view this transition as a necessary, if not inevitable, long-term change in the way we power most forms of mobility.
Many people are looking forward to a day when we are free from the negative externalities of the current fossil fuel system. Long-time environmental advocate Seth Kaplan recently offered his vision for a future in which electric buses also play an outsized role in stabilizing the power grid.
I do not question his or others’ enthusiasm, but I think it is important for everyone to have a realistic understanding of bus operations specifically, and the larger landscape of the transition to electric power, because they bear heavily on whether such creative ideas are actionable ideas.
Specifically with regard to Kaplan’s article, the notion of T bus garages serving as mini power plants misses entirely the way bus transit actually works. The buses he imagines sending power back to the grid during peak power demand hours will, for the most part, be in service during those times, taking people to their destinations. It is not realistic to expect buses to be sitting idle as oversized batteries. Most electric buses will be charged overnight, not at times of peak demand, and I doubt anyone is willing to subsidize, operate, and maintain massive battery storage units, if such units were feasible and available.
But even if Kaplan’s vision could be achieved, there is a larger concern that must be understood: the underlying assumption that the Commonwealth’s current plan to transition to electric buses on a fairly rapid basis is something that makes sense in this moment, or in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Legislature’s electric bus mandate, in its current iteration, is a great mistake.
To understand why, it’s important to take a step back and observe the larger transportation decarbonization landscape. The focus on reducing transportation carbon emissions, a large contributor to climate change, has led to many positive initiatives, but it has also contributed to misplaced priorities and flawed policies. Notably, it has ignored other consequences of driving motor vehicles, and those consequences, or “externalities,” have negative impacts on public health, land use, traffic congestion, and a variety of other factors that make up our quality of life.
Massachusetts’s over-reliance on electric vehicles as a transportation sector solution to carbon emissions stems from the mistaken assumption that the environmental damage caused by cars is attributable predominantly to carbon emissions from internal combustion engine vehicles. This commonly held view ignores the great public health danger posed by all automobiles, including electric vehicles: the generation of particulate matter emissions.
Particulates are tiny, often invisible fragments or particles generated by activities such tire friction or braking. For all their carbon emissions advantages, EVs will continue to emit particulates in the air. This comes primarily from non-exhaust sources: brake and tire friction, as well as road wear and re-suspended road dust – all of which are exacerbated by the heavier weight of EVs. In Greater Boston, these impacts are heightened in inner core communities like East Boston and Chelsea.
We ignore the topic of particulate matter at our peril. We know from several studies undertaken since 2020 that long term exposure to particulates causes significant negative impacts on public health. A Harvard Chan School of Public Health study linked long-term exposure to particulates to a 15 percent higher COVID-19 mortality rate.
Carbon emissions are bad, and they are an issue that has global impact as they influence climate change. Particulate matter emissions are also bad, for different reasons, and they have very specific local public health impacts. Any decarbonization plan that encourages more driving by EVs needs to understand that it is failing to address this critical public health issue.
Mode shift (getting drivers to reduce driving and shift to public transportation) is a quickly scalable option for both carbon and particulate matter reductions. Mode shift is also largely in the control of the Commonwealth and its transit and transportation agencies, as well as state and local land use and housing policies.
Mode shift requires more investment in regional rail -- a revamped commuter rail system that runs on electric power and provides frequent all-day service -- and the Greater Boston subway and bus systems.
The needed level of investment, however, dwarfs what we are currently doing. Over the next decade, Massachusetts should be spending more on public transportation in Metro Boston than it spends on roads and bridges. That does not mean we should spend less on roads and bridges. It means we should spend more on public transportation, significantly more, in order to achieve long-delayed goals of electric, high-frequency regional rail, subway system connectivity, and accelerated state of good repair.
All of this bears heavily on the state mandate that the T transition to an all-electric bus fleet on a fairly aggressive timetable. Many well-intentioned lawmakers and others see this as a matter of urgent necessity. They are wrong. There are many reasons why pushing the T toward a very expensive series of investments in equipment, and new garage and charging facilities, all of which are delayed, is a major mistake at this time. Here are three.
First, the current and foreseeable landscape for US transit agencies seeking to purchase electric bus equipment is not anywhere near what it should be. Here is the dilemma. If the T chooses to use federal money to purchase electric buses, it cannot purchase any bus that comes from (or has parts made in) China. Yet these are the best, least expensive electric buses on the market today and for the foreseeable future. This China ban means that every US transit agency using federal funds is forced to purchase from one vendor, New Flyer.
This is a classic monopoly marketplace, and you don’t need a degree in economics to understand that such marketplaces do not offer best-value pricing. At a time when the T should be maximizing the use of its financial resources, spending any money on electric buses until we can make purchases of quality equipment in a competitive market makes no fiscal sense.
Second, most tailpipe carbon emissions are coming from private automobiles, not from T buses. There are over 5 million registered private passenger vehicles powered by internal combustion engines in Massachusetts (as opposed to under 200,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles), so you get a sense of the magnitude of the primary emissions source. Kaplan’s article rightly notes that the MBTA has already taken actions, including moving to compressed natural gas and electric/hybrid buses, that have reduced bus emissions by 90 percent. In this context, buses are inconsequential to the production of harmful emissions in the Commonwealth.
Third, the capital funds that will have to be spent to meet the legislative directive on electric buses means that the most effective approach to mode shift -- regional rail -- will continue to lag for want of funding. At a time when the T has acknowledged that its capital needs are significantly underfunded, spending limited resources to support the acquisition and garaging of very expensive electric buses is an irresponsible use of that money.
Massachusetts would do substantially more to reduce carbon emissions if it invested in an electric regional rail system with 15-30 minute frequencies that enabled more people to take the train rather than drive. The measurable contribution of electric buses to meaningful carbon reductions is miniscule.
We should stop being beguiled by the shiny object of the electric bus and focus on getting more people to take public transportation. This was the explicit advice offered by Gov. Baker’s Commission on the Future of Transportation. We have never taken that advice, and as a result, we remain stuck with a transport sector decarbonization plan that makes no sense and will not succeed.
Electric bus fantasies should not be a substitute for intelligent, well-informed public policy. The Legislature needs to relieve the MBTA of its e-bus mandate, and the T needs to start being publicly candid about how terribly misplaced such a mandate is. I know of no major US transit agency leader, and I know many of them personally, who supports a rapid transition to electric bus.
This would be a good time to set a new agenda for transport sector decarbonization in Massachusetts, one focused more on achievable mode shift and less on a misplaced carbon reduction initiative that, if allowed to continue, will be highly expensive and largely performative.
James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts transportation secretary.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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