Transportation advocates offer a map, and a rearview mirror

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As Joe Biden plucked Massachusetts power players for his one-term administration, he also shoveled billions of federal dollars into the Bay State, sometimes such a dizzying amount that it could be hard to keep track of what was going where.

That includes nearly $4.8 billion for Massachusetts from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – sometimes also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Roughly $1.7 billion is allotted for the Cape Cod bridges replacement project.

As advocates at Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) keep a wary eye on future drops in federal funding under the Trump administration, and predict an expected fall in gas tax revenue amid a shift to electric cars, they’ve sought to map out, quite literally, where the infrastructure law’s funds have gone. The interactive map, created by T4MA's national parent organization, focuses on funds that have already been locked in and cannot be clawed back.

The map breaks down projects by type and location since 2021, when the law was signed, ranging from highway expansions and public transit to bus electrification and bike infrastructure. But it also allowed them to zoom out and see some trends, such as bus electrification mostly happening around Boston, and sparse in the areas served by regional transportation authorities, with Framingham and Nantucket as the exceptions.

“This is a great example of how we get bang for our buck,” said Reggie Ramos, T4MA’s executive director. “A lot of these transportation projects have benefits but also perpetuate what we’re seeing in the last decade. It’s still very skewed toward highway expansion and maintenance.”

Corrigan Salerno, the policy manager for the D.C.-based Transportation for America, worked on the map, using a little bit of AI to approximately geolocate where a project is, or will be after the shovel breaks ground.

If you peer closely at the map, you may see an anomaly: A cluster of projects, such as the purchase and maintenance of public electric vehicle charging stations, southeast of Stow, sits inside the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. That’s where Salerno placed statewide projects that didn’t have much detail provided by agencies. “Great hub of transportation investment,” he joked.

Projects from the other massive federal law, which Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act with an eye on the 2024 presidential election, were not included. (The multibillion-dollar I-90 Allston highway project has lost $335 million in federal funding from that law.)

Overall, the map is a look in the rearview mirror, and there’s little visibility of the road ahead. Ramos said that apart from leaning on surtax revenues for transportation projects and bailing out the MBTA, she has not seen a firm backup plan from state leaders about what to do if and when federal funding dries up.

“We need to step away from this crisis-response mode,” she said. “But the moment also calls for us to be a little more bold about how we as a state are going to fend for ourselves.”

What should be part of the state’s back-up transportation plan, assuming federal funding falls through in the years ahead? Drop me a line: [email protected].

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