Riding toward a greener future? How Massachusetts public transport compares to other public transportation networks.
What is the relationship between public transportation usage and CO2 emissions in Massachusetts? To investigate this question, this blog uses a peer group of the only nine states with over 100 million total public transport trips in 2023, which are referred to as ‘high transport states’ throughout the blog.
Total CO2 Emissions
US DataLabs ranks all nine of these states by per capita CO2 emissions. As seen in figure 1, Massachusetts had the third lowest per capita CO2 emissions of the group, trailing only New York and California. Massachusetts was 46th in the nation in CO2 emissions per capita, showing the Commonwealth’s commitment to low CO2 emissions. Most of the high transport states rank well in this metric, with six of them in the bottom twelve states in per capita CO2 emissions. However, other high transport states such as Texas and Pennsylvania demonstrate that having large public transport systems does not necessarily translate to low per capita CO2 emissions, as they rank 11th and 22nd highest in CO2 emissions, respectively.
Figure 1: Per Capita CO2 Emissions in High Transport States, 2022
Transportation CO2 Emissions
US DataLabs also separates CO2 emissions by sector, and Figure 2 uses that data alongside 2022 census data to calculate the per capita transportation CO2 emissions in each of these nine states. Massachusetts ranks favorably among peer group states, only releasing 4.01 metric tons of CO2 per person in the transportation sector. As seen in Figure 2, this is the second lowest mark among the high transport states. However, there can still be improvement, as New York again is the top performing state with only 3.81 metric tons of CO2 emissions per person.
Figure 2: Metric Tons of Transportation CO2 Emission per Person in High Transport States, 2022
For these high transport states, transportation accounts for a large part of total carbon emissions and could be cut down if public transport were more efficient. In Massachusetts, transportation accounted for 47.3 percent of all carbon emissions in 2022., compared with 41.2 percent for all high transport states. If public transportation were more optimized, total emissions could be reduced.
What’s Next for Massachusetts
New York demonstrates that an expansive, highly utilized public transportation system can be associated with lower emissions. New York has over 3 billion yearly riders, which is more than 3 times that of the next closest state, and 11 times more than Massachusetts. New York has the lowest transportation emissions per person of the group (3.81 metric tons per person) and also the second lowest per capita emissions in the country, tied for the best in the high transport group. While Massachusetts also fares well in both (4.01 and fifth, respectively), and outperforms most of this peer group, New York’s ability to have lower emissions in a much larger city shows there is still room for improvement.
The MBTA’s funding has grown significantly over the past two years. It will be interesting to see whether Massachusetts’ transportation emissions decrease because of technical improvements and ridership growth for the MBTA. New York has shown that cities with large-scale public transport can still maintain low transportation emissions per capita as the system continues to grow. Lowering CO2 emissions should always be a part of the long-term goals for Massachusetts’ increased investments in transportation. As the MBTA continues to receive funding to maintain, update, and possibly expand its network, it remains to be seen how this will impact future state-wide transportation emissions.
Andrew Harding is a Roger Perry Government Transparency Intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is a rising senior at Connecticut College, with a double major in Government and Educational Studies. Feel free to contact via email, LinkedIn, or writing a letter to Pioneer’s office.
