Massachusetts faces a huge question mark about how to fund the future of transportation in the commonwealth. And we need a plan.

A new report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation described the challenge as “near insurmountable” given the billions needed every year just to fix the roughly two-thirds of the physical infrastructure previous legislators and governors allowed to rot away at the MBTA, without also thinking about the many expansions necessary to keep our dense state rolling to work and toward a carbon-free future.

For 20 years, problems at the agency were left to fester out of sight and out of mind, and the provision of transit generally was allowed to fall far behind where our state’s growth and development needed it to be. We can’t afford to let that happen again.