Boston City Council to Host Hearing On Delays, Lost Funding for Transportation Projects
On Wednesday, April 22, the Boston City Council’s Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation will hold a public hearing to discuss the Wu administration’s transportation policies, focusing on the delays and the loss of federal funding that the city has suffered through since last year’s secretive “30-day review” of transportation policies and projects.
Last month, following the publication of a Boston Globe report that outlined how Mayor Michelle Wu had personally intervened to block long-planned street safety and transit improvement projects across Boston, Council President Liz Breadon (District 9, Allston-Brighton) and Planning, Development, and Transportation committee Chair Sharon Durkan (District 8, Fenway-Back Bay) independently filed orders for public hearings to shed some light on the administration’s new transportation policies and priorities.
“Continued delays to the advancement of these transportation projects could jeopardize an estimated $200 million in public investment for the City of Boston at a time the City can least afford to lose investment,” according to the preamble to Breadon’s hearing order.
In the weeks since Breadon filed that order, the Wu administration has forced the MBTA to delay a federally-funded center-running busway project on Columbus Avenue in Roxbury, and the city also lost $8.15 million in federal funding because of its lack of progress on a plan to redesign a dangerous intersection in the Fenway neighborhood.
Councilor Sharon Durkan, a close ally of Mayor Wu, will chair next Wednesday’s hearing.
Durkan had sponsored her own docket item calling for “a substantive and constructive discussion on transportation philosophy, governance of street infrastructure, project status, and mechanisms for community engagement.”
That conversation will also be part of the agenda on April 22.
Public hearing details
Who: Boston City Council Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation
When: April 22, 2026, 2:00 p.m.
Where: Iannella City Council Chamber, 5th Floor of Boston City Hall (or watch online on the Boston City TV livestream)
Read the official public notice here.
The hearing will also clear an older docket item from January that had been sponsored by Councilors Benjamin Weber (District 6, West Roxbury-Jamaica Plain) and Enrique Pepén (District 5, Hyde Park-Roslindale).
That item requests an update from Streets Cabinet staff on how they’re implementing the mayor’s “safety surge initiative,” the city’s 2023 plan to install thousands of speed humps on residential streets across the city.
Last year’s secretive “30-day review” of street infrastructure projects turned the “surge” into a trickle. After installing nearly 600 speed humps across the city in 2024, city workers only installed a handful last year.
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