Poll Finds Eroding Satisfaction With State’s Transportation Systems, With Affordability A Top Concern

Fewer than one in six Massachusetts voters are satisfied with the state’s transportation system, and affordability and housing costs rank as top concerns, according to a new statewide poll.

The MassINC Polling Group surveyed 800 registered voters in early March, asking them questions about upcoming elections and transportation issues.

When asked “how would you rate the condition of the transportation system,” including roads, bridges, sidewalks, and public transportation, only 15 percent of the survey’s respondents said that the system was in “good” shape.

The vast majority of respondents gave the system a fair (44 percent) or poor (38 percent) rating.

In a press release accompanying the poll results, MassINC notes that these results are more pessimistic than those found from their surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025.

Only one percent (fewer than a dozen of the survey’s 800 respondents) rated the state’s transportation system as “excellent.” According to the survey’s detailed cross-tabs, all of those rosy-eyed respondents had an annual household income over $100,000, and owned at least three cars.

Transit users are less dissatisfied

Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) was one of the poll’s co-sponsors. Reggie Ramos, the organization’s executive director, told StreetsblogMASS on Wednesday that the poll should not be seen as a critique of the MBTA.

She noted that the poll asked respondents to rate the transportation system as a whole, not just public transit. Most of the poll’s respondents came from outside of the Route 128 beltway, and outside of the T’s core service area. The subset of respondents who lived inside Route 128, and the overlapping subset of respondents who use public transit regularly, had more favorable views:

“The MBTA has made leaps and strides in making the system better, and that is palpable. So we have to contextualize the results of the poll, so that we’re not interpreting it as disapproval of everything that’s been done with the T,” Ramos said.

Ramos also noted that the survey was conducted in early March, when the hassles of this winter’s massive snowstorms were still a fresh memory. A January focus group associated with the survey highlighted dissatisfaction with snow removal on sidewalks and bus stops.

Affordability is voters’ top concern

In their first question, pollsters asked respondents an open-ended question: “What do you think is the single biggest issue facing the state government here in Massachusetts?”

The most common response (from 22 percent of respondents) was affordability and the cost of living. A related issue – homelessness and the costs of housing – came in a close second (18 percent).

This polling, conducted between March 12 and March 17, also coincided with the early days of a dramatic spike in gasoline prices in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran.

Typically, ridership on public transit – a more affordable transportation option – increases when gasoline prices spike. But outside greater Boston and a handful of smaller cities, public transit simply isn’t available.

And while gasoline prices are continuing to surge, politicians on Beacon Hill still aren’t making any significant moves to improve or expand transit services into more neighborhoods.

One small exception to that rule has been the Commonwealth’s new “Microtransit and Last Mile Transit Grant” program, which earlier this spring provided grants for nine small-town transit routes, on-demand ride services, and bikeshare expansions.

However, that program has a shoestring budget of just $10 million for the year, which is less than what the state will spend on a single interstate highway paving project between Deerfield and Northampton this summer.

The MassINC poll suggests that voters would like their elected officials to try harder.

Pollsters asked survey respondents whether they would “support or oppose increased state funding for these on-demand van rides in communities that lack bus service?”

28 percent said they would “strongly” support that spending, and 36 percent said they would somewhat support the idea. Only 28 percent said that they would “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose new microtransit services.