Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson talked about Mayor Michelle Wu’s transit agenda, including free fare pilot programs, and the problems with parking in the city. Aloisi is the former Massachusetts transportation secretary, a member of the Transit Matters board and contributor to Commonwealth Magazine. Thompson is executive director of Livable Streets.

Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson talked about Baker’s decision to pull Massachusetts out of a multi-state compact aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the transportation sector.

Wu has remained fairly consistent on her transportation policy stances over the last five years, while Essaibi George’s stances have evolved, according to a review of 2017, 2019, and 2021 candidate questionnaires from the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition, which advocates for policies that reduce traffic-related deaths.

Livable Streets Alliance Executive Director Stacy Thompson cited St. Paul, Minnesota, and Raleigh, North Carolina, as parking reform examples for Boston to follow. St. Paul in August eliminated parking minimums at real estate developments, while Raleigh in June voted to begin the process of eliminating parking requirements at new projects.

Stacy Thompson was among the organizers and said changes need to be made. “We need our elected officials to take accountability, safety and funding seriously so that we can get the ‘t’ back on track,” she said. “Most importantly bring trust back, which we had been building with the previous control board.”

Outside the State House, Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance, said she agreed with Baker's assertion that his predecessors should have made bigger investments in the T and showcased 30 reports assembled over the past 20 years that pointed to "chronic disinvestment."

“So, why aren’t we running as much transit service as possible, why aren’t we building as much infrastructure as humanly possible, because we already have the information that we know that people want to use those modes.”

“We have the tools,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance. “We have the solutions. Now it is the opportunity of our elected officials and the State House and the governor to build back trust and to use the tools they already have in their toolkit to get it done.”

“When we had a control board, every single Monday we heard from leadership, every single week we had a body that was supposed to look into incidents like this,” said Stacy Thompson of LivableStreets Alliance.

"A huge amount of the workforce depends on the T, and if it's not safe and it's not reliable, our economy is not going to come back out of COVID, and that's going to have a ripple effect across the region and the state," Thompson said.