Transportation chairs merge on same road to regulation

Published on December 23, 2025 by MassterList

Students of State House history, and others of a certain vintage, will recall or trade the stories of yesteryear’s fights between governors, House speakers and Senate presidents. 

A budget battle in 1999 featured House Speaker Tom Finneran and Senate President Tom Birmingham taking to the State House balcony, looking out onto Beacon Street, to talk through a deal. The scene exemplified the top-down nature of the Legislature under the golden dome, but it also demonstrated that relationships matter.

If those at the wheel can’t get along – whether through longstanding grudges or an errant remark that leads to a new tiff – that has policy implications.

That goes for committee chairs, too. And at least when it comes to the transportation sector, the chairs of a key committee, Sen. Brendan Crighton and Rep. James Arciero, have a strong relationship stretching back to the early 2000s when they were both aides on Beacon Hill.

“We’ve known each other, my goodness, since he worked for Senator McGee, who’s right here,” Arciero said at the MASSterList/State House News Service transportation forum earlier this month. He was referring to Tom McGee, who now chairs the MBTA board and sat in the front row. Arciero worked for the Senate chair of Ways and Means at the time, Steven Panagiotakos. 

Now he and Crighton are both chairs in a “complicated space,” as Arciero put it. It’s a space with no shortage of opinions, either: Crighton joked that his wife wonders why it takes him more than two hours to come back from grocery shopping at Market Basket as he gets buttonholed by constituents.

Crighton (D-Lynn) has served as transportation chair for longer, nearly four years to Arciero’s seven months. “We don’t get really caught up in the bigger political maneuvering,” Arciero (D-Westford) added. “I think we’re pretty down to earth, guys, and also we have a young family, so there’s a lot in common with that as well, and we always talk about the flexibility and school pickups.”

“I think you’ll see with both of us, we just want to get things done,” Crighton said.

Both agree that regulation of micromobility vehicles – electric bikes and scooters – should be a top priority for next year. “I’ve seen more young people without helmets driving things that are 30 to 35 miles an hour. My daughter and I always get clipped on a rail trail,” Arciero said. “So I’ve seen this exponential sort of increase of these micromobility vehicles since 2021 and we need to get our arms around that and improve things on the safety measures and to regulate the speed.”

They’ve both been on a road show of sorts. At a recent Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce forum, Crighton drew at least one headline by opening the door to congestion pricing, a controversial policy that is seeing success in New York.

“For some reason, you’re villainized as soon as you even say that it should be on the table, which I think when you’re looking at transformative policies, like transportation revenue and how we fund it, it’d be irresponsible for us to take anything off the table,” Crighton said when the topic came up again at the MASSterList/SHNS forum. “We’re serious actors. We should be able to have serious conversations and to weigh pros and cons, debate, study, have a pilot, all these simple things. That’s how you create good policy.”