Cambridge Looking to Value Capture Transit Funding

Time Logan reports: "Cambridge is proposing to levy a new fee on real estate developers in Kendall Square to help pay for public transit improvements, a model that officials said could be adopted by the MBTA for the Green Line extension and other projects."

The proposal would create a transportation enhancement fund by collecting the fee inside the Kendall Square urban renewal zone. In effect, the fee captures value created by new transit investments, and asking developers benefitting from the new value to fund those investments.

The article goes into more detail about the preliminary discussions about creating the new fee, some of the bureaucrats that support it, and some of the developments that could be the first to test out the funding mechanism.